Speed Zine _ 2025 FC: 🧠 Why You Shouldn't Learn Geometry Nodes, Unreal Engine’s Ultra-Fast Physics

Happy Monday!

Hope everyone is staying cool as heat waves sweep across the Northern Hemisphere. This brings us to the sad news that the inventor of the heat index has passed away.

He was 88, but it felt like 107.

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In Premiere for Motion Designers, you'll learn to leverage the art of video editing to increase your creativity and efficiency. Create better animatics, easily edit audio & music, and effortlessly add footage to your motion projects. By the end of this course, you'll have practical, studio-style skills that make you a multimedia master … and most importantly, you can finally stop editing in After Effects!

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THIS WEEKS MOTION MONDAYS VIDEO!

This week, After Effects finally gets the layer staggering tool motion designers have been begging for, and it's everything we hoped it would be! Meanwhile, Midjourney just dropped their first AI video generation model and it's surprisingly good at creating stylized, surreal content that actually feels useful for motion designers.

We're also diving into some wild new physics simulation research from Utah that could revolutionize how we handle dynamics in our favorite 3D apps. Speaking of physics, Unreal 5.6 has introduced Control Rig physics. Plus we're taking a look at True Grit's new PlastiSoul texture pack that's perfect for that vintage tee aesthetic everyone's loving right now.

WATCH THIS WEEK'S NEWS!

NEWS OF MOTION

🧠 Don't Learn Blender's Geometry Nodes

The Blender Guru dropped some truth bombs for beginners in his latest video. His big advice? Skip Geometry Nodes and focus on core skills like modeling and texturing first. Use tutorials to build foundation knowledge, then immediately tackle a solo project to cement what you've learned. He also suggests using inspiring artwork as rotating wallpaper to keep motivation high through the inevitable one-month enthusiasm dip (which is the worst type of chip dip IMHO). You can check out all his donut-y wisdom by watching his full video over on Youtube!

🌫️ Nano Atmospheric Haze Plugin for Resolve

Resolve just got an awesome new depth-aware atmospheric haze plugin that uses ML to add physically accurate fog and light scattering to your footage. While it works on any footage, it works best on log footage with visible light sources as it analyzes highlights then creates realistic airlight and halation that responds to actual scene depth. Pretty clever way to get that cinematic haze look without pumping a fog machine on set. It's OG Trapcode Shine but for the new age!

✏️ Linearity: Design Meets Motion

Linearity's got two apps shaking up the design world. Curve is their Apple-native vector tool that is a much lighter version of Illustrator and works seamlessly across Mac, iPad, and iPhone with AI-powered image-to-vector conversion. Move is their new motion app that's like "Keynote on steroids," letting you import from Figma, Illustrator, or Sketch while keeping all your layers intact. Automatic keyframes, pro effects, and real-time collaboration make simple, social media style animation accessible without the After Effects learning curve.

💡 After Effects Spot and Parallel Light Shadows Faster

The After Effects team is on fire lately. Victoria from the dev team recently announced that Spotlight and Parallel shadow casting are now faster and higher quality in the latest beta, addressing one of AE's biggest 3D shortcomings. This comes hot on the heels of staggered keyframes and ALT/OPTION dragging to duplicate layers. Quality of life updates have been coming in hot and heavy with realistic shadows that don't take forever to render!

🎮 Control Rig Physics in Unreal 5.6

Unreal's new Control Rig Physics is impressive and allows you to be able to animate with real physics directly in the control graph! As shown in this overview video from Proj Prod's Youtube Channel, adding physics to rigs is now possible by just using a few simple nodes, allowing for separate kinematic and dynamic bone chains for granular control. When you're done, you can then bake results into keyframes for further tweaking. Real-time feedback on gravity, collision, and more makes auditing animation immediate and satisfying. Now if only they could get something to make weight painting be as easy…

🎯 Camera Projection Mapping Tool For AE Gets Big Update

Projection 3D, an advanced tool for camera projection mapping and photo parallax animation in After Effects, just received a massive update featuring a redesigned UI and the ability to convert projected objects into full 3D models (OBJ format) directly within After Effects. The developer claims this speeds up camera projection work by approximately 20 times and eliminates the need for switching between applications. New features include unlimited resolution, a texture editing pipeline with Photoshop, and a displace tool that generates 3D geometry from depth maps. Plus, there's one-click water animation with Blender integration. You can grab this update over at aescripts + aeplugins!

🎬 Simple Moves for Cinema 4D

With all the Blender add ons, it's about time Cinema 4D artists get thrown a bone! Samplistic Media did just that by dropping a free tool that makes camera moves, MoGraph animation, and constraint objects stupid simple. Set up animation procedurally so client feedback doesn't make you want to cry. The tool really shines with its ability to easily make art-directable animations through clever MoGraph setups and easy constraint-based rigs.

🎉 Aharon Rabinowitz Celebrates 20 Year Tutorial Anniversary

And finally, we wanted to send congrats to one of the After Effects tutorial legends, our very own Aharon Rabinowitz, who posted his first tutorial on Creative COW exactly 20 years ago last week! His "old TV look" tutorial was among the first free online resources available, helping establish the knowledge-sharing culture that's now so integral to motion design. From those humble beginnings to collaborations with some guy named Andrew Kramer and roles at Red Giant and here at School of Motion, his journey proves that sharing knowledge can lead to incredible career opportunities. Here's to 20 more years of community building!