Piet's Corner User’s Guide
A Title for FCPX
Piet’s Corner (pronounced “Pete’s Corner”) consists of a square shape, one horizontal line, one vertical line and the Title text. The square and lines are arranged like a section of Piet Mondrian’s works from which this title was inspired. It is very easy to stack instances of this title to create more complex “artwork” for your titling. The parameter selection is very easy to use. There are parameters to alter the length of the lines and their offsets from their default position. Animations are automatic and always work regardless of the changes in line parameters. There are eight built in animations: horizontal line moves in from left and exits right, vice versa, or can be made to “bounce” direction. Same rules for the vertical line in up or down directions. It is possible to keyframe your own line animations using the Offsets parameters so you can animate either in or out if you don’t want both.
User’s Parameters Guide
Style Arrangement: There are four arrangements based on the location of the square shape. They are: top left, top right, bottom right and bottom left. Lines are always aligned on the inside (text side) edges of the square.
Animations: There are eight line animations, simply combinations of the horizontal line moving in from the left (Left) and moving out to the right, or the option to “Bounce” (in from the left — out to the left). The vertical line moves in from the top or bottom and exits the opposite direction or bounces.
WriteOn Snapshots: When set to 100, the text does not animate. Anything less will cause the text to write on. Higher values will animate more quickly. Setting this value to zero will cause the longest delay to the start of writing on and write on the slowest. In between values are interpolation of the five write-on “presets” created for this effect.
H-Line Size: The default H-Line Size is the width of whatever text is being used. This setting can be used to set whatever line size you’d like (or set it to 0 to eliminate the line). The parameter can be keyframed to animate.
H-Line Offset: The default H-Line Offset is 0, that is, it automatically aligns to the left and right edges of the text’s bounding box*. This parameter can be used to change the alignment of the horizontal line with respect to the text. Especially effective when H-Line Size is also used.
V-Line Size: The default V-Line Size is the height of the text’s bounding box. If you use multiple lines of text, this size will automatically adjust as lines are added.
V-Line Offset: The default V-Line Offset is 0; automatically aligning with the top edge of the first line of text. This parameter is analogous to H-Line Offset.
Square Size: Use this parameter to change the size of the corner square from its default of 24 down to 0 (not visible) to a much larger size (as a large corner block — which can be very effective). It is not advisable to keyframe the size of this object. Due to the effects of the behavior used to align this object with the text, it is likely to look “jumpy” under animation.
Text Color,
Square Color,
H-Line Color,
V-Line Color: Independent color selections for each visible part of this title. Text color is provided as a convenience: this is the same color as the Text Face color available in the Text inspector.
Drop Shadow: This is off by default. It can be used to good effect… try it with all white title parts on a white background.
Tips
Position the text in the viewer by clicking on the text and dragging to whatever location you want it to appear. Everything follows with the text as if it were one object.
When making color selections, it is often useful (and advisable) to use the same color for more than one part. Simply click on the color swatch in the inspector and drag it on to one of the other swatches and drop.
When creating a multiple level effect, customize the first instance then hold the Option key down and drag a copy of the title above the original. Then, all you need to do is drag the new instance to a new position and make any minor alterations to the title you might need. It is possible to build beautiful and intricate lattice effects for your titles.
Demo video:
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A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.