Tag: template

Motion Template Backdater

Posted on May 28, 2019August 30, 2020 by FX Mahoney

Motion Template Backdater

Use Motion Template Backdater to backdate your Motion Templates to be compatible with the version of FCPX you are running. You should research the types of features in your template to make sure your version of Final Cut will be “aware” of those features. Expect that if the template you’re backdating requires certain dependencies, it may not work. That won’t break FCPX, but you should remove templates that don’t work from the Motion Templates hierarchy and keep your downloaded file as a backup until you can upgrade.

If you have not done so before, please read the Instructions & Notes below. It will toggle to display when you click the button.

Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.

A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.

Page Flip transition for final cut pro x

Page Flip User Guide

Posted on November 16, 2018May 2, 2021 by FX Mahoney

Page Flip Transition

User Guide

This package contains four Transition effects: Page Flip – Open, Page Flip – Close (drop zone versions); Page Flip TLP – Open and Page Flip TLP – Close (timeline pin versions). Open shows the pages “opening” or peeling off and Close shows the pages overlaying the drop zones before.

This transition is fairly straightforward. It is designed to be 3 seconds long when added between clips (overriding preferences). The 3-second length is synchronized with the Audio (supplied). You can speed up or slow down the effect by changing its length in the storyline.

There are two audio effects supplied with this effect. They are named: Page-flip-sfx.wav and Page-flip-open-sfx.wav. If you change the length of the transition, you will need to edit these down and reposition the effects.

There’s an OnScreen Control to make designing custom page animation easy. The OnScreen Control affects the Angle and Rotation parameters.

OSC in center screen: white circle with two line segments separated by a smaller circle and tipped by an arrow. You cannot drag the center circle, but can drag the smaller circle and the arrow head.

The Radius parameter controls the amount of curl on the page. A small value is a tight curve. A Large value is a slight bend.

Fade Out controls a fade effect as the “pages” finish their animation.

Fill Color and Fill Opacity can be used to change the appearance of the backside of the pages. The default setting should be good for most situations.

The rest of the parameter list for all of the transitions concerns the drop zones. For the TLP versions, there will be no actual drop zone source wells, just the Pan and Scale parameters. These can be used to resize and reposition the media in the drop zone area (useful for misbehaving media which you may run into once in awhile.) In most cases, you shouldn’t have to make any adjustments for media that is 16:9 format.

Aligning Audio to Page Flip:

For Page-flip-sfx, align the playhead through the middle of the “bowtie” on the transition, then align the middle audio peak to the playhead

For Page-flip-open-sfx, align the playhead through the middle of the bowtie then align the middle peak to the playhead. Note that the first peak aligns with the start of the transition. In this example, there is an Audio Fade applied to the end.

Tips for Timeline Pins:

In the demo video below, there is a scene of a couple of children running down to the beach. All four pinned frames are from the same clip. If you do not want to show the clip, but still use the stills in a sort of stop frame animation, then simply place a connected clip or secondary storyline over the clip you used for the stills. The reason this is necessary is that timeline pins always must be on the same storyline as the transition.

Timeline pins can be a little “persnickety”. If you drag the dot over a clip in the timeline and release the mouse, a lot of the time the pin will snap back to its default position. The tip is: when you drag the timeline pin to another part of the storyline, bring the mouse down into the clip before releasing the button. The pin should stick where you placed it.

Demonstrations:

Installation Instructions.

Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.

A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.

The Tower User Guide

Posted on November 4, 2018May 1, 2021 by FX Mahoney

The Tower User Guide

The Tower started out as an emulation of the iDVD Revolution theme and originally called Revolution. The project was begun over 3 1/2 years ago — one of the first models attempted when 3D Text became available in Final Cut Pro X. It was plagued with problems. The 3D aspects of the model could be handled easily enough but the “textures” (drop zones and other artwork) suffered. There are technical issues that had to be learned and since there is no documentation, these had to be learned by experimentation. This involved technical experimentation with the very text design used to construct the model, the reason you must install a specific font and all of this took, literally, years. The effort was not a constant involvement with this particular project and it has been alternately abandoned and taken up again about seven times since its inception. A recent, accidental discovery has allowed me to finally put all the pieces together.

There are three preset animations and a “null” to turn the others off: iDVD Revolution (on which this effect was originally based), Rise and Wipe. These preset animations are demonstrated in the video below (I expect less Motion noise from 60fps projects, or try using our SC Motion Blurs effects).

There is a Text Field in the upper right corner (by default) referred to as a “Static Title” which provides the text used in all parts of this effect. Whatever you type there will be copied and repeated in the cylinder effect. This can only be a single line of text. If you need more, use a Basic Title to add additional information.

The position or rotation of the Static Title cannot be animated by keyframing. You can click and drag the title anywhere you need it. Use the Static Title Opacity to fade it in and out of the way when necessary.

[Parameters listed below denoted by ♦ can be keyframed; all others cannot.]

♦ Static Title Opacity — use this parameter to fade the “main title” text or take it out of the scene entirely. Fading the Static Title text has no effect on the text on the circle paths.

♦ Effect Transparency will allow you to fade in/out the cylinder/tower graphics. The iDVD Revolution preset animation uses a Camera Fade and so produces an entirely different effect for transparency than this control’s opacity will.

Drop Zone — this is ubiquitous across all of FCPX. In order to load video into this, you must select the “source well” then go to the Event Browser or the timeline and mouse over a clip. Find the starting frame (the cursor will skim the clip) you want the effect to display and click on it to load the clip. Select the Apply button under the Viewer. You may repeat this process as many times as you like to fit the precise video display you need. If you select a starting point that does not allow the full time of the remaining clip to “fit” into the length of this generator, you will need to shorten the time of the generator or find a longer clip. You can make longer clips by fashioning multiple shorter clips into a compound clip and use the compound clip as if it were a regular clip. [Note: using a timeline video clip does not always result in video that “plays”, but displays as a still frame. If this is the case, use the Event Browser version, or if other Effects are required, create a compound clip to add to the source well.]

(Drop Zone) Pan and Scale — these parameters can be used to resize the video/image used in the drop zone and reposition it horizontally and/or vertically. This can be handy if you want to zoom into a portion of the image and change its orientation (e.g., centering.) Scaling smaller than the “view port” will reveal a black background which can also be used for an interesting effect or view of the subject. Pan and Scale for drop zones cannot be keyframed.

Main 3D Params

♦ Position — use these parameters to position The Tower graphics in the Viewer in “3D space”. Dial down the disclosure triangle to reveal the Z position parameter. Manipulating the Z parameter can be used to “scale” The Tower larger or smaller, but it is far more efficient to use Scaling (below).
♦ Rotation — use these parameters to change the orientation of The Tower in 3D space. FCPX only shows the Z rotation (“spin”) by default. Dial down the disclosure triangle to reveal the X and Y rotations. The X rotation parameter will “lean” The Tower forwards (positive) or backwards (negative). A tumbling animation can be built with this parameter. The Y rotation parameter will “turn” The Tower so that it faces offset directions. The Y rotation can be used to set a starting orientation to be used with Cylinder Spin (below).
♦ Scale offset — This value is restricted at a minimum. If you need to scale The Tower model smaller, then use the Z position parameter listed above. The default view of The Tower is to fill the screen top to bottom (with slight overhang at the caps). Scale offset can be used to quickly focus in on a smaller region of the cylinder model.

Cylinder (parameters)

Cylinder Turn — this is the amount of rotation that the cylinder (not including the wrapping text) will rotate over the life of the generator. It is set by default to 45º which is a nice rate of rotation in the “left to right” direction (contra the text motion). Automated motion can be halted by setting this value to 0º and it can be set to negative values (“right to left” motion) by clicking directly on the numerical value and dragging the mouse downward into negative territory. This parameter cannot be keyframed. If you need to animate the rate of turn, set this value to 0 and keyframe the Rotation Y parameter above.
♦ Color — (cylinder core color) set by default to a dark magenta. This can be any color you want: right click on the color swatch and pick one from the picker. This value can also be keyframed to animate from one color to another (a feature exceptionally overlooked in FCPX!)
♦ Brightness — this parameter is not usually found with Color options but is a feature of 3D Text in FCPX. It is keyframable and included for effect with this template.
♦ Shininess — another 3D Text specific parameter that will allow you to alter the light reflective properties of the cylinder “core”. It gives the effect of altering the “texture” of the core surface, more reflective is more glassy, less is more like “plastic”.
♦ Opacity — setting this parameter value to 0% will eliminate the cylinder core from view leaving only the “floating” curved drop zones. It is an interesting effect. Setting this parameter value to 100% will make the core a “solid” (from “glassy” to “metallic”).

♦ Camera Perspective — this parameter was a late addition and it didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so I stuck it in the Cylinder Core section. The default value is 45º which is roughly equivalent to a 50mm (“normal”) lens on a modern DSLR camera. Setting this value to 0º will distort The Tower model, making it look… flatter and somewhat “bent” (you have to see it…). At 15º, the image will look slightly smaller than normal but less flat. At 137º (default orientation of The Tower) the small text ring at the middle will almost completely fill the screen, and going above 140º will start taking you into the inner core of the effect — looking from the inside out! [Reminder: keyframable!!]

The next two sections concern the rotating text sections starting with the larger, Lower Text Ring section then followed by the Upper Text Ring section. Since both sections contain the same parameters in the same order, I will simply put them together as one.

♦ Repeats — how many times text is repeated along the circle path. The defaults are 4 lower/9 upper for the default text of “My Great Film” provided as a “holder”. The minimum repeats for Lower Text is 1 simply because the text is large enough to completely wrap the cylinder if the text is long enough. The minimum repeats for Upper Text is two. The maximum repeats for Lower Text is 12 and for Upper Text is 20.

♦ Spin — This is the auto animation rate of spin of the corresponding circle of text. The amount of spin is in “degrees per second” (roughly). The range of spin goes from -90º to +90º (which are very fast and not recommended). The default values are within the recommended range for use, however, depending on whether you keyframe the Y rotation, you may need higher rates of spin to make the offset to the cylinder obvious. By default, the Lower Text spin rate is 1/2 the Upper Text spin rate. This gives the viewer a chance to read the larger text as it moves which the faster speed for the smaller text makes the repetitions more obvious.

♦ Tracking — distance between characters. Use this parameter to even out any large gaps in the text and use this to help even out the gaps between the vertical bars within the texts. Vertical bars are separate from the actual text and even though their Repeats are automatically duplicated from the text repeats, their relationship to the text on the circle, by default, aligns to the same degree points along the circle (see V.Bar Offset).
♦ V.Bar Offset — allows reposition of vertical bar separators w/r/t text. Usually you will want to reset the degree offset from the text starts to place them in the exact middle of the text repeat gaps. These values are simply offsets and do not affect their synchronized spin with the texts. That said, this value can be keyframed to behave in any manner you prefer (or in conjunction with Path Radius).
♦ Path Radius — This is a “rigged” fixed positive range from 0 to 100%. At 0%, the text’s circle path is as “tight” as it gets around the cylinder. At 100%, it is as far as it gets. This value is quite wide, but not unlimited (and the max value will not be revealed as it really makes little difference.) This parameter may be keyframed to effect. However, if expanding the radius or collapsing it in an animation, you will also want to animate the Tracking values and the V.Bar Offset to maintain the relationships of space and v.bar position during the animation. It is *not* recommended to animate the Repeats parameter to fill gaps in expanded path radii.
♦ Offset Angle —set starting angle or keyframe spin animation. The V.Bar and Text are connected in any animated rotation (the V.Bar Offset is “additive” to this animation) and this parameter can be used to offset the starting angle (or keyframe additional animation apart from the Spin parameter).
♦ V. Offset — this sets the vertical location w/r/t its original location upon the column. If you need the circle texts to disappear, this is the only way to accomplish it — by dragging this value so that the text goes off-screen. There is no option for opacity in these circle texts.

Background parameters

There is a solid color background to this generator.

♦ BG Color — Sets the color of the background.

♦BG Opacity — Sets the opacity of the background. Overlaying this effect upon the storyline allows for a fade through the color.

Demo:

Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.

A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.

Puzzle HD User Guide

Posted on July 22, 2018May 2, 2021 by FX Mahoney

Puzzle HD User Guide

Puzzle HD is a Generator template and requires the installation of the ZZSCPuzzleHD-Regular truetype font (included). Simply open Font Book and drag the font into the font list column. If Final Cut is running, you will need to restart it so that it updates its font list.

Puzzle HD does not animate on its own but only needs one parameter keyframed to animate the effect to your liking. This method allows for “freeze frame” animation for effect. The puzzle can be resized, moved and rotated in space. It’s very easy to use. An optional puzzle board background (wooden texture) is provided.

Keyframe example

The yellow/orange diamond demonstrates an active keyframe. It only appears yellow when the playhead is resting on the frame on which the keyframe is set. Below the yellow/orange diamond is an unset keyframe (default). When you mouse over an unset keyframe, FCPX shows a tooltip to “Add a keyframe”. The curved arrow on the right side is a “reset” button (which will clear all keyframes and reset the parameter to its default setting). Not shown are left and right facing arrows that appear when the playhead is on either side of a set keyframe which can be used as a shortcut to set the playhead on the next or previous set keyframe. You can have a keyframe set on each frame (possible but not practical). FCPX will interpolate parameter values when the playhead is between two set keyframes.

Puzzle HD is animated by the Piece Location parameter. The default is set to 100% (fully assembled). The 0% value is a completely disassembled puzzle and more often than not, all the pieces will be off-screen. To see how this works, go down to the Puzzle Rotation parameter and dial open the disclosure triangle on the left edge of the parameter. Change the Y parameter to 45º. Adjust the Puzzle Scale down to 80%. Adjust the Active Pieces parameter to 10 or so. Slowly drag the Piece Location parameter from 100% down to 0% and watch the effect. Move Piece Location back and forth a few times. That’s the effect. You set the timing, you set how far puzzle pieces are placed (with or without animation!) Everything else is customization.

Puzzle HD Parameters

Active Pieces

This parameter determines how many pieces will become animated with respect to the setting of Piece Location. A setting of 0 will move only one piece at a time from its beginning location to its end location, then move the next piece until its completion. The higher the value, the more pieces will be moving at the same time (but still like a “race” to the finish, you will still see a starting order). The slider goes to 100 (there are only 35 pieces of the puzzle), but you can click on the number value and drag it up to higher values which will compress the travel distances over all the puzzle pieces the higher the value.

Variance

This parameter introduces more random motion but not in position, but XYZ rotations. Cranking this value up will get the individual pieces spinning around like “crazy”!

Method

There are three animation methods: 1) Random (this is the default — pieces animate in random order); 2) By Single Column — this will cause the pieces to animate by “column” (left to right going from 0% to 100%); 3) From Ends to Center — this will guarantee that the last piece to “fit” will be the center piece (or conversely, the center piece will be the first to move out).

Random Seed

This is changed by clicking on the circular opposing arrows will generate a new random value. This value affects Variance only.

Piece Thickness

This parameter determines the thickness of all the puzzle pieces. This puzzle is created in real 3D and the back sides are textured as cardboard. The default value of 10 works best in general, but you can decide for yourself how you want pieces to appear. Since the puzzle does not require animating, the freeze frame appearance may need a different look.

Front Edge Size

Another 3D look option. There is a disclosure triangle, however, this parameter may already be open by default. The actual parameters that mater are Width and Depth. When Width is 0, you should have a seamless image. Keyframing this value from any positive value down to zero will transition the appearance from puzzle to normal video(/image). The Depth is the vertical (in 3D, this direction is towards the viewer) distance of thickness of the “edge”. These values are completely separate from the Piece Thickness value.

Show Board

This generator has an optional wooden puzzle board. This parameter is set on by default. You may uncheck the parameter to hide the puzzle board.

Puzzle Position

The location of the puzzle in the viewer. Dialing open the disclosure triangle reveals a Z position parameter which matters (and is different than scale although it can be used in much the same manner!) The XYZ parameters can be keyframed to animate the puzzle in your scene.

Puzzle Rotation

These parameters, like Position, may be keyframed to animate the rotational orientation of the entire puzzle.

Puzzle Scale

This parameter is a useful shortcut to resizing the appearance of the puzzle in lieu of manipulating the usually hidden Z position parameter.

Drop Zone

This is filled, by default, with a custom drop zone (which forces the aspect ratio of the media dropped to 16:9). This is a standard Final Cut Pro drop zone otherwise. If correction is needed the following Pan and Scale parameters can be used to make adjustments and/or corrections. Fill Color is used for a background in case of any media with an alpha channel (transparency). Puzzles don’t usually come with holes in them!

Shadow Opacity and Softness

Each puzzle piece casts a (3D) shadow. This effect is not the usual “drop shadow” used for everything else in the user interface. Shadow Softness can be used to take the edges off… so to speak 😉

Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.

A good place to see all of my effects as well as several tutorials and other demonstrations in use is on my YouTube channel.

Sliding Thirds User Guide

Posted on April 6, 2018April 29, 2021 by FX Mahoney

Sliding Thirds User Guide

A title effect for FCPX

Description

This effect is for 16:9 media. You can use it for other aspect ratios, it simply will not look as good.

Sliding Thirds title is a simple yet powerful effect. Even though it is being referred to as an “effect”, it is actually a Title plugin for FCPX. And even though it is a “title”, no text has been provided for use. Sliding Thirds is very much like an adjustment layer you can apply to your storyline to provide animation support for any other kind of title you would like to apply. Its effect can be extended greatly by “stacking” instances of the Sliding Thirds title in your storyline. (Examples below demonstrate a “pyramid” stack, an “offset” stack, and “straight” stacks.) Directly stacking one upon another will double its effect.

The default setting is to have the left side panel animate into view for a little over 1 second (including the offsetting of the “canvas” if set). At the end of the title (about the last 1 second) the panel slides back off and any offset of the canvas is restored to its original position. The title can be as short as 2 seconds and 10 frames long or as long as your entire project. Panels are activated by checkbox option. It is allowed to not use any panels and only use the Horizontal and/or Vertical Slide to move what is on the canvas. Sliding Thirds can be used simply to “push” anything on the screen by up to one third of its dimension. Stack another Sliding Thirds on top and move everything another third, including whatever you add to the Sliding Thirds title underneath. Stack as many as you like to keep moving panels across the screen.

See the demo video (below) for a variety of effects than can be accomplished with this single simple title.

Horizontal/Vertical Slide: Values default to 0. Sliding left moves the screen (storyline) media to the left. Sliding right moves the screen media to the right. Values go to 100% with minus or positive indicating direction of movement (negative vertical is downward). A 100% offset will move the screen media just far enough so that the edge of the media will match the opposite edge of its corresponding panel (if used). Offset values of 0 will not move the screen/storyline media. The usual value of 50% will move the storyline media just far enough to maintain its center to the center of its new visual space between its panel and the outer edge of the video. This value may be keyframed to customize its appearance as well as to make adjustments when stacking Sliding Thirds. Keyframing can be used to override the built in animation timing. An example of this is demonstrated in the Demo video below.

Fill Color: The color used for all panels. There is no mix and matching colors for panels, they are all the same for one instance of Sliding Thirds.

Fill Opacity: Sets the transparency for all panels.

Use Left/Right/Top/Bottom Panel: Checkboxes allowing selection of which panel appears. They can all be used or none of them can be used. If you would like to build a “reveal” effect using only Horizontal/Vertical Slides, you must combine the Sliding Thirds title with a clip in a compound clip and place the media to be revealed below the compound clip in the storyline. Without using a compound clip, Sliding Thirds will move *everything* beneath it including clips beneath the storyline (but not audio!)

Drop Shadow: Typical drop shadow controls; should not need explanation.

Drop Zones: There is a drop zone for each panel. The drop zone is sized to exactly fit the panel it belongs to which will make media placement convenient: the center of the dropped media will always align with the center of the panel. Included with each drop zone is a Pan parameter which allows adjusting the positioning of the media within the panel; and a Scale parameter which normally will be used to “shrink” one of the dimensions to fit more of the view into the panel, e.g., scaling the X dimension to less than 100% to squeeze the media horizontally for Left/Right panels, or for shrinking the Y dimension to fit vertically into Top/Bottom panels.

Added recently:
Animate Intro/Outro: The animation only determines the appearance of the panels. Turned on, the panels will slide in. Otherwise they will instantly and continuously be “on” for the duration of the Sliding Thirds title in the storyline. Sometimes it might be useful to have the Outro turned off if you simply want to move a clip in one direction and not have it be returned to its original position (usually when stacking multiple Sliding Thirds…) It’s at the bottom of the parameter list to mostly be “out of the way” and there if you need it.

Parameters:

Basics

Sliding Thirds consists of two parts: The sliding background panel and the storyline content. Storyline content means everything (media, generators, titles, or anything else you can add to your project) underneath the Sliding Thirds title instance. A Panel is a complex background widget consisting of a solid color and/or drop zone content.

Panels are designed basically as a solid color background for any other type of content you wish to add above the Sliding Thirds title. Panels may be any color. Panels may have any level of opacity, they can even be made invisible.

Drop Zones can contain anything. Media, other titles, other generators, and compound clips of any other combination of media, generators, titles, etc. Using Drop Zones that are filled with titles or other transparent background media still display the background color solid panel depending on your settings. When using another title for any of the four drop zones available, you may create a title in your project anywhere in your project, then select the drop zone source well in Sliding Thirds and select your (temporary) title and Apply. Once the content is added to the drop zone you may delete it from the storyline or change your title to be reused in another drop zone. When you’re done with adding drop zone content, you may delete any item from the storyline that you created to place in the drop zone.

Drop Zones in Sliding Thirds are designed to have the aspect ratio of the panels on which they are applied. When designing titles or generators for adding to a drop zone, design for the center of the screen. The center relationship is maintained within the custom drop zones. You can offset and/or scale the drop zone media with the supplied parameters for each.

Use as a Reveal effect

Panels are optional. The left panel is on by default but may be turned off. The storyline media may be animated (up to 1/3 the screen in either direction per instance of Sliding Thirds [if stacking is used]). If all the Sliding Thirds titles are combined with media immediately below their instances into a compound clip, then any other media below the compound clip will remain stationary. Combining the animated compound with stationary media will create a reveal effect. This may also be used for basically any kind of media: to reveal a title or reveal another clip. Turning off the Animate Outro option with three stacked Sliding Thirds instances can be used as a slide transition.

“Fully Loaded”

One Slider Thirds title. The ice cream sundae clip is in the viewer and all four panels have their drop zones loaded. When the drop zones are empty only the panels are visible provided their opacity is enough to make them seen.

Upper and Lower Thirds are always dominant. When using color panels without drop shadows, it is possible to make L-shaped fill regions. When using Stacking (see below), for example for a 2/3 slide, Drop Shadow seams can be eliminated by applying a drop shadow only to the lowest instance.

Stacking

As stated, Sliding Thirds will move everything underneath its duration. You can add basic titles (or any other type of media) over the storyline and Sliding Thirds will gather it all up and slide it (by the Horizontal/Vertical Slide amount). In the example below, there is a Basic Title over the storyline video. About 1 second after its appearance, a Sliding Thirds “instance” is placed. The Basic Title text will slide with the storyline media as if it were part of the scene. If the Sliding Third has video in its drop zone, then that video will slide into view to “fill the gap”. When the Sliding Thirds instance ends, the media will slide back to its original position.

Stacking more than one Sliding Thirds will continue to slide media — including a Sliding thirds panel or drop zone that is underneath it. The maximum slide for each instance is 1/3 the screen. Two instances will slide 2/3s of the screen and so on. More than three instances will begin to slide panels off the screen at the other end — but they will slide back on when Sliding Thirds title ends over the instances below it. In the case of “Offset Stacking” as shown below, the returning media will “collapse” behind the last (topmost) instance until finished.

The above image shows the storyline section for the Demo: Offset Stacking section of the demo video.

Pyramid Stacking

In the example below, there is a Basic Title (“Demo Pyramid Stacking” from the Demo video) on top of the storyline. Four Sliding Thirds titles have been stacked and retimed to form a pyramid shape, followed by another Basic title on top. The top Basic title remains stationary throughout the animations. The Demo Pyramid Stacking title text at the bottom of the stack is animated four times – once for each Sliding Thirds title added and resulting with the Demo … text moving off the right side of the screen upon the exectution of the fourth stacked Sliding Thirds. In this arrangement, when the topmost Sliding Thirds ends, the entire screen (accumulated titles below it and the storyline) will reset back the same displacement amount. When the third Sliding Thirds ends, the screen resets back another third distance, etc. until the storyline is restored to its normal appearance.

The example below demonstrates the use of interim text titles under the Sliding Thirds. The green arrows show the positions of Sliding Thirds titles and the yellow arrows highlight the positions of Basic Text Titles used to label the entire accumulated scene beneath each text entry. The yellow circles illustrate where titles were “bladed” and their content changes, so as the animation begins resetting to the normal storyline appearance, the titling has been changed to extend the messaging.

This example is taken from the section of the Demo video below beginning with the waterfall and sliding up six times.

Straight Stack

Add a Sliding Thirds title to the storyline and set the Horizontal or Vertical (or both) offsets to ±100. Hold down the Option key and drag upward to create a duplicate of the Sliding Thirds title. With snapping on, align the two titles together. Animation will now cover a 2/3 distance across the screen. Repeating this action will cover the screen with either panels, drop zones (in 1/3 sections) or, by making a compound clip, a full screen “reveal” effect with any other additional media placed anywhere below the compound clip.

Creating a Paneled Split Screen

Apply a Sliding Thirds title. Pick which panel to use and adjust its color. Leave Horizontal/Vertical Slides at 0. Option drag a copy immediately above the first one (which also duplicates color and panel choice). For the instance on top, set the Horizontal or Vertical Slide to 50%. To the instance on the bottom, adjust the drop shadow if used (Blur = 0 and Opacity =100% will create a solid line). Apply your titling or other media content to the solid color background portion of the screen:

Of course: you still have plenty of options for customization!

Sliding Thirds is an extremely useful, easy, and quick utility to perform perfectly executed animations by thirds — no keyframing required. If you work with television advertisement, this tool is a must have.

Demo:

Installation Instructions.

Keep up to date with Sight-Creations on Twitter and Facebook.

Short Circuit User Guide

Posted on March 7, 2018April 29, 2021 by FX Mahoney

Short Circuit User Guide

by Sight-Creations

A Title for FCPX

There is an onscreen control (OSC) for convenient positioning on the screen. There is a Rotation parameter available just for fun.

Due to the way this effect was created, editing text on the screen is not allowed. You must change the text in the Text parameter in the Title inspector. All other controls for text (color, font, size, alignment, line spacing, tracking, etc) have been made available in the inspector for your convenience. The Collection parameter has been supplied so that if you use font collections in Font Book to organize your fonts, you can shorten the font list by selection your “favorite” collection first, then choose a font from that collection.

GLITCH PARAMETERS

Noise Smoothing
Noise has been added to this effect to create part of the texture. Noise Smoothing blurs (more like smears) the noise in a specific direction. The higher the amount, the smoother it will appear. Between 0 smoothing and about the default setting of 16, the smoothing will appear a little like a paint brush stroke. As the value is increased, the noise will be less apparent.

Noise Angle Mvmt
This parameter randomizes the direction of the “smearing”. At 0, the smearing is horizontal.

Glitch Coloring
This gradient can be customized to color the glitch effect. It uses luminance “mapping”. Darker shades of the Glitch pattern used will appear to be the color selected on the left side of the gradient. Lighter shades will map the right side of the gradient. You can use as many color tabs as you like. The colors of the gradient may also be animated. If you opt to animate color, make sure you have all the tabs of color you need for the entire animation. Adding tabs is easy: simply click the mouse in the “color bar” under the gradient bar and a new tab, containing the color clicked on will appear. (You can remove tabs by clicking and dragging them off the bar.) The gradient has a disclosure triangle to open it up for all of its available features. Since this is a luminance mapping, opacity tabs have no effect on the color used.

Glitch Color Over
On by default. Deselecting this option will have the actual text always “on top” of the effect. Its appearance will be affected by the Text color parameter. The glitch effect does not blend.

Horizontal Glitch Amount % / Vertical Glitch Amount %
These parameters determine how spread out the effect becomes. Near 0 will keep the glitches close to the text. The higher the percent, the more of the screen territory will become involved in the effect.

Glitch Amout % > Frequency
This parameter increases the amount of change in the glitching based on the direction percentage set.

Division Lengths
The glitching effect is “notched” in on/off states. The “notches” are generally different lengths of time (depending on the Random Seed parameter). Higher numbers for Division Lengths means that glitching will happen for longer periods of time (still very short — but relatively shorter or longer depending on this setting).

Frequency
This parameter will set, in general, how many glitches occur over the 10 second default length of this title. Setting or animating to 0 for this parameter *should* turn the glitching off. A setting of 1 will create a circumstance where the glitching is nearly constant. A setting of 2 will be approximately half and half, etc. A setting of 8 should provide 8 on/off cycles.

This title is designed to loop its animation. This method allows this title to keep the exact timing you achieve with your chosen effect no matter how long you make the title in the storyline.

All of this will depend on the setting of the Random Seed which changes everything. The timing of this effect is extremely flexible and its random mixing of time notches is part of its appeal making it seem more “natural”.

GLITCH SHAPING PARAMETERS

The glitch effect is determined by a pattern created in Motion and almost infinitely variable even though it is restricted so that will not become over-taxing to Final Cut’s rendering engine. The pattern is comprised of shapes that you can randomly size.

Pattern H Density / Pattern V Density
These parameters determine how many shapes are “crowded” in the horizontal and vertical space of the “texture”. (More below).

Scale X / Scale Y
Use these parameters to redefine the basic shape used in the texture.

Scale Rand.
This parameter will randomly change the redefined basic shape by the amount selected.

Randomize S… (Scaling)
This randomizing parameter will re-randomize the scaling of all the shapes in the pattern

Pattern Shuffle
This parameter will simply rearrange all the shapes within the pattern.

More on Glitch Shaping Parameters
It is possible to remove all shapes. At this point, the Glitching will simply be Noise (and the base text combined). By manipulating these parameters, you can design a multitude of different glitching effects (all in one title!)

TIP
When you find a pattern you really like, select the title in the storyline and save as a Compound Clip (set up an Event to collect saved favorite titles!)

Demo:

INSTALLATION
If you need help installing this title effect, please refer to this document:
https://fcpxtemplates.com/installing-plugins-for-fcpx (there are links to an outline and step-by-step video if you need to see the process.)

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Hinged CRT - LiveType TV LiveFont Revisited

Hinged CRT User Guide

Posted on November 30, 2017April 29, 2021 by FX Mahoney

Hinged CRT Generator

User Guide

I want my LiveType® TV!

This is not a complicated effect. It’s basically a drop zone with window dressing. This effect requires the installation of a special font used to create the 3D text effect graphics (included with the plugin download).

This generator is auto animated via the optional Build In and Build Out parameters. The Build In animates the CRT up into view with a turn (just like the original). The Build Out turns the CRT and pulls it back out of the scene. There are other controls that can be keyframed to customize animations however you like and they can even be used to supplement the default animations.

There are sixteen default animations, eight standard and another eight with the turn direction reversed. CRT is animated from scene edges (top, bottom, right and left) and the Long descriptor means horizontal orientation of the CRT while Tall means vertical. The turn for all orientations is screen up to face front. The turn, if Change Direction is checked is screen down to face front.

First trick:
Set up the Hinged CRT generator as if it were a completely finished effect including all keyframed animations. Blade through the middle of the generator (all keyframes will remain intact) and change the Build Out animation to move in the opposite direction by selecting the Change Direction checkbox.

Parameters:

The Zoom slider will increase the size of the CRT to slightly larger than 1920 x 1080. For larger format media, use the Video Inspector Scale All parameter. It will still look great!

The Horizontal, Vertical and Rotation Offset parameters can be used to customize animations, even the Build In/Out animations already in progress! Rotation reorients the entire Hinged CRT model, not the CRT in the hinge mount.

The front screen “glass” effect looks a little lame… due to the nature of 3D surfaces in Final Cut, there’s not much that can be done. A Reflection Amount parameter has been added to help reduce the otherwise sharp edge effect in the glass. Another technique to disguise its appearance is to rotate the CRT about -7º to shift the shine slightly and smooth out the edges.

The next section of parameters deals with the Drop Zone. Select the Drop Zone source well and FCPX will present a “two-up” display in the Viewer. Select your source media from the Event browser. If your media is to be video, then as you mouse over the video in the Event Browser, the cursor will change to a pointing finger and you should see a skimmer bar. Keep an eye in the viewer and where you click on the Event thumbnail will select your first frame of video to be used. If choosing an image? It doesn’t really matter where you click.

The Drop Zone can also be filled with any kind of video you create in the storyline. You can combine video, photos, titles and generators just as you would for your normal video presentation. Bundle all the pieces to be used into a Compound clip and select the starting frame from your compound clip right in the storyline. Once you fill a Drop Zone with media in the storyline, you may simply delete that media from the storyline and the drop zone will retain what was placed in it. This is especially convenient if you need to simply place Title text in the CRT without having to make a compound clip. Once loaded, reuse the title for another instance of Hinged CRT or simply delete or “hide” the title (typing the V key on any kind of selection will toggle its “visibility” [or turn on/off audio as well.])

There are Pan and Scale controls to help align and/or fit video into the CRT screen. You may also changed the background color of the dropped material (e.g. text) with the BG Fill Color. The color selected will appear slightly different due to the design of the 3D model. Color “richness” can be compensated with the Contrast, Brightness and Gamma controls at the bottom of the parameter list.

Bad TV options are on be default but minimally used (scan lines). Unchecking Bad TV will present a “straight” media image with no “old TV” effects.

Waviness is a good way to provide “glitch”. Keyframe a jump into Waviness to last about a second and jump back out (reset to 0).

Roll is best used by setting from one extreme and keyframing to the other depending on the direction of the roll. That action will give two “flips” through the image and looks convincing even when the Drop Zone media is scaled down (creating a rather large border between the two rolled images).

Static, like waviness, is best used in moderation, but the choice for all of these features is yours!

Reducing Color Sync will give the image color edges (faded red and cyan – probably looks somewhat “cool” with red-cyan 3D glasses :D).

Old TVs were very “flexible” in their display of onscreen images — the Saturation control can help with that little bit of realism as well.

The next three parameters deal with scan lines. You really have to play with them in conjunction with each other. The number of effects achieved cannot be enumerated here.

And last, the previously mentioned Contrast, Brightness and Gamma Controls. These can be used to adjust the actual dropped image in the Drop Zone.

Have fun!

[LiveType® is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc.]

Demo video:

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Talking Head User Guide

Posted on September 20, 2017May 2, 2021 by FX Mahoney

Talking Head User Guide

Video layouts and title animation made easy.

Talking Head is an Effect template for Final Cut Pro and was inspired by news channel format for “remote” interviews. A talking head is usually a camera shot in a kind of Picture-in-Picture format. However, most picture-in-picture effects for Final Cut are accomplished by the use of Titles or Generators using Drop Zones. Anytime a drop zone is involved, all audio from any clip applied to the drop zone is gone. If audio is needed, the audio track must by reapplied to the storyline and manually sync’d for the drop zone media. Talking Head is not a drop zone – it is the actual clip with all its properties loosened from the confines of the video full frame.

Talking Head has an OnScreen Control (OSC) to assist in making your clip layouts exceptionally easy. Size your Talking Head with the Dimensions parameter (dial down the disclosure triangle to set the Width and Height separately) then drag it into position with the OSC. Use the Horizontal and Vertical Img Offsets to reveal the portion of your clip required and use Image Scale if necessary to fit your subject inside the dimensions you have set. It is possible to animate the Horizontal and Vertical Img Offsets to slide your subject into the Talking Head “space”. There are controls for “Fill Color” and Fill Opacity to create a custom solid color background, or set the Opacity to zero to have the clip below show through. There are similar controls for the border.

Talking Head is a “modular” effect. It can be applied along with any other effect and it is layer sensitive (effects added after Talking Head will affect the Border and Fill (if exposed). You can change the order of effects applied to a clip by using the mouse to drag them in the Video Inspector over or above other effects already applied.

Using Talking Head to create custom title effects

When added to a title like Basic Title, Talking Head can turn the title into text with a background fill, or outlined, or both. Text can be animated by Position and Rotation via the Position and Rotation controls added by the effect. Text can be animated inside the Talking Head frame to make a scrolling text effect, or a “news crawl” effect. Use the Horizontal and/or Vertical Img Offset parameters to keyframe the animation. See the video below for ideas.

Layering

More than one Talking Head can be applied to a clip to create other effects as well, for example:

Talking Head 1, blue outlined clip. Talking Head 2, orange outlined with white background.

Tip for building a “slide” in effect:

The best workflow is to build your “final” layout. Size all your Talking Head effects in the “canvas”. Move the playhead into the clip by a few seconds. Set a Keyframe on the Center Location parameter and the Dimensions parameter. Back up the playhead several frames (depending how fast you want the effect to animate – it can be changed later). Set the Dimension Width (or Height) to zero. Use the OSC (or click and drag on the Center Location X parameter) to move the Talking Head clip to line up next to the section you want it to expand from. Play. If done correctly, the left (or right) edge will remain stationary and the clip width will expand to fill the originally designed area. See video for example.

Installation Instructions. (Talking Head is an Effect).

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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.

Artistic Magnifier User Guide

Posted on June 13, 2017April 29, 2021 by FX Mahoney

Artistic Magnifier

A Title for FCPX

User Guide

Installation instructions: https://fcpxtemplates.com/installing-plugins-for-fcpx

Originally designed as a utility magnifier for tutorials and such, it turns out there are interesting visual side effects that make this effect usable anywhere!

This effect was designed as a Title which allows any other object positioned below the title attached to the storyline, including text. If you’re okay with a little softness in the text (which is also a nice effect occasionally), this effect can be used to “transition” text with a slight drift and marvelous fade.

This effect was designed so that the scaled media used in the magnified view region maintains an “edge alignment” proportional to the position of the magnified region within the view frame of the video. What that means is: when you align the edge of the magnifier region with any edge of the view frame, the scaled media also aligns with that edge. The magnifier is designed not to go beyond the view frame edge, it will always be contained within the view frame. This technique means that when the magnifier region moves away from the center of the screen, the scaled media also moves in the opposite direction. It is a very nice effect — a beautiful difference in parallax view of the scene and gives a subtle sense of “3D-ness” to the scene.

In the diagram below, the Magnifier region is moving along the direction of the green arrow and as it moves, the Scaled Media is moving toward the border of the Drop Zone/Storyline frame boundary in the direction of the red arrow, synchronized to coincide at the edges of the frame boundary. The Scale value determines how much movement is perceptible.

Parameters:

This effect has a single OSC (onscreen control) to assist in positioning in the viewer. The position can be keyframed.

Width/Height: Due to the nature of the design for this effect, it was necessary to limit the width and height to only 1280 wide by 720 high. If you’d like to see how this was done, you can go into the Motion template in Motion and dig it out. It did require working a spreadsheet in Numbers to make the calculations necessary and for values beyond the 1280 horizontal and 1080 vertical, there was not enough room to add the number of control points necessary to handle the exponential expansion of values to make alignment for a larger region possible. Maybe, someday, Apple will add a way to perform that kind of math automatically and this project will be updated. It is not necessary to keep these values proportional to each other. Within the bounds of the maxWidth and maxHeight, any size can be created (even 0 by 0) and keyframed for effect.

Scale: Range from 0% to 400%; default is 200% (or 2X). May be keyframed for effect. All scale values work with the math used for the region/scaled media edge alignments. However, when going smaller than 100%, it will be necessary to resize the width and height parameters if an outline boundary is desired.

Roundness: The magnifier region may have rounded corners. Rounding can also be used to create a more circular effect (although you may have trouble obtaining a “perfect circle”).

Border Color: keyframable value can be animated to change color over life, or simply be set for the life of the effect.

Border Opacity: keyframable value can be animated to fade in/out the border.

Border Width: keyframable value can be animated to adjust the weight of the boarder. The center of the border is the edge of the magnifier region. Using large values will obscure edge pixels.

First/Last Point Offsets: These parameters can be used to offset the beginning and end where the border is drawn around the region. These can be keyframed to create an (eye-catching) animation, typically drawing the box, or used to create an animated arrow (see the Outline Start and End Caps below).

Corner Style: when the region is set up as an unrounded rectangle and outlined with a line wider than 1 pixel, the corner style can be set to Square, Round or Bevel (which will create a 45° angle “cut” on the corners).

Outline Start/End Cap— There are four options: None (similar to Square), Square, Round, Bevel and Arrow. None ends at the actual control (corner) point whereas Square represents the center of a “fill” of a square that is “Width x Width”. Bevel cuts two 45° angles on the end and Arrow applies an arrow head. (Arrow size controls were not included with this effect: they were deemed superfluous for the most part).

Feather Edge/Falloff: These controls can be used to control a blurred and mixed edge between the magnifier region and the underlying media. There are values available beyond the slider, so click and drag the values up/down to create a larger feather.

Bg Overlay Color/Opacity: This effect includes a method of darkening the area outside the magnifier region, for effect. Color is black by default but may be set to any value and animated over time. Opacity is also a keyframable value that can be animated to fade in/out the color overlay.

AUTO ANIMATION section:

These parameters deal with transitioning the magnification effect.

Fade In Time: the number of frames to fade up from 0 to 100% opacity. Timing may be affected by stretching the effect’s timing in the storyline.

Fade Out Time: the number of frames to fade out from 100% to 0% opacity. Timing may be affected by stretching the effect’s timing in the storyline.

Start Offset: the number of frames before starting the Fade In.

End Offset: the number of frames before the end where the Fade Out ends.

These parameters controlling the fade of only the magnifier region allows animating other features before (and/or after) these Fades are applied.

Demo:

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Introducing a new FCPX effect: Comic Book SC

Posted on September 16, 2016November 25, 2022 by FX Mahoney

Introducing a new FCPX effect

Comic Book SC

Literally years in the making. I’ve been after this effect for a long time. I finally had to build a custom halftoning effect for this template and it turned out very nicely. There’s a video preview demo below; check it out. I have to self host the video because neither YouTube nor Vimeo would handle it and it may have to pause occasionally (it’s a very large file of 356MB at 28mbits/sec). I must have encoded almost a dozen versions! I was able to make a passable version for YouTube, but it requires viewing in 4K format (4K allows up to 45Mbps bit rate for 30p and the encoding worked out fairly well u2014 not great u2014 passable u2014 barely). Not useful for mobile devices or people with slower internet connections. My self-hosted video isn’t that friendly either but at least you can right click on it and download it for viewing locally, or wait for it to load in the player. Once loaded, you can watch it over and over again at full speed (and the player automatically resizes to fit your browser window).

Please don’t buy this effect expecting to create cool YouTube or Vimeo videos… they won’t fly. This is a more pro level video effect, not because I think it’s so good (although I do), but because of the encoding requirements to make it look… right.

Check out some of these stills taken directly from the FCPX storyline!

Previous image

Next image

Comic Book SC Effect

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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.

Use 3D Titles for the 3D orientation onscreen control

A Simple Trick with FCPX Titles

Posted on July 25, 2016April 29, 2021 by FX Mahoney

A Simple Trick With FCPX Titles

Rotating Title text in FCPX

You will need FCPX 10.2.x in order to make use of this tip.

[ QuickTools has been upgraded, enhanced and greatly expanded by SC KeyFX! ]

I’ve created dozens (if not more than 100) titles for FCPX, but for my own personal use, 95% or more of the time I just simply add a Basic Title to my storyline as needed. If you’re familiar with Basic Title (and you should be!) you’ll know that there are no parameters available. One of the features of Basic Title is that the Title Background is absent. This Title Background is a placeholder used in developing Titles in Apple Motion to represent the content of the storyline in FCPX (or more accurately, the content of *everything* video/image related beneath the title in the storyline). Something to keep in mind as I’ll get back to that later.

The behavior of Basic Title in the storyline is that you can click on the text in the canvas and drag it around to place it in the scene. You cannot keyframe the motion to create an animation in this way. Keyframing animation is not the important point of this story, it’s just a point of note.

What this article is about is a “trick” to be able to *rotate* the text in 3D space to arrange it in the scene. It should work in any Title or Generator that includes editable text in the canvas.

With the Title selected in the storyline, click on the Text tab of the Inspector. Activate 3D Text (you can turn it back off afterwards!)

Go back into the canvas and mouse over the text area. You should see an outline appear:

Click *once* inside the rectangle. You should see a 3D control appear:

Clicking and dragging inside the circles will allow you to rotate the text in 3D space. The top circle is the X-axis rotation (a red “great circle” will appear when activated). The left circle will be the Y-axis rotation (its great circle is green). The right circle will be the Z-axis rotation (and its great circle is blue).

If you hold down the command and option keys, you can coax all the great circles to appear and stay on allowing a floating rotation control with the mouse in all directions at once.

You may not like or need a 3D look to the text so you can turn 3D Text back off to restore the 2D text and the orientation will remain as in the example frame below. This is a great tool to help align text along perspective planes inside video. It’s not perfect but seems to be convincing enough most of the time. To make it work better — if you have Motion — you could publish the Camera: Angle of View parameter and possibly the Camera: Distance (Position.Z) to emphasize parallax views.

Integrating Titles Into the Scene

The second part of this article is about taking the technique to another level, that have having it appear integrated into the scene — to have action move in front of the text. Take a look at the examples in this video:

QuickMask is part of the QuickTools Effects sold on this site and on my store on Creative Market. The mask only works in this fashion on Titles that have their Title Background placeholder disabled. You can download a *FREE* Basic Title with Parameters title/template here (http://sight-creations.com/free_stuff/sc_Title_with_Params.zip) which will allow you to animate the title in the canvas without having to use the Transform parameters for the entire “layer.” You are able to keyframe rotation using the onscreen 3D controls, and although the position parameters respond to onscreen control movement, you must manually keyframe the Position parameters (for some unknown reason) as onscreen control changes for position are ignored in FCPX.

The power of QuickMask is based on the newly included feature of “effects masks” in FCPX. For an overview of Effects Masks watch this video:

As it turns out, effects can be used on Titles as well and if a title has no background placeholder in use then this visual effect can be accomplished with QuickMask. The masks are easily animated/keyframed making creating the effects shown in the top video possible. The downside is that you have to manually “track” the masks. The upside: manual tracking is usually faster (although more tedious) than automatic tracking — and considerably less expensive! Note: since this technique only works on Titles with no Title Background layer, the Color Mask option is useless (unless you use it directly on the text).

—F•X

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The Apple Watch 3D Model that wasn’t released

Posted on July 11, 2016August 8, 2020 by FX Mahoney

Developed in August 2015 but never released. Why? Apple never made the San Francisco system font available to other applications (system only) and the fonts are only available to those who have an Apple Developer account. Furthermore, developers could only use it for interface “mock ups” (although this model might qualify). The Mickey Mouse watch face would have never been included because it is © (and trademarked) by the Walt Disney Company… probably forever.

This model’s features:
built in clock display (which runs fast – it’s just a demo)
front “glass”
animatable position/rotation parameters
animatable dial/crown rotation
animatable button
drop zone w/Pan and Scale parameters
drop zone position and rotation parameters to animate turn effect
clock position and scale (in case of repairs!)
glass reflection intensity control

I developed a generator to go with this model:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dZ7560xcUc (dated Aug. 29th, 2015)
which is a frame accurate, settable and customizable watch.

The second half of this watch demo (the activity monitor) was another generator I created for the watch drop zone (also not released).

The state of this watch model/Motion template is in limbo.

I may develop the text font for this clock myself when (or if) I have the time as a substitute to the required version of San Francisco used in its making.