Tag: user guide

Waving Flag generator by sight-creations

Waving Flag 2.1 User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

Waving Flag 2.1 User Guide

First, take a look at the parameters in the inspector:

Waving Flag 2.1 parameters

At the very top is a drop zone, showing “No source”. Actually, the drop zone is preloaded with the US Flag image. Since this is a drop zone, it can be used to change the flag to any image or video clip you like. The flag size is 1920 x 1010. 1080 media will fit into the area rather well with minor clipping from the top and bottom of the image. There is no way to crop or reposition the image/video in the drop zone region (this is different than standard drop zone behavior in FCPX.) It’s simply the way the generator was designed.

The flag image for this effect was created with shapes in Motion. All the colors were matched to the “official” color guide for the flag. That said, it would look considerably better if you had an image of an actual cloth flag (laid out “square” would be best).

If you need to change the drop zone content from whatever you have applied back to the US Flag, simply click the small X next to the drop zone, which appears as you mouse over it, to reset it.

In the demo video at the bottom of this page, the transition flags were created using Compound Clips with the transition built into compound clip setup and the compound clip applied to the drop zone. Occasionally, if taken from the storyline, FCPX will only show a freeze frame (this seems to be a random and “sparce” occurance) making it necessary to supply the drop zone media from the Event Browser (where a copy of the compound clip is stored). If you can and do take the media from the storyline, you can safely delete the compound clip from the storyline after applying it to the drop zone (only if it is not being used for any other part of your video project.)

Options

Below the drop zone are a set of checkboxes. Show Flagpole can be used to toggle its appearance on or off. The default is on. Reverse simply turns the flag in the opposite direction. Add Wrinkle is a bit of a hack. It attempts to “roughen” the appearance… it’s best used when scaling the flag to smaller sizes. It will also probably look better with cloth textured flag images.

Notice the OnScreen Control (small black target icon). This will help you drag the flag around your scene for placement. Its parameters are available as Control Pt Center in case you need to keyframe the flag’s position. This effect is not really designed for effective position keyframing — it’s best used for placement in a relatively still scene.

Below is the appearance of Waving Flag on first drop:

Waving Flag 2.1 default view

The Scale parameter can be used to resize the flag. However, as you do resize the flag, its relationship to the onscreen control (OSC) will change as there will be a shift in the viewpoint, or parallax. If attempting to keyframe position with scaling, things will begin to get a little more complicated. This doesn’t mean it cannot be accomplished, just expect to have to deal with two things at one time.

The Angle of the flag has a range of -36º (a kind of “draped down” look) to +20º (as if you were looking up at the flag, overhead). Its default is 0º as shown in the above image.

Animation

Animation is automatic for this generator, but can be greatly enhanced by keyframing parameters!

The rest of the parameters deal with the animation of the flag. The flag’s animation is accomplished by manipulating a distortion filter (with a depth map) in several additive ways with the exception of the “furl” which is handled separately. Knowing the details does not help using this effect, so the distortion will be referred to as ripples or waves, amplitude or height and frequency or speed in some cases or repetition in others.

Wind Speed: determines how fast the waves or ripples through the flag occur. Although there is a setting of zero (o), the flag is never 100% still. It moves in extremely slow motion. The maximum wind speed is 100 which is more of a percentage value than an indication of true wind speed (i.e., it does not mean 100mph!) Let’s just say: it provides a very healthy “pulse”.

Wave Depth: determines the distance from the parts moving toward the back and the parts moving toward the front of the flag. If you set this parameter to zero (o), the flag is flat and the “wind speed” is imperceptible, no matter what its parameter setting is! If you need a flat, still flag, set Wave Depth to 0. At the opposite end of the spectrum: setting the Wave Depth to 100 (again, more of a percent value) will create more intense shadowing almost blacking out portions of the flag image:

Waving Flag wave depth

The default value of Wave Depth is 25. Staying within the range of 25-75 will generally work best.

Flag Ripple. This parameter determines how many “waves” appear in the flag. Set to 0, the flag only “cycles” one complete wave — that is — from a starting point to maximum “height”, down to maximum “depth” and returning to its starting value. The maximum value of Flag Ripple is 4 which provides for 4 complete wave cycles. More “flap” in the flag, if you will.

The Furl

Waving Flag furl demo

The “Furl” is an extra added animation. Every so often, the end of the flag curls back on itself (as it does in real life quite often). Setting the Furl Speed to 0 results in no furling. Anything else will create this furling animation. Furl Speed is like two parameters in one: the higher the value, the more often furling occurs as well as how fast the animation takes place. In setting up you flag animation, you may find it helpful to try and match this with the Wind Speed for a more natural look.

 

Furl Variance: There are several aspects of the furling that are kind of lumped together. There’s how much the flag curls; how far back up it furls; and how fast the furling occurs. The Variance adds some randomness to all of these (albeit, a determinable randomness depending on the setting!) Setting the Furl Variance to 0 results in exactly the same furling every time. Setting the Variance to 100… well… it may not be to your liking but will be interesting from time to time.

Furl Boost adds a little magnification to the effect of furling.

All of the parameters from Control Pt Center down are keyframable, that is, you can have their values change over time. This is a power aspect that allows you to customize how the animation will appear. For instance, you can animate the Wind Speed with the Angle and also vary the Wave Depth to give a more realistic, lifelike effect to the animation. The same can be done with furling, especially animating the Variance over time to create completely different furls each time one occurs. Their appearances will be somewhat regular depending on the Furl Speed setting. Animating Boost can also help change the furling even while the furling is occurring.

All that’s left is: practice! This effect is set up for basic animation on first drop and all you have to do is make changes here and there to produce a pleasant effect. How far you want to take it is completely up to you!

Demo video:

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SC Retimer detail

S•C Retimer User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

S•C Retimer User Guide

Perform complex retiming of clips without blading. Forwards, backwards, freeze frames, anything without making any cuts, and it’s very easy to make adjustments at any time using the Video Animation editor. And! Keyframed adjustments can be eased!

SC Retimer is an effect for playing with the timing of a clip.

SC Retimer has a built in oscillator and stop motion feature.

SC Retimer can be used for normal playback of a clip. It uses only the frames within the clip however it has been trimmed. If you trim a clip after applying SC Retimer, you should readjust the Clip Length parameter if accurate information is important for you. You may, however, set any time length you want (see “Trick” below) or ignore it altogether.

SC Retimer features an onscreen dashboard/calculator to assist in designing your effect.

Although not absolutely necessary, you begin by entering the length of the clip by copying the number you see under the timecode clock in the viewer. The time entered is fixed to the time base of the project. A 24 fps project uses the time entered at 24 frames per second. It’s that easy. (All clips applied to a storyline are conformed to the frame rate.)

Note: if you’re using drop frame framerates, round to the nearest progressive framerate. 23.98 to 24, 29.97 to 30 and 59.94 to 60. This effect only counts full frames and cannot adjust for the dropped frames.

You can use the same timecode entry shortcuts in the inspector as you would for the timecode clock. For example, typing 9.5 sets the length to 9 seconds and 5 frames. The “leading” zero is not required. Another example would be 13. (ends with a period) enters 13:00 in the time. You can also click and drag on the number values in the inspector to set the time.

 

While it is not necessary to enter the precise length of the clip, it will be very much more helpful. The time is always with respect to the project and not the clip (consider that no matter what clip you use, it is conformed to the project frame rate!)

 

All the other values in the calculator dashboard represent:

 

1) the currently “selected” frame (Playhead)
2) the half amplitude frame count (right top)
3) the full amplitude frame count (right middle)
4) the current “playing” frame (even if it is the red zone)

 

The following assumes a 10 second clip in a 24 fps project. The Total Frames is 240, numbering from 0 to 239.

 

All parameters in the inspector are set up as percentages. You can read the frame values from the calculator.

Trick: input a Clip Length value that is exactly 100 frames to convert the values in the dashboard to percent. For example, in a 30p project, set the Clip Length time to 3:10 (3 seconds * 30 + 10 frames). For a 24p project, use 4:04 (4 seconds * 24 + 4 frames). For a 60p project, use 1:40.

The Dashboard Red and Green Zones

All playable frames are within the Green Zone. It is possible for the combined actions of this effect to go outside the green zone. It is possible that the calculated frame number can be outside the playable range.

Think of your clip as an Image Sequence.

When you add this effect to your clip, it no longer “plays”. You need to set up how it will play with this effect.

The Playhead. This parameter allows you to “select” which frame is displayed. It can be keyframed to play the clip “normally” or used to advance or reverse playback. Any order of keyframing will alter how you clip will play.

Oscillate: Oscillation is off be default. To turn it on, select the checkbox.
Wave Shape defaults to Triangle which is linear changes between the amplitude peaks. Sine will ease both near the amplitude peaks. Sawtooth will always go from the minimum value to the maximum value, then reset (like an “instant replay” effect). Square will alternate the displayed frames between the minumum and maximum.

Phase: All the curves start at the midpoint between minimum and maximum. Phase allows you to offset the starting point. For Triangle and Sine, setting Phase to -50% sets the animation start at the minimum (forward going).

SC Retimer waveforms
Default waveforms at Phase 0. Shown: 3 complete cycles. They begin and end on the “zero line” (consider the Playhead value the center line).

 

Stop Motion: Turning on this option will create a easy to accomplish stop motion effect.

Steps over Range: No matter how long the clip is in “real time”, this value will play the number of (whole number) frames you set over the length of the clip. No matter if your clip is one second or much longer, only the indicated number of frames will be played. So you will need to gauge how to set this value based on how long your clip is. It may also depend on how fast you’ve set the playback with the Playhead parameter or oscillation.

The CLIP COPY section deals with resizing and orienting the effect. By default, the background original clip source is turned off. If you need to use Effect Masks (color correction, or for other effects) turn on the Source and use it (you will have to move the SC Retimer affected layer — scaling to 0 will completely remove it — but you just need to get it out of the way enough to create the mask.)

Stretching out the effect:
You can play and/or replay the same frames over and over from a clip, but where do you allocate the time? Simply use FCPX to retime a clip to as slow as you need for as much time as you need. You aren’t going to be seeing the original clip playing slow. Use as long as you need to keep reusing the frames with SC Retimer. [Speeding up a clip will not work as well!] Do not trim any frames from the original clips that you need to be able to “play”.

Keyframing the Playhead parameter has the extra added benefit of Easing. Use the Video Animation feature and select Playhead from the dropdown menu for the effect. Right-click on the line connecting keyframes and choose the easing you want to enhance your effect. For example, slow down the playback at the end of a segment to a freeze frame; or vice versa.

SC Retimer parameters
Animation Editor

Consider the possibilities! From fast motion to freeze frame! Instant Replay or dancing zombies; stop motion effects. How about “crazy credits”?

cylon user guide

Cylon User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

Cylon User Guide

Cylon — A Hypnotic Title for Final Cut Pro X

Cylon is really easy to learn and use. Cylon was made to work with Michroma font (supplied). This is optional, however Cylon is set up to use it by default. Use Font Book to install the font and restart FCPX if running. A special feature of this title is the inclusion of a Text to Audio application. The Cylon download contains the Cylon Title template, the Michroma (OFL font), and the CylonSpeechMaker application along with a few example “extras”. The WAV files were Text to Audio files processed with the Robot effect in FCPX (includes the “Cylon sound effect” and “By your command”) and the base Text to Audio files imported into FCPX used in the video below. Michroma and CylonSpeechMaker will be in the “cylonAccessories” folder in the downloaded material. The OFL License text accompanies Michroma.ttf.

A brief rundown of the parameters

Speed is how fast the “Eye” moves left and right. The default is 3 which is “normal”. The values are 1 to 5 corresponding to “very slow” to “very fast”.  Stretching out the title will make no difference in the speed as this title will loop every 10 seconds. Speed settings were chosen to loop smoothly.

Osc. Adjust is a way to “narrow” the oscillation of the “Eye”. When the Slot is enabled, you may want to adjust the sweep to fit within the slot. When the slot is narrowed (Slot Width Adj.) it is possible for the sweeping eye to move outside of the bounds of the slot.

Eye Color determines not only the color of the sweeping eye, but also the outline of the slot when enabled.

Smooth Glow lets you adjust the apparent size of the sweeping eye.

Show Slot will enable or disable the slot. When the background is set to 0% opacity (which it is by default) it is recommended that you Show Slot.

Slot Width Adj. allows for resizing and customizing the slot. You can click on the number value in the inspector and drag downward for negative values (shorten the slot).

Slot Vert. Adj. — If you change the size of the text or use a different font, you can use this value to reposition the slot with respect to the text.

Crop Background – By default, this title will use the entire screen for the background. Selecting Crop Background will crop the background to a rectangle around just the title and its slot.

Invert Crop Area will allow you to cover the entire background with a solid color except for the immediate area around the title. This can be used to build some interesting alternative effects particularly when used with compound clips and creative positioning on the screen.

BG Color — The solid background color.

BG Opacity — is set for 0% by default. This parameter can be used to create a colored overlay to your scene when using Cylon.

Width Adj. — is the Width of the “cropped” area around the text. This can be resized (and animated) to allow more of the background to be covered (or shown).

Height Adj. — is the Height adjustment of the cropped area.

Offset BG will allow you to offset the adjusted cropped background surrounding the Cylon title.

Text Position is the position on the screen. This parameter can be animated (keyframed) if necessary.

Cylon parameters

CylonSpeechMaker

Cylon Speech Maker applet

Choose the system voice you prefer (clicking Play only plays a standard line being voiced), provide a file name (recommend using part of the line being created) and where you want to save the file. For American English, Alex, Fred or Samantha are recommended (it doesn’t really matter if they are to be robotized). Once created, simply drag and drop the audio in the FCPX timeline, or an Event.

Since the design inspiration for this title is a fictional robot, a way needed to be found for you to be able to create “artificial speech”. While this does not create the Robot voice effect (which can be done within Final Cut), it does take anything you write in a text file and converts it to recorded speech (using Apple’s built in Text-to-Speech facility). CylonSpeechMaker was created in Automator (you can find the technique easily on the internet) as an Application (most are “workflow” scripts). Simply type out your line in TextEdit as plain text, then drop the saved file on the CylonSpeechMaker application icon. The text file will open again (side effect — TextEdit should be running when you drop a file on the app) and you will be presented with:

cylonspeechmaker

Final Cut Pro has an Audio Effect called “Robot”. Apply this effect to you imported speech audio file to robotize it. I recommend settings close to these:

robot speech settings

The small triangle under the Pitch Base is a control that can be clicked and dragged (left/right). In the image above, it was moved almost all the way to the right for the Pitch: A4. On the left side, drag the Pitch value down to around -12 and the Formant adjusted for the final effect you like.

You can use CylonSpeechMaker for any project — robotizing or not!

Creating the text file is generally straightforward: simply type out what you want recorded. A creative technique to force pronunciations is to break up your text like the following:

.
Resistance. Is. Few. Tile.
.

Use periods (punctuation) to force spacing (“breaths”/pauses). You can cut and edit the audio together to smooth out gaps. You can hear the result in this (which also used the Samantha voice — really!):

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

Cylon Title for FCPX
Buy Now!
The Tower Rise animation option

The Tower User Guide

Posted on 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

Puzzle HD User Guide

Posted on 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

puzzle hd 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).

 

Puzzle HD Parameters

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 - fully Loaded

Sliding Thirds User Guide

Posted on 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:

Sliding Thirds parameterList

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.

Sliding Thirds - fully Loaded

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.

Sliding Thirds Offset Stacking

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.

Sliding Thirds Pyramid Stacking

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.

Pyramid with text added

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:

Sliding Thirds Split 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.

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short circuit is a glitch title effect by sight-creations and Short Circuit User Guide

Short Circuit User Guide

Posted on 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.

Short Circuit Title parameters

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 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.

Hinged CRT Modes
Build Animation Modes

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:

Hinged CRT FCPX Plugin 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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Hinged CRT - LiveType TV LiveFont Revisited
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Talking Head effect for Final Cut Pro X

Talking Head User Guide

Posted on 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 by Sight-Creations — fcpxtemplates.com

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:

Example of two Talking Head effects applied to one clip.

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).

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.

Vegas Baby demo

Vegas Baby Title

Posted on by FX Mahoney

Vegas Baby User Guide

A Title for FCPX

The iconic Las Vegas Welcome sign was designed in 1959 by Betty Willis. It is in the style of “Googie Architecture” (FYI). She gave the design as a gift to the City of Las Vegas without copyright. It is in the public domain.

Vegas Baby is a 3D Text title for Final Cut Pro. It requires FCPX 10.3.4 or better, a video card with a minimum of 1GB of vRAM, and the installation of a specialized font (ZZSCVegasBaby-Regular.ttf) responsible for the “neon” letters and the sign shapes (it will be necessary to restart FCPX after installation of the font).

Vegas Baby is a complex effect with flashing lights and special textures (coin faces) and animations on two separate sides. Expect long render times. When dealing with the title in the FCPX storyline, it is best to set the View > Quality to Better Performance. Since Vegas Baby performs “reasonably well” using Better Performance, it was deemed eligible to be released. Please be patient with it!

Vegas Baby features an easily customizable “banner” (circled letters) and drop zone panels on the front and back sides. Separate titling for the front and back panels. Titling and drop zones can be combined. Complex text formatting will need to be handled via imported image/video or by creating compound clips in the storyline. An example would be any text message with more than one font used.

A 3D OSC (on-screen control) has been applied to this effect. For this reason, none of the text in the title is editable in the viewer but text boxes have been added to the Inspector to make text changes. To use the OSC simply single-click on the Vegas Baby panel and wait about 1 second. A Rectangular outline will appear and a 3D directional control will appear near the center of the rectangle region. It’s a hack… but it works. You can use the 3D control to keyframe rotation, but positioning via keyframe will have to be manually done with the parameter values in the Inspector. [Note: the OSC is a text character itself which is editable in FCPX – ignore anything you see in the Text Inspector as it pertains to this character used for the 3D onscreen control. If you accidentally change the character, its default is the character zero (‘0’) and its size is 856.0 if you find you need to manually reset these values.]

The Coin Features (Banner) Section

The neon letters in the circle shapes at the top of the panel are considered the banner. As with the real sign, the front surface of the circular regions have the pattern of a 1922 “Peace” silver dollar. The “coins” are not “regular” and each surface of the original WELCOME sign have different rotational orientations for the coins. This title has a feature to force them to align if you so choose — set the Coin Rot. Variance to 0% and set the Coin Rotation to orient the faces to the same angles across the characters of the banner.

Vegas Baby Banner detail

In the Circle Text entry, you can enter anything from deleting the text (to completely remove the circled characters) to whatever you think can fit on a single line and still look good as a sign ;).  Whatever you enter will apply the characters (only a-z lowercase [and space] are supported), the coin circles and the rim “ring” lights. A space character will add a small separation between letters.

There is a fundmental “lighting” structure to this 3D model. Sometimes expected colors may seem darker (or lighter) than the values provided in the inspector. Make visual adjustments in the Viewer and don’t rely so heavily on the numerical values. For times when even the “brightest” color is not bright enough: the numerical values of the RGB color can be adjusted to greater and less than the absolutes provided by the corresponding sliders. Click on the individual numerical values for the R, G, and B elements and drag up to go beyond 1.0 and drag down to go below 0 (towards -1).

Due to the design of the template, text is not editable in the viewer. For each panel, there is only an option for one font. If you need more complex textual design (more  than one font, or font and graphics) create a compound clip in the storyline from titles and other graphics and add the compound clip to the drop zone for that panel. You can delete the compound clip from the storyline immediately after adding it to the template.

Flashing light animations will be affected by lengthening or shortening the time of the Vegas Baby title. Longer times will slow it down; shorter times will speed it up. Recommended length in storyline is about 5 – 15 seconds (10 is default). Ten seconds is a good length of time to leave this title active to give the viewer time to take in the whole effect.

The rest is fairly typical.

Published Paramters

ANIMATION CONTROL

Position — It is possible to position this template in the view with an OSC (described above). However, if you want to keyframe motion, you cannot use the OSC to make position changes. Use these parameters “manually” for keyframing. Another benefit of these parameters: no matter what rotational orientation you have set for the template, these parameters will move it in tradition X, Y & Z axes relative to the Viewer. Using the OSC: rotation changes the XYZ axis orientation as well. Position parameters override that orientation.

Rotation — Unlike Position, Rotation can be keyframed using the OSC. These parameters do not override those set in the Viewer.

Hide Stand — The blue stand can be removed from the scene to reduce the template to the basic sign.

Glow Amount — This is set to 3 by default. In general, this setting is likely the best setting. However, you can raise this value to create more “light halos” or turn it off altogether.

COIN FEATURES

Circle Text — This is where you enter the text for the “banner” section. Only lowercase alphabetic characters (a-z) are used for the effect. Other characters will not provide the correct visual effect.

Text Color — Keep in mind that this is supposed to be a neon-like light. You will want to adjust this color to a value that will be enhanced by the glow effect.

Circle BG Color — By default, this is set to 90% white. You can set this, and all colors in this template to “supercolors” (element values greater than 1.0 or less than 0.0).

Coin Face Intensity — This determines how dark the “marks” are that create the coin “face”. Setting this to 0 will fade the coin face out completely creating a solid color background for the neon characters.  Setting this value to maximum intensity will help “punch through” the pattern if you adjust the Coin BG Color somewhat darker.

Coin Rotation — The “real” Las Vegas Welcome sign has 1922 Peace dollars painted on the backgrounds at varying angles of rotation.  This is set at 360 (straight up) to help with the Variance (see below). When Variance is set to zero, all the coins are rotated to this value.

Vegas Baby parameter list

Coin Rot. Variance — The variation from one coin to the next for the rotation. When Coin Rotation is 0, this has no effect. When Coin Rotation is non-zero, this parameter will randomize the rotation between 0 and the Coin Rotation value.

Var. Random… — This is the Random Seed generator for the Variance. Click the “circle arrows” to generate a new “seed” value and change how the coins are varied.

Ring Light Color — Each character in the banner also has a “ring light” — another “neon” (or florescent) type light around the rim of the “coin” background. Use this parameter to change its color (default is white).

Emit Intensity — This parameter will change the brightness of the Ring Light color.

FRONT SIDE/BACK SIDE

(each section has identical parameters, both of which will be outlined in this section.

Front (Back) Text — Use this text box to enter the text you want to appear on the sign panel. This can be used in conjunction with a drop zone (always appears on top).

Collection — Font Book “collections” are supported with this template. If you manage your fonts with collections, you can set the collection here. For example, you have a collection of just “script” fonts, you can set this parameter to your scripts collection then search for the script font from that collection you are looking for without having to navigate a font menu that might be hundreds of fonts long.

Font — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.

Size — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.

Color — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.

Weight — This is a feature of 3D text. You can use this parameter to change the thickness of characters, make them more bold or more thin. Best practice: hold the Option key down while dragging the numeric value for more refined alteration.

Line Spacing — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.

Tracking — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience.

Baseline — Same as from the Title Inspector provided here for your convenience. Use this parameter to help vertically align the text where you want it to appear.

Drop Zone — Optional. Drop Zones are pre-loaded with a transparent PNG so that the typical drop zone “symbol” does not appear.

Pan — Use the X and Y parameters to adjust the alignment of the image in the panel.

Scale — Use this parameter to size the media to fit within the panel.

Front (Back) Brightness — As mentioned above, this is a 3D model and lighting is affected by things like angle of rotation. You can use this parameter to help override a “too shadowy” look, or tone it down if it’s too bright.

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.

Solari Strip feature with SC logo

Solari Strip User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

Solari Strip User Guide

A Generator for FCPX

Solari Strip is a “real” 3D effect. The Split-Flap animation is built with actual 3D modeled parts. The effect can be moved around in 3D space and still have a consistent “look”.

Solari Strip is an easy to use generator. It features 14 Solari (or split-flap) character sections. Each section is limited to the characters A-Z and numbers 0-9 with spaces between the groups. An added feature is the ability to turn each split-flap character on or off to make creating layout “patterns” possible.

Solari Strip requires installation of a font: ZZSC Flipboard Parts provided with the download. Use Font Book to install the font. The font name starts with “ZZSC” to drop the font to the bottom of your font menu and out of the way of your regular fonts.

Published Parameters

This is a partial list. The SLOT # CONTROL sections are the same for all 14 split flap sections.

At the top of the inspector are the Position control in the scene. Position, Rotation and Scale plus the color of the “Back Panel”. Before releasing, a few other parameters have been added. They are:

Back Panel Opacity — it is possible to fade or completely turn off the back panel which is an effective way to make the Solari characters look as if they are part of the storyline background.

Back Panel Width — it is possible to turn off individual Solari characters in order to create your own formatting. For example, you need 2 slots for number and 7 slots for characters. You can adjust the width of the Back Panel to span just the 10 characters used (including a “gap” character).

Back Panel X Offset — allows you to align the Back Panel to any section or subsection of the solari characters.

Each Solari Strip generator will have its own OSC (on screen control) to allow you to easily position the strip in the Viewer.

Solari Strip parameters

SLOT CONTROLS

All Slot Control sections are the same for all characters.

Each section control is a menu to toggle on or off that “slot’s” solari (or split-flap) character. Turning off the character will leave a blank space.

Move the playhead to the beginning of the generator to set the Starting Character (Start Value), then move the playhead to the end of the generator to set the Ending Character (End Value).

The Start and End Offset parameters determine the (video) frame offsets from the beginning and end of the generator that animation begins and ends. You can completely customize how the characters change with these parameters. The default length of the generator is 300 frames. “Crossing” the start and end values will effectively freeze that Solari character to the End Value. Setting the Start Offset to 300 or more will “stick” the character at its Start Value.

The character sets (A-Z 0-9) loop so the starting and ending (Value) numbers can be just about any positive value. Please see the accompanying PDF file for number/character associations. This is a looping effect and to give the illusion of very fast action, you could set 2-3 spans of entire character sets before landing on the ending value.

If you set the Start Value to be a greater number than the End Value, that Solari Character will run “backwards”!

Recomendations

Do not set the Start and End Offsets to 0. Give the reader a second or two to see the first set (Start Offset = 30 to 60). 

Vary the Ending times a little so that the flaps do not all finish at the same time (not very “real-life”).

Notes

Viewing the panel of character from behind, although possible, will look rather strange (only the “face” of the effect works as expected). This is why the Back Panel was provided. Use it if animating the Strip in rotation.

The Back Panel is simply a flat (no beveling or other styled corner) surface with depth. Lining up several generators will make a seemless surface even when overlapped (provided the Z-positions are exactly the same).

If you create a scene with several simultaneous instances of Solari Strip, be prepared for a rather long render time (on the upside: it will be worth it!) If placed in scenes in your movie that require further editing, consider “baking” the Solari Strip effect with transparency (ProRes 4444) and bringing the exported movie back into FCPX for application in your scene(s).

Even with one strip, rendering will be somewhat lengthy (depending on your Mac’s specifications).

Demo video:

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.

Artistic Magnifier

Artistic Magnifier User Guide

Posted on 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.

Artisitc Magnifier Diagram
Artisitc Magnifier Diagram How scaled media moves with respect to the magnifier

Parameters:

Artistic Magnifier 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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Artistic Magnifier
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Fiesta Title

Fiesta User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

Fiesta User Guide

A Title for FCPX

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

This looks like a lot of parameters, but they are broken down in to easy sections and in order of general importance, so to speak. This title has a “build in” and “build out” that animates the title into the scene at the beginning and out of the scene at the end. The lengths for both are 1/2 second which will remain constant whether the title is stretched out or reduced in the storyline. This title was designed to move, otherwise it would have been called “Siesta”.

Workflow Tips

If you select the title and type ‘/‘, the title will loop and you can make changes in real time. (If it doesn’t loop, type Command-L to toggle on looping).

If you do nothing, Fiesta will animate in from the top of the frame to the center of the view, stay for 4 seconds and animate out upwards off the screen.

Begin with the ANIMATION CONTROLS. Set a custom Direction In. Try -90° to start the animation in from the left side and set Direction Out to +90° to move the title out to the right at the end.

Go down to the RANDOMNESS section. Change Position Amount to about 30.

Add Z Rot. Rnd Amt – about -25 and increase the Angle Freq to about 0.3. (The slider only moves in the positive direction— click on the number and drag downward with the mouse.

Go down to the SPOT GENERATOR section and dial down the Spot Color(s) parameter. The default is a single white color:
default gradient
Notice the Interpolation is set to Constant. This means you can create a discreet color “table” of colors to be applied to the random spots.

Right click on the small square under the left corner and select a color from the color palette popup.

Click on the bottom “bar” at another location to create a new “tab” and right click on it in the same way and pick a second color. Continue for as many colors as you would like to add.

parameter list
color gradient with constants

Note: if you reset the Title from the top of the Title Parameter list, the published “gradient” tools will reset to a blue-gray to blue gradient with the Interpolations set to Continuous which creates a smooth gradient between the two tabbed colors. The behavior of the tool also changes and new tabs will also be continuous. To change back to Constant, strip off the end tab (click and drag straight down until it pulls off), click on the other tab and set the Interpolation to Constant. Then, as you add new tabs, they will also be Constant (again).<br /><br />

This same technique can be applied to the Text Coloring for banding colors on the text.

That is the fundamental, simple workflow. Experiment with all the rest. The parameter descriptions below should give you enough information for how to proceed.

To copy the settings from one instance of Fiesta to others, simply option-drag a copy to another location in the storyline. To Save a set of parameter settings, create a Compound Clip to use later.

Parameter Descriptions

Main Controls

Title Opacity: This parameter controls the overall opacity of everything in this title. It is helpful when animating the contents directly forward or directly backward into the scene.

Text Coloring: Although initially set to a single color, this control is a “Gradient” control which includes Opacity. The default setting for new color additions is “Constant” which will create a “banded” look. This setting can be changed any time and for any color swatch by changing the Interpolation to Continuous. Dial down the disclosure triangle to reveal the gradient parameter controls.

Animation Controls

Direction In/Out:  Presented is the Z axis direction control. 0° is straight up, 90° is due right, etc., so the angle is with respect to the line coming straight out of the screen. Dialing down the disclosure triangle reveals X and Y axis directions. X is left/right and Y is up/down.  Move the playhead to near the beginning of the title in the storyline to manipulate these values to determine from where the title moves into the scene. As an example, the default direction is from directly up. Increasing the X axis rotation to 90° will cause the starting position to be directly away from the viewer and -90 (or 270) will start the title behind the viewer (off-screen).  Use Y axis rotation will move the starting position left or right of the center line. It is best to position the playhead and watch where the title moves as these values are changed.

Amplify Direction: The default amount of movement is from just outside the bounds of the video frame. When animating from away or behind the viewer (you), it becomes necessary to lengthen the amount of “distance” travelled. This parameter will make the animation both faster and have the effect of making it travel farther by up to 400%. Keyframe the Title Opacity to help fade the effect for distance.

Start X/Y/Z°
End X/Y/Z°
These values can be used to set the starting and ending orientation of the Title with respect the the plane of the Viewer.

Randomness

Position Amount: How much the title moves around the center point

Pos. Freq.: How often the movement changes (randomly – based on “seed”)

Pos. Noise: How *severe* the changes will be

Pos Rand Seed Click the  randButton  to create a new random value or double click the number and type in your own.

X/Y/Z° Rot. Amt: How much the Title rotates

Angle Freq: How often the rotation changes

Angle Noise: How severe the changes will be

Angle Freq and Noise control the settings for all three rotations.

Angle Rand Seed: This is a slider with 20 different random seeds. This will help setting up how the title looks at a particular point within the animation. Set the Playhead at a specific point and use this slider to set the randomized angle at that point in time.

Spot Generator

Spots: The number of spots generated

Scale Randomness: The randomness of the size of each spot generated

Spot Color(s): A gradient tool like the Text Coloring, pre-set for Constant color change. Simply keep adding colors to the gradient as needed

Randomize Spots: Randomizes the positioning, scaling, and coloring of the spots.

Text Controls (For your convenience – duplicated in the Title Inspector)

Text: the copy of the text in the title

Collection: if you organize your font into Collections in Font Book, those collections can be selected here (this is NOT a feature available in the Text Inspector!)

Font
Size
Line Spacing
Tracking
Baseline

Drop Zone Controls

Use Drop Zone: This will turn on or off the drop zone.

Drop Zone: The drop zone, by default, is filled with a transparent PNG. It will not appear even if the Use Drop Zone option is selected until you change to content to another clip or image.

Scale: By default, the drop zone is full screen. This value can be used to scale down the media

Pan: This value can be used to offset the media from the drop zone center.

Scale and Pan can be used to shrink and position images or video in your title scene.

Demo video:

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Fiesta Title
Fiesta!

Title for Final Cut Pro X

Product Page
Touch of Class gallery

Touch of Class User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

Touch Of Class User Guide

Title for FCPX 10.3+

by Sight-Creations (F•X Mahoney)

By default, ToC is a simple labelling title with enough flexibility to be a full view title or a lower third.

A blurred background label type title with a high level of customization.

All non-option parameters can be keyframed!

Position (for animation)

Fade (A convenience to avoid using the Video Animation tool).

Font (default: Helvetica Neue)

Size (default: 48)

Color (text color: default white)

Text Vertical Adj (Different fonts have different ascents/descents. Vertical adjustment will be necessary if you change fonts. You can also use this parameter to adjust the text relative to the background label “tape”).

Text Horiz Adj (As with Text Vertical Adj., it is possible to adjust the horizontal position of the text relative to the label tape with the center text position at 0).

Label Width Adj (You can adjust the width of the label tape to any size from 0 to beyond the size of the screen, suitable for creating a lower third).

Label Height Adj (You can adjust the height of the label tape to any size from 0 to beyond the size of the screen, suitable for creating an entire blurred background).

Label Brightness (Improve contrast with your text by adjusting this parameter).

Label Blur Amount (Blur the background behind the label tape from 0 [no blur] to 100).

Tint Option (Checkbox to turn on Tinting).

Tint Color (Used to colorize the background label tape).

Tint Intensity (Used to adjust the amount to coloring applied by the Tint).

Touch of Class Option (Adjustable outline inside or outside blurred label tape region, adjustable from 0 to larger than the screen region).

Outline Color (The outline is a tasteful (touch of class) 1 px width, not adjustable — the color can be used to complement the title text color).

Outline Opacity (Blending with low opacity gives a beautifully subtle look).

Outline Offset (Adjustable in negative [inside the label tape region] and positive [outside the label tape region] directions).

 

 

Demo video:

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.

Touch of Class feature
Buy it here
Duotone thumb

Duotone User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

Duotone User Guide

A Retro Effect

for Final Cut Pro X

duotone parameters
duotone parameters

User Guide

What is old is new again…

Duotone is an old technique to add a little color to otherwise grayscale images, for example, sepia-toning images to lend a somewhat flesh color to an black and white image.

Duotones can be any single color plus black (or white) or any two colors. The most popular color combinations are CMY combinations (cyan-magenta-yellow) or RGB combinations (red-green-blue). The default Preset color combination in Duotone is Yellow/Magenta. The available colors in the Presets are:

Highlight:

Duotone Color Menu

Shadow:

duotoneMenuBlack

You will see duplicates from one to the other. Remember I said that the *combinations* were from the CMY or RGB — they can be any order you like.

You may want a kind of “negative” effect.

There are a wide variety of combinations available in the preset colors.

Each color has the option to customize the color with the color picker.  Select the option to Customize Highlights or Shadows and choose a new color from the respective pickers. Note that when you select to customize, the color swatch will “revert” to it’s last created custom color. The Highlights custom color starts at white and the Shadows start at black. When you select new colors, you can go back to a preset by unchecking the Customize option. Reselecting the Customize option will put back the last select custom color. It does not matter that you might change the Preset. The color swatch shows the last selected color (Preset or Custom).

Duotones are created by “inking” the grayscale image.  Duotone Intensity determines how much color is applied to the highlights and shadows of the grayscale image. A setting of 0 is a Black & White image.

Duotone controls can make that Black & White Image look outstanding (not simply a desaturated color image, but a genuine black & white image). The Brightness Level is not true brightness, but a conversion of the “value” portion of HSV (Hue-Saturation-Value). It will help boost the lightness of a fully infused duotone that may appear too dark initially (example: using Blue).

The Grayscale Balance section is essentially a Levels control. The Black and White Points determine the range of grayscale. Anything below the Black Point value, when raised will be crushed to black (extending the Black range). Anything above the White Point value will blow out to white. These two controls can radically increase the contrast of the image. The “crushing” values can be mitigated by the use of the Contrast Redux controls.  The Mid Gray Point can elevate or lower a midpoint value and be used to determine the ratio of Highlight Color to Shadow Color.

The Contrast Redux controls will soften the crushing effect of either the Black or White Point.

Duotone Mix will allow you to keyframe a transition from the full color image to the duotone; or it can be used to soften the duotone effect and blend with the original colors of the image.

This is a simple effect. It has an extremely wide range of possibilities! Combined with the Effects Masks provided by FCPX, particularly Shape Masks, even more creative effect can be created with Duotone. Remember that Colors can be keyframed for animation just like any other parameter.

Have fun! Experiment. And use this beautiful classic design tool to take your video to a whole new level!

—F•X

Demo:

Installation Instructions for Duotone here..

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

SC Guides 3 sample 2

SC Guides User Guide

Posted on by FX Mahoney

SC Guides User Guide

SC Guides 3 is a Title for FCPX

 

parameter list
SC Guides Parameters

 

This is a simple tool. It is designed to help you place or align objects at specific locations in your video. It is also designed to work with any resolution up to 9600 x 9600 (and a little more).

In FCPX, some of the default resolution settings are not all “square” pixels. For these resolutions, there will be a slight discrepancy in the Video Dimensions parameters — the adjustments are easy to make to correct the values displayed in the Viewer.

You begin by supplying the video dimensions (1920 x 1080 are the default).

There is an OnScreen Control (the larger one) with the guidelines attached which can be controlled in the viewer or by manipulating the Location parameters (X and Y). You will notice the values are decimal values between -0.5 and 0.5 for the top values and 0 to 1.0 in the disclosed values. You can use either set of these values for precision placement of the gridlines (sometimes manually controlling the OSC, especially in downscaled views, makes it difficult to achieve the position you require). By holding down the Option key and dragging the mouse on the values up or down, you can get fine tune control of the gridlines.

The last two parameters allow you to customize the line color and its opacity.

When you’re done positioning or aligning your objects, select the SC Guides title and type the ‘v’ key to disable it, or simply delete it.

If you need help installing this template: https://fcpxtemplates.com/install4fcpx/latest.htm

 

SC Guides 3

SC Guides 3

 

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