Motion Quick Tip - Creating Effects for FCP X

hi everyone I'm Andy Neil and this is a motion five quick tip technically this is also a Final Cut Pro 10 quick tip since these two applications are now mo closely connected than ever before and it's never been more apparent than now then when you can actually use motion 5 to create effects to use inside Final Cut I'm going to give you a primer on how it's done by creating a custom picture-in-picture effect starting here at the open screen for motion you can see that you have many project types to choose from now the basic motion project and also titles generators transitions and effects since picture and picture is something that I'll be applying to a clip rather than being added as its own track or own clip I'm going to choose the Final Cut effect project in the upper right you can choose the preset frame size that you want to work in I'm using broadcast HD 720 preset this is just my own preference as I like to work in HD and in sixteen by nine but you'll be able to apply this effect to any sort of footage standard def or high def also the duration doesn't have a whole lot of bearing either it has some but we'll go over that later in general you don't have to worry about the duration because the effect will be stretched automatically to fit the length of the clip that is being applied to hit open to start the project first thing that you can see is that motion has already placed the drop zone in your project with the name effect source this drop zone is a reference for the clip that you'll be applying this effect to what this means is that anything you do to this layer will appear on the effected clip inside Final Cut it's pretty straightforward to make a custom mask in motion you need to use the Bezier mask tool make sure the effect source clip is selected then click and hold on the mask button to reveal all the options choosing bezzie a mask click in the viewer and start drawing your mask however you want it to look I'm going to go for something that looks a little like a slight for pointed star but you can make it look whatever you want it's up to you just make sure that it doesn't extend all the way to the edges of the frame you may also want to give yourself some room from the edges too in case you want to allow for feathering of the mask once you've finished you should only see the effect source in the shape of your mask now you could be done right here you could save this effect and drop it onto Clips inside final cut 10 without another step but if you want to give yourself some flexibility and make this into an effect that you can use over and over again then there are a few more steps that we should try there's a new feature inside motion 5 called publishing what publishing gives you is access to motion parameters from within Final Cut and publishing a parameter is very easy for example I may want to feather the edges of my mask go to the mass tab of the inspector and there you'll see a feather parameter I can assign it a value now but then it'll just be a set value inside Final Cut and I'll have to come back to this project every time I want to change it instead click on this downward facing arrow this is the animation menu for this parameter and choose publish from the list outwardly nothing has happened but click on the layer marked project this contains all of your project settings in the project tab you can see your published parameters here is the feather control that we just published if I adjust the slider you can see feathering being applied just the same as if I de justed it at the point of the original control anything that is in the published parameter section will be visible inside final cuts inspector so let's add a few more parameters anything else that I think I might want control over inside Final Cut 10 go back to the Bezier mask layer let's publish the parameter for roundness and for fall-off common parameters for adjusting masks go back to the project settings to see the new parameters that are there not only will these properties be visible inside Final Cut but however they look here will be their default setting when they're applied in other words if we want the roundness control to be at the top of our list of parameters we can rearrange it here by simply dragging it above the feather control you can also rename the controls if you want by double clicking the name do this for the roundness control and call it a just mask just for giggles now let's save our project when you create an effect project instead of a normal motion project motion assumes that you want to save it to be available in Final Cut so you don't get the normal dialog box give your effect a name I'm calling mine adjustable P IP in the category section you need to choose or create a category in which to save the effect if you've never made an effect before you'll only have the choice to create a new category I created one before the called custom and this is where I put all of my custom effects you can also create a theme if you want themes are groups of effects that have an overall look to them you can browse the various themes that come with Final Cut 10 in the effects browser if you want to take a look at them while categories are required a theme isn't so just uncheck the button that says include unused media and hit publish now we can head back over to Final Cut here I have two clips one atop the other open your effects browser if it's not already open and find the category you created in motion inside you should see your effect drag it on to the top clip scrubbing over the two clips you can see that it's already working open the inspector if it isn't already and inside the video section are the published parameters for your effect as you can see I can adjust the mask right here click on the transform icon in the viewer in order to adjust the scale of the picture-in-picture clip so that it's much smaller than the background and there we have our basic effect built in motion and applied in Final Cut but now that we've tried it out there are many things that could be made better with it for one I can't adjust the image behind the mask so the mask is cutting off the head of the leopard also it just pops on and off and it would be nicer if I could add in a fade to that effect well okay let's go attend to that flip over to motion we still have our effect project open to be able to move and reposition the effective video layer behind the mask it has to be separate from the mask right now the mask is directly affecting the layer so to fix that drag the Bezier mask layer on to the group instead outwardly there is no difference but now that the effect source layer is by itself I can move it independent of the mask and if I can do that in motion then I can do it in Final Cut by publishing the right parameters go to the properties tab for the effects source layer click on the animation menu for the position and publish it do the same for the scale parameter as well click on the project settings and go to the project tab to see your published parameters rename the position parameter to video position and the scale to video scale this is so that there is no confusion in final cut about what these parameters affect next thing I wanted to do was to add the ability to do a fade in and out while creating a fade in motion is easy just select the group and go to behaviors basic motion fade in/out this gives us a fade that we can adjust in the behaviors tab but it also leads us to our first real problem regarding our effect you see in the behaviors tab I can adjust the fade in or out to any number that I want there's no real limit but if I just publish this parameter as is it could lead to a problem inside Final Cut and here's why remember when I said not to worry about the duration of your motion project because it would automatically be lengthened or shortened to fit the clip inside Final Cut well I said that because we didn't have any animated elements in our effect at first Final Cut stretches the length of the motion project to fit the clip it's applied to our project duration is 10 seconds or 300 frames if we apply that effect to a 20 second clip inside Final Cut any animation that exists in our motion project will run at half speed because our 300 frames are being stretched to 6 hundred frames the reverse would also happen if we apply two clips shorter than ten seconds the animation would speed up in other words our 20 frame fade in will never actually be 20 frames unless the effect is applied to a clip that's the exact same length as our project luckily motion has an answer for this they're called mandatory build markers open the timing pane of your project by hitting f6 make sure that no layer is selected just click an empty space in the timing pane or the layers pane drag anywhere in the timeline and hit M to place a marker drag further down and hit em again to place the second marker right-click the first marker and choose edit at the bottom click the type drop-down to reveal the marker types choose build in mandatory a mandatory build in marker states that any part of the project prior to this point will always play using the exact number of frames that motion uses no matter how stretched or squash the effect is inside final cut a mandatory build out marker does the same for ending animations select the second marker and change it to mandatory build out note the change in the look of the markers there is now a highlighted area between them think of this area as the area where no animation occurs or the place where final cut can stretch the effect without there being a noticeable difference the placement of the markers doesn't really matter so long as the animation of the fade behavior doesn't cross it this means that we need to restrict the amount of fade that we plan to allow with our effect and that brings us to one of the other cool new aspects of motion 5 rigging rigging is a way to create our own controllers for motion effects rigs can be incredibly complex and they can involve literally hundreds of parameters adjusted with a single control but rigs can also be very simple and we're going to create a simple rig go to the object menu and choose new rig from the menu in the inspector you'll see buttons for the three types of controllers you can choose from these are called widgets there's the slider the pop-up and the checkbox click the slider button to create a slider widget to rename the slider click the word in the layers pane and type fade in this slider will represent the fading control of our effect again the reason we're not just publishing the fade in parameter from the behavior is that you can add any value you want with it and there's no way to restrict it but we need it to be restricted for our purposes this is one of the many ways that an effect can influence its own design if you look at the slider widget controls they're fairly simple to understand there is a dot on the left side which represents the sliders lowest value and a dot on the right side which represents its highest value and we can set and record these arbitrarily below the slider is a range minimum and maximum for the minimum I think zero is fine in case I don't actually want to add a fade in for the maximum let's say four seconds that's probably the biggest fade I'm going to need for this effect that's 120 frames so change the maximum range value to 120 if I slide the slider you'll see that the value goes from 0 to 120 now to set it as a fade in we need to record its highest and lowest values select the left dot below the slider and click the start button now we are in record mode any changes that we make to the project will be recorded as a relative value associated with this slider position this mini HUD lets us know that we're recording in a lot of ways rigging is like making a macro or like making an action in Photoshop if you've ever done that select the fade behavior drag the fade in slider to zero click stop on the mini HUD note that there's now a little joystick icon beside the parameter that we changed this is an indicator to let you know that this parameter is under the control of a widget it doesn't tell you which widget is controlling it but if you click the animation menu you can choose reveal widget from the list and motion will jump you to the correct controller as you can see the parameter we adjusted is now showing up below the controls for the slider now we need to set the upper limit for our fade because we're only adjusting a single parameter and it's already been connected to the widget I don't need to hit the start button again to change its value just make sure that the right dot is selected and adjust the fade in parameter to 120 to match the maximum range that we set for our widget now if you drag the widget slider you will see the fade in parameter match it exactly we need to do the same thing for the fade-out parameter create another slider widget by selecting the rig and then clicking the slider button rename this slider fade-out click the lepton and hit start to enter edit mode go to the behavior and in the behaviors tab drag the fade-out slider to zero click stop and go back to the widget controls click the right dot and adjust the fade-out value to 120 don't forget to also set the maximum range to 120 just like we did with the fade in slider there we've just created two custom controllers simple true but they're custom in order to see them in Final Cut however we're going to need to publish them click the animation menu and publish each widget go to the publishing section of the project settings and rearrange the sliders if you want I'm just going to put the fade in before the fade out one last thing I need to do is to make sure that my markers are not inside the 120 frame maximum fade that I'm allowing for the effect if yours are just drag the markers to reposition them like I said it doesn't really matter where they go so long as they're excluding the animations now that we've finished adjusting our effect just hit save and it will update inside Final Cut flip over to Final Cut one thing to keep in mind any effects that have already been applied to Clips in your timeline will not have the updated controls I think this is a way to protect any effects you've already added from changes that you may or may not have made to the overall effect to take advantage of our work we need to delete the picture-in-picture effect and re-add it there now we have all of our additional controls I can adjust the mask I can feather it as before but now I can also scale the video up and I can reposition it to get the perfect picture in picture effect and that's all there is to it to creating your own custom effects inside fiim cut I think if I wanted to add more to this effect I might publish the drop shadow properties I could also create an edge border with controls or maybe I just create a new effect for that after all one of the most important things to grasp when you're designing effects is not what controls you put in but what controls you leave out I'm Andy Neil and this has been a motion and Final Cut Pro quick tip

Channel: Creative COW

Views: 45,961

Keywords: apple, motion, video, tutorial, how, fcpx, final, cut, vfx, quick, tip

Id: OM_oM_XcWc0

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 09 2012