Sort and Group Macro Template Parameters in DaVinci Resolve - Secret of Fusion Setting File

hi there welcome back as promised in the video of using fusion shapes in the edit page today i will demonstrate how to group and sort the parameters that are used in the shape generator template previously we created this generator template essential shapes tutorial let's add it to the timeline for simple macros with only a few parameters it's not much of a concern how the parameters appear in the inspector but in this case as you can see here we have a lot of them and they look pretty intimidating go to the fusion page and open the essential generators in the effects panel right click one of the generators or click the three dots option menu choose show folder to open the template file folder since i have associated the setting file extension to notepad i can double-click the shapes tutorial settings file and open it in notepad this will be our working tool for today i'm not going to explain all the details in the settings file the content is mostly self-explanatory but this group operator plays a big role here it controls how the macro is displayed in the fusion node editor i would like to give it a few more words because the tutorial template was saved as a group macro it is showing as a group in the editor which allows us to double click and open the group to see individual nodes inside the group change this to macro operator save the change and go back to the fusion page add the tutorial template to the editor it now appears as a single node if this is what you prefer you can choose the save as command when you create a macro i personally like the group version because it allows me to make additional changes for individual nodes in the fusion page instead of being limited by the exported parameters all right let's change this back to group operator and back to our topic today the first input section is the list of parameters that were chosen in the macro editor window when we created the macro in the fusion page they are simply named as input 1 input 2 and so on in the davinci resolve inspector these parameters are displayed in the exact order as they are saved in the file we can swap the positions of these parameters to change their display orders for example i want to move corner radius sides points and depth to the top underneath the shape type select all the lines of input 6 which is the corner radius parameter ctrl x to cut them from their current position position the edit cursor at the beginning of input 2. press control v to paste the copper lines press control s to save the change go back to the fusion page add macro to the editor and in the inspector we see that the corner radius is now showing underneath the shape type we don't have to change the name in the setting file they don't affect the displaying orders we just need to ensure they are unique in the list repeat the same step for the other three parameters as there are many input parameters i search the word sides to locate the parameters since they are together we can select all the lines cut and paste them at the same time save the change and go to the node editor add the updated macro to the editor now we see all four parameters are moved up under the shape type if we forgot to rename the parameters when a macro was created we can also change their names in the settings file the corner radius is for the rectangle shape we can add a name entry in the settings file and give it the name of rectangle corner radius similarly we rename the other three parameters to polygon sides star points and star depth ok we have reordered and renamed some of the parameters next we will see how to add new pages to group the parameters in different tabs the last set of the parameters are used to control the soft glow effect and i want them to be in a separate page find the filter parameter in the setting file which is input 55 add a new page entry inside the definition give it the value of soft glow save the change now if we add the template to the editor we see that a new tab soft glow is added and all the parameters after the filter are moved to this new tab so this page definition tells davinci resolve that all parameters after and include the one with the page definition will be displayed in a new tab until it sees another page definition for example i also want to separate the parameters of the duplicate node add a new page to the first parameter of the duplicate node set the page name to duplicate and another new tab added for the duplicate effect but the shape color parameters are also moved to this new tab because they are saved after the duplicate parameters to move them back to the controls page add a page entry that is set to controls great they are now back to the first tab and the duplicate tab is dedicated to the duplicate controls only sometimes there are parameters added by mistake in this case i have the allow combining parameters added but not necessary so we just need to find the parameters in the file and delete them from the list of input parameters okay they are all gone now these steps we can create more pages to group parameters based on their functions grid controls go to the grid page border style controls and color controls go to the border page jitter parameters go to the jitter page but there is one thing here i want the jitter tab to appear after duplicate and before the soft glow which makes more sense because the jitter effect is the last step of a normal shape workflow just like we did earlier for sorting individual parameters we use the same approach to move a page select all parameters inside the page ctrl x to cut place the edit cursor at the first line of the soft glow page ctrl v to paste okay the jitter page is moved as expected you might have noticed that in the jitter tab there are only two parameters but in the settings file there are actually a lot more than just two where did they go if we look closer at the definition of these parameters in the settings file all of them have this control group definition except the first one and they are all set to the same number nine the ones that appear in the inspector are the last pair of parameters point y offset they are grouped together with a slider and two input boxes it seems like that minimum and maximum control only accept two parameters for the same group let's change the control group values to unique numbers for each pair of these parameters and great all the jitter parameters are now showing up in the jitters tab okay we've discussed sorting parameters and moving parameters to new pages what about grouping parameters inside a page like we see in the inspector of many built-in nodes for example the text plus node has different group sections inside the text tab which can expand or collapse and i want to group these five parameters into a layout group i couldn't find a very intuitive way to achieve this but here is what i did right click the background node and choose edit controls add a new control with the name layout set the input control to label control check the show arrow option for the hide next number enter 5. because there are five parameters we want to group set the nest level to one since this is the first level group click ok to confirm in the user tab we see a layout label is added after the shape type but when we try to create a macro this layout label is not available for selection so i select the background node make a copy paste the content into another notepad select layout control definition in the user controls section and press ctrl c or right click to make a copy go to the setting file notepad window find the user controls section of the background node definition paste the lines after shape type make sure to add a comma after the shape type list copy the definition of input 1 paste to the line before input 2 which is the first parameter of the intended layout group change the name to shape layout set the source to layout which is the name of the user control remove the default setting save the change back to the fusion page add the macro and here we go those parameters are now collapsed under the shape layout group to make the group expand by default go to the settings file go to background node definition add a new layout input line set value to 1. save the change that's it now if we add the template to the editor the layout section is expanded by default all right that's all for today i didn't expect to spend so much time trying to show how this was done but that's just how it works i didn't want to leave anything out if you are still with me thank you for your patience and see you next time

Channel: Essential Video Editing

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Id: fagNxubikrg

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2022