I don't normally watch something this long I just don't have the patience But this guy has a nice speaking voice & was straight to the point *& shown PRECISION .. > NOW THAT I LOVE!!! GREAT JOB MATE!
You are so good at explaining/demonstrating complicated stuff, always easy to start your lesson and actually go through it all... With many others I just lose it and give up.. Thanks..
I've done two of your demo's and though they have come out a bit rough (see channel), I just want to thank you for the time and effort of putting these tutorials together I'll probably go thru all of them as I'm a total beginner.
hi simon, awesome videos! this really helps me! I've tried making a intro for my channel by using your tutorials! I want to start using this tutorial but I've seen you already started with some things, I'm completely new to motion 5 so I am just following what you are doing, I hope that you can show me how to begin from the start! once again thanks for the tutorials! learning more and more thanks to you!
Bloody excellent tutorial Simon. I hope you still answer these comments seeing as it's an old video - I need to then have a line cross the whole logo that fills it with colour. Any videos to show that?
Thanks. I'm not sure what you mean by the line crossing the logo and filling with colour. Please feel free to email me at simon@tokyo-uk.com and I might be able to suggest something if you give me some more details.
Hi Simon - congrats. I love your motion 5 tutorials. I was trying to copy animation curves (keyframes) from one function (transform.scale.x) to another (transform.position.z). I have checked all the documentation and followed instructions from the apple website... but nothing works. I thought you might know. Do you know where I might be able to find an answer. thanks again!
Hiya - incompatible parameter keyframes can't be copied, because ... they're incompatible. But there is a much easier and more powerful solution anyway, which is to Link them (using the Link Behavior) - more powerful because you don't have to have a 1:1 correspondence if you don't want it. Does that help?
I’ve been practicing this technique step by step and works great, when I publish it to Final Cut as a generator my letters are on the screen over the video (like a title) but as soon as the lens flare starts a big black box appears that follows the flare. Is there a work around this?
The Motion Lens Flare uses the Add Blend mode and does not come with an alpha channel. That means you can often run into issues with seeing the edges of the layer. There are two options you could consider: a) make the Lens Flare dimensions (not its scale) much bigger; b) create an alpha channel for the Lens Flare by e.g. adding a Channel Mixer filter and setting the Alpha-Alpha to zero and the other three channels to 1. Without knowing the details of your template set-up, a third option might be simply to set the Blend Mode to Add inside FCP ...
@@SimonUbsdell thanks worked like a charm, another question I made a title for my friend sent him all the files he made the same path’s and in his Final Cut he gets the red screen with the “!”. We have the same versions of Final Cut, made sure the file paths are exact, the only difference is he dosnt have motion. Is that’s what’s causing this?
It is possible that your installation is corrupt. Try deleting the Motion application, downloading it again from the App Store and reinstalling. But first double-check that the Lens Flare really isn't there - have you looked through all the generators to see if you can find it?
By default the Flare generator has no alpha channel and uses the Add blend mode. But you can create an alpha channel by applying a Channel Mixer filter and setting the Alpha-Alpha to zero and the Alpha-Red (or Alpha-Green or Alpha Blue or as combination of all three) to 1.0. This uses the luminance of the colour channels to create the alpha.
@@SimonUbsdell Thanks Simon for your clear answer. I found an other way to get a flare with Alpha. I made one myself in Photoshop and put that in the animation. Thanks for explaining the technique. In this video i used what i learned. ruclips.net/video/rKzxKY-XST0/видео.html
Because you can't link the ends of a line to anything in Motion so you couldn't automate the animation along the paths of the letters. And a line (shape) is 2D only whereas a line replicator can be made 3D.
One other thing I wanted to point out is that if you create a Line, set the Line Brush Type to Airbrush (rather than Solid) and increase the Spacing you will see that ... it is made up of a string of dots. In other words, making a line out of dots is not such a crazy idea. In fact it allows you a lot more control over the look of the line than if you use the basic Solid mode (which is just a very thin rectangle).
I really wonder which software is more capable or if they are equal. I’m about to buy a MacBook and can’t decide if I need the education bundle including motion 5. I’ve used adobe products and as far as I see, what you do in adobe is simpler to do in motion than adobe; but I’m not sure yet if there’s anything you can do in adobe but can’t do in motion. So, Dear Simon, since you use both, can you help me sort this out? For example they say tracking in after effects does not exist in Apple motion; and they also say there might be things you can’t do in motion but can do in after effects. Thanks a lot in advance.
It's a good question and often asked. My take on it is that you can do a lot more with Motion than most people realise but it takes quite a bit of ingenuity to get there sometimes. The huge advantage it has over After Effects is the fact that you can get realtime playback of even fairly complex projects whereas After Effects is still terribly slow in this area because it's not making good use of the GPU. (Check out this tutorial where I demonstrate this: ruclips.net/video/VXa3iXgkF8g/видео.html). For me that means you can create much more quickly in Motion and for that reason I often use it as a "design scratchpad" - I might then move over to After Effects to master the project or depending on the needs I might stay in Motion. However, all that being said, there is no question that After Effects has a much deeper and more powerful toolset, not to mention an incredibly rich ecosystem of training, assets, utilities and the rest.
Thanks a lot for your kind and comprehensive reply. Just one more question but first as many more stated before, I’d like to say that you’re a great teacher. This expression of mine is different in that it is said by a teacher. You explain just the way a teacher does, which is really important for this kind of things. So, the question is, as a teacher, I would like to make short cartoons for educational purposes, simple characters and simple scenes, you know; which path should I choose to make this kind of stuff? Apple or Adobe something else? Would Final cut and motion 5 be enough or would it be wiser to pick premier and after effects? Thanks again in advance.
If you are wanting to do character animation, then I would recommend without hesitation that you go with After Effects - the Puppet Tool makes this easy. Motion has nothing even remotely similar. Here's my attempt at doing character animation in Motion - it's not good: ruclips.net/video/lPI2DDSgQoA/видео.html
I saw that video of yours and liked it very much it seems not bad 😄. And I saw another video and there was a puppet tool in motion 5. If motion were enough, I would go with it since it’s a one time purchase, but as you said I’ll go with adobe I think.
Very nice tutorial. Why did you use a clone-blur to effect the "glow" for the LASER word, but then used the Glow Filter on the laser itself? My intuition is that you'd want to use the same effect in both cases for simplicity's sake… but maybe there are aesthetic differences that matter here?
The reason I like to use the blur technique for glow is that I find it's more flexible to control (although essentially it's doing the exact same thing that glow is "under the hood"). You could for example use it to create layers of "glow" that are different in colour, but mostly I use it to create very diffuse areas of "glow". And of course you can adjust the blend mode for slightly different effects. Generally I like to use "custom-made" effects like this - you can get to places that prebuilt filters can't necessarily take you. It's all about experimenting and you can never do enough of that.
how did you create the grid? i mean I know how to create a grid but how did you calculate how big what square should be and all the mathematics behind it? thanks
There isn't any maths behind it (or "math" if you are in the US!). It's just a question of drawing horizontal and vertical lines (using the line tool) that just touch the edges of each curve - what I'm calling the horizontal and vertical tangents, if that's the right way of describing them. Note that you could also create diagonal lines for the trickier 45 degree tangents - if you hold down the Shift key when creating a line, you can get it to snap not only to horizontal and vertical but also to 45 degrees, which is perfect for this.
I know this could be potentially very difficult, but I would love to see this as a FCPX effect. Do you think you could make a tutorial on how to do this? It would be much appreciated!
I'm afraid there's really no way of making this into an FCP X effect because it requires drawing a path for each of the letters and that's not something you could publish so as to be able to make it work with different text, which is what I imagine you have in mind.
That could very well be the case! I won't pretend to have optimised this project to the ultimate limit so if you think you can improve on it, go right ahead. And if it works out I'd love to hear what you discover.
Amazing, thank you so much. I am astonished of the power of M5, but don't use it, yet, total beginner, my problems start already at 1:21 to follow up, because I have no clue how to add a grid and why your symbol for the text S in the layer view looks totally different to mine? Shame on me 🙈
I made the grid using a series of horizontal and vertical lines, using the Line Tool, just to give me a better feel for where the tangents are that I want to work with. If you hold down the shift key while creating a line, it constrains it to be horizontal or vertical. I'm not sure what you mean that the symbol in the layer view ...
@@SimonUbsdell, thank you so much for your super fast reply. But I am really the total beginner and noob: where do I find the line tool? Do you have some boosting videos for zero clue starters? FYC: I use FCP since version 6 but never Motion except Stabilise or Match Move. But since the possibility - to send a clip from FCP to Motion and have the result back directly into FCP (7) time line - was (totally non-understandable 🤔) removed in FCPX, I never have been working with Motion 5. But seeing what can be done with M5 in your videos, I said to myself, "give it a try"... 😉. I am at version 5.4.2 right now. And subbed and activated the bell 👍😊
I would strongly recommend Mark Spencer's outstandingly good Ripple Training series for Motion: www.rippletraining.com/product-category/motion-learning-path/ Note also that you can get from FCP X to Motion now using Automatic Duck's XSend Motion: fxfactory.com/info/xsendmotion/
@@SimonUbsdell , a last question: you made the laser line out of a dot and replicated it. Before I spent to much time searching and finding nothing: Lines do not exist in Motion 5?
I'm afraid it's not copyright free so I can't share it, but there are literally millions of similar images on the internet that you can find and which would work just as well. Try Googling something like "rough textures images".
Thank you so must for this creative work. I had a question in mind. Do I have to make any changes in settings because in 20:00 I tried to make the laser follow the latter the same way you did, but It kept going all over the screen. Even after checking "all" for "source perimeter" What do you think is the reason for that? And how can you solve this problem? Thanks a lot>>> I love your videos man, keep it up. Mo
Hi Simon, really enjoying your tutorials! Really well done and incredibly useful! Thank you! :) Question on this one, for the laser itself, why use a replicator and not a line shape? Thanks
+Matt Grover Good question - that was my first thought when approaching this, but the problem is that linking the end of the line to the path is a lot more of a faff than simply using a replicator. It can be done but it's not worth the effort, and the result doesn't look any better. Unless I missed something really obvious which is perfectly possible!
No, that makes sense, I've done a few bits using line shapes before and ended up with some wacky geometry and results, still learning of course, but it does seem replicators can be a lot more flexible in certain situations. Thanks :)
Out of curiosity : do you have any idea how to achieve this in After Effects? I mean I am aware of the write on effect in AE and how to pull of everything in AE BUT the laser that follows along. This is not a AE VS Motion discussion. Just curious how that laser that follows along would work in AE because it seems so simple (which is good) in Motion. Thank you very much.
It would be very easy to do in Ae using the Beam effect, or you could get a lot more fancy and use expressions, as in this example: hottek.net/2007/07/testing-new-posts.html
I should add that Ae makes this project a whole lot easier because you can use Auto Trace to get paths from your text layer which avoids having to draw them manually - a feature it would be great to have in Motion, but I don't see that happening sadly.
So your question really roused my curiosity about this so I went ahead and replicated the project in After Effects with very interesting results. Some things (like the ability to use Auto Trace) make it a lot easier, but many others are really surprising clunky and inefficient when compared to Motion - I wasn't expecting to find that, to be honest. One of the major differences, of course, was how incredibly slow Ae is at rendering the exact same scene! I'm thinking it might be revealing to do a tutorial showing how this works in Ae, if anyone is interested.
YES I would be VERY interested to see this. At the moment I do NOT know how to feel about Motion yet. I would say the conclusion is: nothing is black or white - there is no YES or NO. I am a video editor (Avid, Premiere, FCP 7) and I've started using FCPX a few months ago. Of course I've started to build my own generators in Motion for FCPX which is A LOT OF FUN and something I really enjoy. Of course I still really love AE but then I am using AE for god something like 10 years already. So of course I enjoy a program I've been using for ages. Also Motion seems to be an underdog. So there are many opinions that I've got: I always like "weird" software that doesn't get much love. I still use Flash...I mean Animate for vector graphics. That program never got much love even though I am way faster in it than say Illustrator. I also think plenty of companies don't even have Motion so I am like: should I invest my time learning a program hardly ANYONE uses? It's kinda unfair really. Motion is a powerful tool and DAMN it's really CHEAP. It's so cheap and all those things you can do with it. I like the "grouping" in it. I don't have to step into 5 million sub clips/nests/pre compositions (that's the right term) and step out again- it's all right there. SO what I am trying to say: Your tutorials help a lot. They are very inspiring and motivational where I am like "WOW this is possible in Motion? This looks so easy and fun! Let me try this". I guess it's just the spark of learning a new program which makes me feel so excited. There are plenty of AE tutorials out there I do not know yet so yeh of course I would be VERY interested in seeing how you do the same thing in AE and what problems you might run into / how it differs to Motion. I also still have some "basic" beginner problems with Motion which tend to frustrate me like the very bottom layer is my background and then I just have some text layers and I am NOT able to click on the text in the viewer (if that's the right term. maybe canvas?) and move it around there because I will ALWAYS click on the background even though the layer is locked so I just move the X and Y position in the inspector- still simple stuff like this annoys me in Motion. So much text...last words: Keep up the great work!
Hiya, Thanks for your interesting reply. I'd be really happy to chat in more detail if you'd like to email me at the address in the About tab above. Always happy to try and help where I can but email is usually the best way of talking so it doesn't get lost in the RUclips wash!
There are two (old and possibly now no longer functional) utilities for getting Illustrator shapes into Motion: tokyo-uk.com/Motion/ExportMotionShape.zip scottash.com/motionize/ I have no idea if either still works. But what we really want is for Apple to give us an option to convert text to shapes like After Effects has. So make sure to ask them for it. That's what the Feedback option is for. PS. Don't try this effect with long words. It's not meant for that. It just won't look good.
I got all the way to the point of putting the lens flare on and couldn't get it to trace around the first letter. I have no clue what I did wrong, i went step by step with the video.
After Effects is a lot more powerful (mainly because of its great extensibility) but Motion is still a lot faster to use for many types of projects and mostly a lot more fun as well.
AND ! ONCE DONE ! very easy to reuse....... so i understand. 1st, is that true AND second how does one go about saving that whole project ? Within Motion.. I mean.
Sorry, meant to refer to saving an element, for example all those motion paths. Within Motion meaning finding them again in the library and not in some folder I must find in finder. ALSO~ You mention ' timing ' , and as a Poet I coud'nt agree more. ANY Idea what the average number of seconds taken .......for a average sentence.
Hi Simon, I tried to reproduce it and it was quiet ok at the begining ad all the sudden I started seeing the lens flare rectangle that is moving with the lens, I tried to troubleshoot it but was unable to figure out what caused it. I may have done something intentionally and ended like that. do you have an idea what is causing it here is the video ruclips.net/user/edit?o=U&video_id=vunxLTvVLcY
Thanks for the tutorials, Simon. I used the laser effect at the beginning of this video, celebrating the 75th birthday of our Dutch newspaper Trouw. (which started as an secret underground newspaper in WW2). ruclips.net/video/virNJ6Sld6o/видео.html. One very general question I'd like to ask you: when starting a new project and building elements, how do you find the right scale, the right size in pixels? Stones in the street could be 500x500 pixels each, or 20x20 each. How much for a house that's further away? In the space terminal tutorial e.g. you used the 1080-height to shape the arches. Why not build it twice as high? When is the scene getting too small and when am I building for giants? It also depends on the scenery and camera movement, i understand, but what would be a good rule of thumb? Thanks!
The beauty is in your ability to demonstrate a more simple way to work in some of the most complex situations. Taking what sometimes feels very intimidating and turning it in to the understandable. Simon you are an incredible teacher and have helped me grow as a motion artist and for this I thank you!!
+Inside Out NYC Thanks very much - I made a complete mess of my first attempt at explaining this one, so it's good to know that this revised version makes a bit more sense ;-) Anyway, I really appreciate your kind feedback and it's great to hear that I've been able to help you.
Thank you for the excellent tutorial! I used it to make a clip of my own (ruclips.net/video/U6nSHuKnWPc/видео.html) and made some changes so it looks like the laser writes the Scouting logo in wood. When adding some smoke i was wondering what would be the best way to link it to the path (own motion path of linking to flare). I chose to link to the flare (like your replicator) but when i did this, for some reason the link got an offset in position and scale. This was easy to correct but i don't understand why it happened. The next step (and challenge) for me is to figure out how the get the laser to only show up in the smoke instead of showing the whole beam. I will check out some more of your tutorials for sure!
leas feel free to email me your project and I'd be happy to take a look. Were you linking the flare generator center or the flare's Transform? These have different results due to the way the generator's coordinates system works.
I learned so much in such a short time. Perfect pace. Articulate. No superfluous ramblings. Hat tip, sir.
Thank you. Glad you liked it.
Haha... better said, "Tips in the hat Sir."
Great.explained and excellent result. As I want to learn Motion I have found your channel. I already subscribed. Best wishes. Peter
I don't normally watch something this long I just don't have the patience But this guy has a nice speaking voice & was straight to the point *& shown PRECISION .. > NOW THAT I LOVE!!! GREAT JOB MATE!
Thanks for your great feedback! Much appreciated.
Wow... its great. I will try tonight. Very excited to learn Apple motion. Thank you so much Simon. Greeting from Indonesia
Thank you so much for your very well explained videos. it helps a lot. Very much appreciated. cheers from France :)
You are so good at explaining/demonstrating complicated stuff, always easy to start your lesson and actually go through it all... With many others I just lose it and give up.. Thanks..
I've been using Motion 5 for only 5 days now and.....
Motion 5 'Incredible" This tutorial ---- Incredible on steroids!!
new sub for sure.. Youre teachng style is amazing! Thank you! I know this is a older post, but timeless!
Thank you!
I've done two of your demo's and though they have come out a bit rough (see channel), I just want to thank you for the time and effort of putting these tutorials together I'll probably go thru all of them as I'm a total beginner.
Great tip for tracing - using a grid. I never thought of that one; thanks.
Another great tutorial. Thank you Simon.
+Tony Mennito Thanks, Tony :)
You are a great teacher and motivator. Thank you!
hi simon, awesome videos! this really helps me! I've tried making a intro for my channel by using your tutorials!
I want to start using this tutorial but I've seen you already started with some things, I'm completely new to motion 5 so I am just following what you are doing, I hope that you can show me how to begin from the start! once again thanks for the tutorials! learning more and more thanks to you!
If you need any specifics tips, please feel free to email me. You can find my address in the About tab above.
Bloody excellent tutorial Simon. I hope you still answer these comments seeing as it's an old video - I need to then have a line cross the whole logo that fills it with colour. Any videos to show that?
Thanks. I'm not sure what you mean by the line crossing the logo and filling with colour. Please feel free to email me at simon@tokyo-uk.com and I might be able to suggest something if you give me some more details.
Hi Simon - congrats. I love your motion 5 tutorials. I was trying to copy animation curves (keyframes) from one function (transform.scale.x) to another (transform.position.z). I have checked all the documentation and followed instructions from the apple website... but nothing works. I thought you might know. Do you know where I might be able to find an answer. thanks again!
Hiya - incompatible parameter keyframes can't be copied, because ... they're incompatible. But there is a much easier and more powerful solution anyway, which is to Link them (using the Link Behavior) - more powerful because you don't have to have a 1:1 correspondence if you don't want it. Does that help?
I’ve been practicing this technique step by step and works great, when I publish it to Final Cut as a generator my letters are on the screen over the video (like a title) but as soon as the lens flare starts a big black box appears that follows the flare. Is there a work around this?
The Motion Lens Flare uses the Add Blend mode and does not come with an alpha channel. That means you can often run into issues with seeing the edges of the layer. There are two options you could consider: a) make the Lens Flare dimensions (not its scale) much bigger; b) create an alpha channel for the Lens Flare by e.g. adding a Channel Mixer filter and setting the Alpha-Alpha to zero and the other three channels to 1. Without knowing the details of your template set-up, a third option might be simply to set the Blend Mode to Add inside FCP ...
@@SimonUbsdell thanks worked like a charm, another question I made a title for my friend sent him all the files he made the same path’s and in his Final Cut he gets the red screen with the “!”. We have the same versions of Final Cut, made sure the file paths are exact, the only difference is he dosnt have motion. Is that’s what’s causing this?
Simon, you are the best!!!!!!
@Simon Ubsdell This tutorial is so awesome but does it come with files attached
Hi, Is there a way to add drop zones. Would that work for let’s say dropping in a logo?
I am new to Motion!
Thanks,
Dave
Why i havent lans flare om my motion 5!? Must i download it on webside or what must i do?
You should have the Lens Flare in your Library under Generators.
Yes I no! But I have'nt it!
It is possible that your installation is corrupt. Try deleting the Motion application, downloading it again from the App Store and reinstalling. But first double-check that the Lens Flare really isn't there - have you looked through all the generators to see if you can find it?
Great tutorial, but how can i make it with alpha channel on the flare?
By default the Flare generator has no alpha channel and uses the Add blend mode. But you can create an alpha channel by applying a Channel Mixer filter and setting the Alpha-Alpha to zero and the Alpha-Red (or Alpha-Green or Alpha Blue or as combination of all three) to 1.0. This uses the luminance of the colour channels to create the alpha.
@@SimonUbsdell Thanks Simon for your clear answer. I found an other way to get a flare with Alpha. I made one myself in Photoshop and put that in the animation. Thanks for explaining the technique. In this video i used what i learned. ruclips.net/video/rKzxKY-XST0/видео.html
Thanks Simon!
Why did you make the laser using circles? Isn't there a line tool, instead of having to use 200 small circles to make a line?
Because you can't link the ends of a line to anything in Motion so you couldn't automate the animation along the paths of the letters. And a line (shape) is 2D only whereas a line replicator can be made 3D.
Ok thanks! Makes sense.
One other thing I wanted to point out is that if you create a Line, set the Line Brush Type to Airbrush (rather than Solid) and increase the Spacing you will see that ... it is made up of a string of dots. In other words, making a line out of dots is not such a crazy idea. In fact it allows you a lot more control over the look of the line than if you use the basic Solid mode (which is just a very thin rectangle).
Wow! Really cool. I didn't know that... thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
Simon, great and clear. Thanks! my2penny: use line and track points. but the 3d look issue i guess stays on.
I really wonder which software is more capable or if they are equal. I’m about to buy a MacBook and can’t decide if I need the education bundle including motion 5. I’ve used adobe products and as far as I see, what you do in adobe is simpler to do in motion than adobe; but I’m not sure yet if there’s anything you can do in adobe but can’t do in motion. So, Dear Simon, since you use both, can you help me sort this out? For example they say tracking in after effects does not exist in Apple motion; and they also say there might be things you can’t do in motion but can do in after effects. Thanks a lot in advance.
It's a good question and often asked. My take on it is that you can do a lot more with Motion than most people realise but it takes quite a bit of ingenuity to get there sometimes. The huge advantage it has over After Effects is the fact that you can get realtime playback of even fairly complex projects whereas After Effects is still terribly slow in this area because it's not making good use of the GPU. (Check out this tutorial where I demonstrate this: ruclips.net/video/VXa3iXgkF8g/видео.html). For me that means you can create much more quickly in Motion and for that reason I often use it as a "design scratchpad" - I might then move over to After Effects to master the project or depending on the needs I might stay in Motion. However, all that being said, there is no question that After Effects has a much deeper and more powerful toolset, not to mention an incredibly rich ecosystem of training, assets, utilities and the rest.
Thanks a lot for your kind and comprehensive reply. Just one more question but first as many more stated before, I’d like to say that you’re a great teacher. This expression of mine is different in that it is said by a teacher. You explain just the way a teacher does, which is really important for this kind of things. So, the question is, as a teacher, I would like to make short cartoons for educational purposes, simple characters and simple scenes, you know; which path should I choose to make this kind of stuff? Apple or Adobe something else? Would Final cut and motion 5 be enough or would it be wiser to pick premier and after effects? Thanks again in advance.
If you are wanting to do character animation, then I would recommend without hesitation that you go with After Effects - the Puppet Tool makes this easy. Motion has nothing even remotely similar. Here's my attempt at doing character animation in Motion - it's not good: ruclips.net/video/lPI2DDSgQoA/видео.html
I saw that video of yours and liked it very much it seems not bad 😄. And I saw another video and there was a puppet tool in motion 5. If motion were enough, I would go with it since it’s a one time purchase, but as you said I’ll go with adobe I think.
MotionVFX do a puppet tool plug-in: www.motionvfx.com/store,mpuppet,p2886.html I haven't tried it but it might work for you if you.
Very nice tutorial. Why did you use a clone-blur to effect the "glow" for the LASER word, but then used the Glow Filter on the laser itself? My intuition is that you'd want to use the same effect in both cases for simplicity's sake… but maybe there are aesthetic differences that matter here?
The reason I like to use the blur technique for glow is that I find it's more flexible to control (although essentially it's doing the exact same thing that glow is "under the hood"). You could for example use it to create layers of "glow" that are different in colour, but mostly I use it to create very diffuse areas of "glow". And of course you can adjust the blend mode for slightly different effects. Generally I like to use "custom-made" effects like this - you can get to places that prebuilt filters can't necessarily take you. It's all about experimenting and you can never do enough of that.
how did you create the grid? i mean I know how to create a grid but how did you calculate how big what square should be and all the mathematics behind it? thanks
There isn't any maths behind it (or "math" if you are in the US!). It's just a question of drawing horizontal and vertical lines (using the line tool) that just touch the edges of each curve - what I'm calling the horizontal and vertical tangents, if that's the right way of describing them. Note that you could also create diagonal lines for the trickier 45 degree tangents - if you hold down the Shift key when creating a line, you can get it to snap not only to horizontal and vertical but also to 45 degrees, which is perfect for this.
I know this could be potentially very difficult, but I would love to see this as a FCPX effect. Do you think you could make a tutorial on how to do this? It would be much appreciated!
I'm afraid there's really no way of making this into an FCP X effect because it requires drawing a path for each of the letters and that's not something you could publish so as to be able to make it work with different text, which is what I imagine you have in mind.
excellent lesson , Thank you !
could you save a lot of in and out frames by grouping Each letter with its write on, lens flare, and laser line?
That could very well be the case! I won't pretend to have optimised this project to the ultimate limit so if you think you can improve on it, go right ahead. And if it works out I'd love to hear what you discover.
I learned a lot in this video, but some of my letters don't stay after they are written in and are delayed. I hoped you could help me with this.
If you would like to send me your project (email address in the About tab above), I'd be happy to troubleshoot it for you.
Ok will do!
great lesson to me!! Thanks a lot!!^^
Amazing, thank you so much. I am astonished of the power of M5, but don't use it, yet, total beginner, my problems start already at 1:21 to follow up, because I have no clue how to add a grid and why your symbol for the text S in the layer view looks totally different to mine? Shame on me 🙈
I made the grid using a series of horizontal and vertical lines, using the Line Tool, just to give me a better feel for where the tangents are that I want to work with. If you hold down the shift key while creating a line, it constrains it to be horizontal or vertical. I'm not sure what you mean that the symbol in the layer view ...
@@SimonUbsdell, thank you so much for your super fast reply. But I am really the total beginner and noob: where do I find the line tool? Do you have some boosting videos for zero clue starters? FYC: I use FCP since version 6 but never Motion except Stabilise or Match Move. But since the possibility - to send a clip from FCP to Motion and have the result back directly into FCP (7) time line - was (totally non-understandable 🤔) removed in FCPX, I never have been working with Motion 5. But seeing what can be done with M5 in your videos, I said to myself, "give it a try"... 😉. I am at version 5.4.2 right now. And subbed and activated the bell 👍😊
I would strongly recommend Mark Spencer's outstandingly good Ripple Training series for Motion: www.rippletraining.com/product-category/motion-learning-path/ Note also that you can get from FCP X to Motion now using Automatic Duck's XSend Motion: fxfactory.com/info/xsendmotion/
@@SimonUbsdell , many thanks for those links and the perfect instructions in your videos. Will do my best to get into it.
@@SimonUbsdell , a last question: you made the laser line out of a dot and replicated it. Before I spent to much time searching and finding nothing: Lines do not exist in Motion 5?
is it possible to provide the background image so that we can follow step by step?
I'm afraid it's not copyright free so I can't share it, but there are literally millions of similar images on the internet that you can find and which would work just as well. Try Googling something like "rough textures images".
Awesome thanks a lot , this is the time i'm ever accomplishing anything using motion, great tutorial. A++++
Thank you so must for this creative work. I had a question in mind. Do I have to make any changes in settings because in 20:00 I tried to make the laser follow the latter the same way you did, but It kept going all over the screen. Even after checking "all" for "source perimeter" What do you think is the reason for that? And how can you solve this problem? Thanks a lot>>> I love your videos man, keep it up.
Mo
Hi there. I'm not sure what the problem might be but if you'd like to email me your project I can take a look. Address in the About tab above.
I just did. Thanks a lott.
Hi Simon, really enjoying your tutorials! Really well done and incredibly useful! Thank you! :)
Question on this one, for the laser itself, why use a replicator and not a line shape? Thanks
+Matt Grover Good question - that was my first thought when approaching this, but the problem is that linking the end of the line to the path is a lot more of a faff than simply using a replicator. It can be done but it's not worth the effort, and the result doesn't look any better. Unless I missed something really obvious which is perfectly possible!
No, that makes sense, I've done a few bits using line shapes before and ended up with some wacky geometry and results, still learning of course, but it does seem replicators can be a lot more flexible in certain situations. Thanks :)
I would like to know what font is being used her I can't find it or see it its' blurry.
It's called CGF Locust Resistance. You can find it here on dafont.com: www.dafont.com/search.php?q=locus
Hi Simon
Any idea why the entire screen turns white when i select lens flare?
Thanks Pete
Don't worry sorted it by closing and reopening project. Brilliant tutorial by the way, thank you.
Out of curiosity : do you have any idea how to achieve this in After Effects? I mean I am aware of the write on effect in AE and how to pull of everything in AE BUT the laser that follows along. This is not a AE VS Motion discussion. Just curious how that laser that follows along would work in AE because it seems so simple (which is good) in Motion. Thank you very much.
It would be very easy to do in Ae using the Beam effect, or you could get a lot more fancy and use expressions, as in this example: hottek.net/2007/07/testing-new-posts.html
I should add that Ae makes this project a whole lot easier because you can use Auto Trace to get paths from your text layer which avoids having to draw them manually - a feature it would be great to have in Motion, but I don't see that happening sadly.
So your question really roused my curiosity about this so I went ahead and replicated the project in After Effects with very interesting results. Some things (like the ability to use Auto Trace) make it a lot easier, but many others are really surprising clunky and inefficient when compared to Motion - I wasn't expecting to find that, to be honest. One of the major differences, of course, was how incredibly slow Ae is at rendering the exact same scene! I'm thinking it might be revealing to do a tutorial showing how this works in Ae, if anyone is interested.
YES I would be VERY interested to see this. At the moment I do NOT know how to feel about Motion yet. I would say the conclusion is: nothing is black or white - there is no YES or NO. I am a video editor (Avid, Premiere, FCP 7) and I've started using FCPX a few months ago. Of course I've started to build my own generators in Motion for FCPX which is A LOT OF FUN and something I really enjoy. Of course I still really love AE but then I am using AE for god something like 10 years already. So of course I enjoy a program I've been using for ages. Also Motion seems to be an underdog. So there are many opinions that I've got: I always like "weird" software that doesn't get much love. I still use Flash...I mean Animate for vector graphics. That program never got much love even though I am way faster in it than say Illustrator. I also think plenty of companies don't even have Motion so I am like: should I invest my time learning a program hardly ANYONE uses? It's kinda unfair really. Motion is a powerful tool and DAMN it's really CHEAP. It's so cheap and all those things you can do with it. I like the "grouping" in it. I don't have to step into 5 million sub clips/nests/pre compositions (that's the right term) and step out again- it's all right there. SO what I am trying to say: Your tutorials help a lot. They are very inspiring and motivational where I am like "WOW this is possible in Motion? This looks so easy and fun! Let me try this". I guess it's just the spark of learning a new program which makes me feel so excited. There are plenty of AE tutorials out there I do not know yet so yeh of course I would be VERY interested in seeing how you do the same thing in AE and what problems you might run into / how it differs to Motion. I also still have some "basic" beginner problems with Motion which tend to frustrate me like the very bottom layer is my background and then I just have some text layers and I am NOT able to click on the text in the viewer (if that's the right term. maybe canvas?) and move it around there because I will ALWAYS click on the background even though the layer is locked so I just move the X and Y position in the inspector- still simple stuff like this annoys me in Motion. So much text...last words:
Keep up the great work!
Hiya, Thanks for your interesting reply. I'd be really happy to chat in more detail if you'd like to email me at the address in the About tab above. Always happy to try and help where I can but email is usually the best way of talking so it doesn't get lost in the RUclips wash!
Where can I get laser sound effects like that?
www.videocopilot.net/products/motionpulse/
Thank you!
Why can you not simply import text as bezier curves? It would make it so much easier, especially if you've a long word.
There are two (old and possibly now no longer functional) utilities for getting Illustrator shapes into Motion: tokyo-uk.com/Motion/ExportMotionShape.zip
scottash.com/motionize/
I have no idea if either still works.
But what we really want is for Apple to give us an option to convert text to shapes like After Effects has. So make sure to ask them for it. That's what the Feedback option is for.
PS. Don't try this effect with long words. It's not meant for that. It just won't look good.
I got all the way to the point of putting the lens flare on and couldn't get it to trace around the first letter. I have no clue what I did wrong, i went step by step with the video.
I'm not sure what the problem might be but if you'd like to email me your project I can take a look. Address in the About tab above.
Fantastic!
How does motion 5 compare with adobe after affects?
After Effects is a lot more powerful (mainly because of its great extensibility) but Motion is still a lot faster to use for many types of projects and mostly a lot more fun as well.
okay thanks.
AND !
ONCE DONE ! very easy to reuse....... so i understand.
1st, is that true AND second how does one go about saving that whole project ? Within Motion.. I mean.
I'm sorry, I don't understand your first question. As to your second question, to save a project in Motion got to File/Save.
Sorry, meant to refer to saving an element, for example all those motion paths. Within Motion meaning finding them again in the library and not in some folder I must find in finder.
ALSO~ You mention ' timing ' , and as a Poet I
coud'nt agree more.
ANY Idea what the average number of seconds taken .......for a average sentence.
You can save almost anything to the Favorites folder which is an easy way of recalling complex processes.
how do i even start setting this up ??????
Could I know what's the name of this software?
Apple Motion: www.apple.com/uk/final-cut-pro/motion/
+Simon Ubsdell thank you very much ☺
Hi. Could you send me this project, something I go out and I would compare to find the error.
Send me an email (address in the About tab above) and I'll send you the project.
Hi Simon, I tried to reproduce it and it was quiet ok at the begining ad all the sudden I started seeing the lens flare rectangle that is moving with the lens, I tried to troubleshoot it but was unable to figure out what caused it. I may have done something intentionally and ended like that. do you have an idea what is causing it here is the video ruclips.net/user/edit?o=U&video_id=vunxLTvVLcY
Please feel free to email me your project and I'd be happy to take a look. You can find my address in the About tab above.
many thanks I will
I am noticing the same issue with my lens flare. Is there a way to resolve?
Thanks for the tutorials, Simon. I used the laser effect at the beginning of this video, celebrating the 75th birthday of our Dutch newspaper Trouw. (which started as an secret underground newspaper in WW2). ruclips.net/video/virNJ6Sld6o/видео.html.
One very general question I'd like to ask you: when starting a new project and building elements, how do you find the right scale, the right size in pixels? Stones in the street could be 500x500 pixels each, or 20x20 each. How much for a house that's further away? In the space terminal tutorial e.g. you used the 1080-height to shape the arches. Why not build it twice as high? When is the scene getting too small and when am I building for giants? It also depends on the scenery and camera movement, i understand, but what would be a good rule of thumb? Thanks!
JAJA Es el intro de @maurg1
The beauty is in your ability to demonstrate a more simple way to work in some of the most complex situations. Taking what sometimes feels very intimidating and turning it in to the understandable. Simon you are an incredible teacher and have helped me grow as a motion artist and for this I thank you!!
+Inside Out NYC Thanks very much - I made a complete mess of my first attempt at explaining this one, so it's good to know that this revised version makes a bit more sense ;-) Anyway, I really appreciate your kind feedback and it's great to hear that I've been able to help you.
Thank you for the excellent tutorial! I used it to make a clip of my own (ruclips.net/video/U6nSHuKnWPc/видео.html) and made some changes so it looks like the laser writes the Scouting logo in wood. When adding some smoke i was wondering what would be the best way to link it to the path (own motion path of linking to flare). I chose to link to the flare (like your replicator) but when i did this, for some reason the link got an offset in position and scale. This was easy to correct but i don't understand why it happened. The next step (and challenge) for me is to figure out how the get the laser to only show up in the smoke instead of showing the whole beam. I will check out some more of your tutorials for sure!
leas feel free to email me your project and I'd be happy to take a look. Were you linking the flare generator center or the flare's Transform? These have different results due to the way the generator's coordinates system works.