We decided to update Object Animator with a set of animations used as layers. These are located under Cineflare ObjectAnimator in the “Titles” browser.
The main objective for using title layers is to be able to lengthen or shorten the layer over your element for a longer or shorter duration time simply by physically adjusting the title layer. This allows duration change with these custom animations that was previously not possible with the Effects version of Object Animator. However, you can still access the Effects version in the Effects browser of FCPX.
Inside the parameters window of the title layers you’ll find controls to change the direction of the animation, modify the spread or intensity of the animation, give it a customized motion blur amount, and adjust the fade time of each. You can also turn off and on the axis lines to adjust them to further tweak the animation when you want to change the center point of the axis.
The animations in the Titles browser of Object Animator consist of several new animations in addition to the ones found in the Effects browser. Scroll to the bottom of the animations to also find some extra tools and instructions.
The “Animations Clean” and “Animations Motion Blur” tools require at least 30 frames to complete both the incoming and outgoing animations once you apply it to an element on the timeline. This is approximately one full second depending on the frame rate of your timeline. If you shorten an element below 30 frames in length, then you will experience the animations cutting short or producing undesired results. The “Quick Animations Clean” and “Quick Animations Motion Blur” tools require at least 15 frames to complete both the incoming and outgoing animations once you apply it to an element on the timeline. This is approximately one half second depending on the frame rate of your timeline. If you shorten an element below 15 frames in length, then you will experience the animations cutting short or producing undesired results. The Quick Animations tools are great for when you want a much faster transitions time and you plan on having that image on the timeline for a much shorter time: great for fast moving and fast changing images. The Clean effect applies no motion blur while the Motion Blur effect renders natural motion blur depending on the speed of an animation. Please note: motion blur rendering can tax the GPU of your system so make sure you have enough speed and memory before you choose the Motion Blur version of any effect.
Preparing an image. Prepare an image by importing a high resolution image into your project. Transparent background images like a PNG work well. Once you have imported an image, drag it onto your timeline. FCPX will want you to work with an image that is in a 16:9 ratio. Select the image then do a right click and choose “New Compound Clip”. This forces the image into that 16:9 aspect ratio space so that you can start adding animations to it and have it respond correctly.
Add the animation. Drag and drop one of the animations tools of ObjectAnimator onto the image clip. Click on the image again so you can view the parameters of ObjectAnimator. From the drop down menus, you can choose from over 70 variations of the animations available. You can even choose a different outgoing animation from that of the incoming animation. Additionally, you can choose other animations such as a constant zooming in or drift that makes the object move slightly across the duration of the clip.
Axis Controls. Axis controls have been added so that you can see the exact axis point of the animation. This comes in very handy for when you want to reset the axis points of an animations like “Flip” for example. Click the Show Axis controls for both the build in and build out. You can then reposition the axis exactly where you want them. By placing the Y axis at the top of an image, you can make the animation look like a flip down rather than a center flip. When doing this for any zoom effect, the zoom start positions also gets changed. Make sure you turn off the axis views again once you have them where you want them.
Extra Animations. Sometimes you may wish to add a short fade in and fade out to your animation. Simply click the Fade In and/or Fade Out check boxes. Also, you can offset the animation slightly if you wish the animation to start showing a few frames after the beginning of the animation. Adjust this by adjusting the View Offset sliders. This delays the fade in and fade out controls so that you will delay the viewable beginning of the animation. For example, if you choose the Basic slide in animation and you offset the Fade In by adjusting the Start View Offset slider controls, instead of seeing the object come in right away, you will see it come on to the screen after it’s progression rather than right in the beginning of it’s progression.
Image Controls. Once you have placed the animation effect onto an image you can then go into the image controls and reposition and resize the image by using these controls. There is even an on-screen control in the center of the the screen that allows you to resize, reposition, and rotate the image very quickly. IMPORTANT: if you want to resize or scale the image after you have applied one of the animation effects, make sure you only use the controls INSIDE the ObjectAnimator effect. If you go outside the effect and attempt to resize or reposition the image from its original parameters, you will get undesired effects and image clipping.
Add ObjectAnimator to any element on the timeline and change up the controls to get many many variations of each animation.