Well, if the supplied filters are not enough to get that extra special effect your client was after, you can always resort to third party plug-ins.
Motion should be able to use any After Effects compatible filter without too many worries. To install filters ‘into Motion’ you have to point to the filter folder in the general part of the preferences’ panel. The next time motion is restarted, the plug-ins will show up in the third party filters folder which is in the Library.
Here you can see I've selected the excellent Sapphire plug-ins from GenArts. If you have more than one set of plug-ins, say from different manufacturers, you can drop an alias to them in a new custom folder. I would recommend you check any websites of filter manufacturer’s for compatibility before installing any though. I know of two companies who are going to post ‘updated’ AE filter sets for Motion.
Now, there are a few things to watch out for:
- First of all don't expect any clip or graphic to play in real time with an AE filter applied. The big plus side is that the clip will play, although at a low frame rate without any rendering!
- Secondly, the dreaded problem of getting plug-ins to work outside the clip/graphic’s alpha channel borders.
Here's the problem. I've applied Sapphire’s Edge Rays to the clip that has been shrunk down. As you can see, where the clip finishes, so do the rays! Very similar to what happens in Final Cut Pro.
Here's the solution. At the back of the layer you want the plug-in to affect insert a colour solid from the generators’ tab, found in the Library. The default is this rather lovely blue!
Straight away, you can see that the rays now expand to the edge of the colour solid.
The plug-in has to be applied to the layer though and not the clip. One final step is to now set the opacity of the colour solid to zero.
Here's the final result. I'm sure there might be a quicker and easier work around, but it got me out of a problem. If you need longer rays or want to move the picture and keep the effect, you can make the colour solid as large as you like (Up to 2048 x 2048) to give you that space ‘around’ your clip or graphic.
A couple of things to note, all the default parameters get loaded into the dashboard.
This somewhat defeats the object of having the ‘most used’ controls in the dashboard and I'd like to set a preference that only loads the top three, or loads the last three I used for example. Or maybe by version 2 of Motion I might be able to pick the parameters I require! Also don't expect third party plug-ins to appear in the drop down add filter menu at the top of the canvas – the request to Apple has been put in though.
Go to next section: Conclusion
This review may not be re-published without the permission of Peter Wiggins
Copyright MMIV
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