One of the companies harnessing FxFactory Pro’s plug-in creation architecture is Yanobox. Its first offering, Motype, is a useful and easy plug-in for creating dynamic text animations. In the following tutorial, you can see just how easy Motype is to get up and running.

If you’d like to follow along, download and install the latest version of FxFactory from www.noiseindustries.com and then download and install the free 15-day trial of Motype from the same site. It should be noted that Motype, as well as any plug-ins using FxFactory, can be used in Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, Motion and After Effects.

The host application I refer to in this tutorial is Final Cut Pro; the functionality, however, is identical in each of the supported host applications.

Step 1: Set up Your Project and Sequence

OK. Start by opening Final Cut Pro, create a New Project, click on Sequence 1 in the browser and press command-zero to access the Sequence Settings.

In the Sequence Settings dialog, click on the Load Sequence Preset… button and in the Select Sequence Preset dialog, choose Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) 1280×720 24p 48kHz from the Select pop-up menu. If you don’t have the codec installed, choose another HD preset and click OK and then OK again in the Sequence Settings dialog. Name your sequence and save your project. You’re now ready to use Motype!

Step 2 Apply Motype

In the Effects tab, click on the disclosure triangle for Video Generators, scroll down to the Yanobox folder, click on the Yanobox disclosure triangle and then drag Motype to the Canvas and choose Insert from the Edit Overlay.

Step 3 Customize the Generator

Double-click on the Motype generator in the timeline to load it into the Viewer. Then click on the Controls tab in the Viewer to access Motype’s parameters. We’re going to choose a preset as a starting point and then customize it.

In the Controls tab, click on the Choose Preset… pop-up menu and select YB_Stage_Strange_720. Then, in the timeline, go to the start of your sequence and play it back to preview the title. Once you’ve played it back, place your playhead at around the halfway point of the generator so you can see the additional changes you’ll make to the preset.

Back in the Controls tab, click on the Text disclosure triangle and change the type so that it reads, “tricked text” and hit return. The new text will refresh in the Canvas. Once done, close the Text parameters by clicking on its disclosure triangle.

Open the Motion Mixer parameters and change the Duration to 120. This will increase the time it takes for the text to animate onto the screen. Close the Motion Mixer parameters.

Open the Particles parameters and change the Textures pop-up menu to Squared and then scroll down and change the value of the last Textures parameter, Opacity, to 0.15, which will boost the opacity of the new particle emitter. Close the Particles parameters.

Step 4 Add Your Final Touches

Open the Cyclorama parameters and under SPOTLIGHT 1, change the Texture from Hexagonal Pixellate to Lines. Then, change the Texture Scale parameter to 3 and press return. Your Canvas should now refresh and reflect the changes.

The last steps are to render your sequence, play it back, make any adjustments, add a fade out to the end of the generator and start editing your sequence!