Dropdown Rigging – A Useful Quick Tip Tutorial

[Tim Wilson]

These are great! Thanks!

[Brett Sherman]

I attempted a method like this for selecting colors from a group of swatches. Slightly different in that I was using “Link” instead of “Clone”. The thing was it worked perfectly in Motion. But crashed FCP X every time. I don’t know if it had something specifically to do with color or the “Link” parameter behavior. But I’ve been extremely hesitant to use this method ever since.

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Brett Sherman
One Man Band (If it\’s video related I\’ll do it!)
I work for an institution that probably does not want to be associated with my babblings here.

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Brett Sherman] “I attempted a method like this for selecting colors from a group of swatches. Slightly different in that I was using “Link” instead of “Clone”.”

But using Clone is what makes this work and work so elegantly – and it’s been proven to work with 100% reliability over many years now.

Your method sounds completely different. And yes, you can get into trouble with Link if you don’t proceed carefully.

I would encourage users to get friendly with Clones in general; they are one of the most powerful and versatile features in Motion but are not generally well understood.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Brett Sherman]

[Simon Ubsdell] “I would encourage users to get friendly with Clones in general; they are one of the most powerful and versatile features in Motion but are not generally well understood.”

The one thing I’m not sure about is whether there is a hit on performance when you use this type of cloning. For example, I’m making a Newspaper Article template that will have multiple layouts. Is it better to build them into one Motion Template with a lot more layers and graphics? Or would it have better performance if I use a different Motion template for each layout?

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Brett Sherman
One Man Band (If it\’s video related I\’ll do it!)
I work for an institution that probably does not want to be associated with my babblings here.

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Brett Sherman] “The one thing I’m not sure about is whether there is a hit on performance when you use this type of cloning. “

I just ran a test to answer this question – at least in part. One of the factors you need to consider in terms of performance is how large the resulting XML is going to be.

I created a project with all the 25 shapes in the Motion library added to a dropdown rig.

The Clone method gives you a project size of 566KB.

The Opacity method gives you a project size of 703KB.

So you can clearly see the benefit of this method.

I built a massive lens flare template, one of the largest things I’ve ever built in Motion, and I was using this Clone method very liberally to swap out the hundreds of different image options. Not only is it rock solid but it’s always very performant.

I can also attest to the reliability of this method given that it’s built into a few of the templates Rob and I have sold commercially over a number of years – all without a single problem.

I will just say that Clones, when used injudiciously, can cause performance problems, but that is quite a different question.

You seem to be asking something hat is slightly at a tangent to this, and, without knowing the exact details of your project, I would say that there is an advantage to breaking a template up into separate Motion projects over bundling everything into one, again because the holy grail is keeping the XML size down wherever possible. But this only really applies if your project is very complex …

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Brett Sherman]

Very helpful. Thanks!

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Brett Sherman
One Man Band (If it\’s video related I\’ll do it!)
I work for an institution that probably does not want to be associated with my babblings here.