Motion Master Template / Behaviour advice needed

[David Bogie]

Yar, we have a large folder of lower thirds using branded colors, brand typefaces, specific graphical elements. You must have two separate text elements. No matter how carefully you create the text masters, every one will require precision tweaking. Text objects in Motion behave strangely and unpredictably compared to apps like After Effects.

We have simplified these by pre-rendering most of the moving elements and most of the visual enhancements like highlight glints. The text animations require rendering on every application, of course.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Peter Brown]

Thanks David,

I’m actually thinking in terms of using the ‘Add Master Template’ function in Final Cut Pro, which brings in editable fields, like the text generators – I’m trying to avoid using lots of imported Motion docs, as if they were photoshop files, as it’s not as efficient a workflow as the Template function.

I think my best way through is to add a parameter in Motion that forces the second name to be a certain number of pixels to the right of the first name – but I don’t know which behavior that would be.

All 8 of the other editable fields render perfectly, without tweaking, as they don’t have different formatting within a sentence.

cheers again
Peter

[Jeff Greenberg]

I think I get what you’re trying to do…
Horizontally, you’d like text block 2 to be on the edge of text block 1.

I played for about 20 min on trying a combination of attractors + repellers to get it to sit.

And then I have idea B.
Text block 1 is Left aligned…and Text block 2 is Right aligned (on the right side of the screen.)

Sorry I couldn’t come up with a better solution.

Best,

Jeff G
Principal Instructor
Future Media Concepts

FMCTraining.com
Editorsretreat.com

[Peter Brown]

Jeff,

That’s exactly what I’m trying to do – I’ll give the left/right aligning a try. I wish there was a behaviour that aligned to another object without travelling or gravity simulation – just a static align. Boring, but essential!

cheers for the idea
Peter

[David Bogie]

Yr, like I said, text is weird in Motion. There is not way to attach position parameters from one layer to another since the text object will be variable in size, even if the character alignment is static.

This is not easily done in After Effects but an expression could be created to do the job for you.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”