[Dirk De jong]

[Robin S. Kurz] “Wouldn’t a simple circular, animated Replicator be perfect for this?”

I was thinking that too, but if the 7 objects aren’t the same then maybe not… but a replicator may be able to be used somehow anyway…

[Dirk De jong]

[Jiggy Gaton] “As you can see, I am using the offset for each copy of the motion path to nudge the starting point of each circle. There must be some math involved, only I can’t figure it out”

It looks like the Motion Path behavior’s Offset parameter represents % of full orbit around the circle (360 degrees). If you have some objects to distribute evenly I think you’d just divide 100 by the number of objects (in this case 7) and space the offset values that far apart – so 100/7 = about 14.3 (or say 14.286)
so
object 1 = Offset zero
object 2 = Offset 14.3
object 3 = Offset 28.6
object 4 = Offset 42.9
etc.

I tried to post a motion project here
https://f1.creativecow.net/11362/motion-project-7-objects-on-a-circle-motion-path

[Dirk De jong]

I reported it as a bug in Apple’s bug db

[Dirk De jong]

[Nick Janes] “Is there any way to direct message on here?”

It doesn’t seem like there is a messaging feature… I can be reached by email here ;
definitely.dirk(at)gmail.com

replace the “(at)” with an “@”

[Dirk De jong]

[Nick Janes] “what did you use to create that?
“

Apple Motion ;
https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/motion/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/motion/id434290957

BTW, while watching my demo video just now it occurred to me that there was no good way to change the font or other basic properties of the lower 3rd titles, and so I just updated it so those titles (like the sidebar was already) can now be directly edited (onscreen and in the text inspector) to allow for that – so if you downloaded the zip already, you could go back and download it again to get the now slightly improved version…

[Dirk De jong]

My first inclination would be to use particles (even if they end up post processed so they don’t necessarily look like particles in the final result). But I suspect the particles that come standard with AE are perhaps not feature rich enough to pull it off well so probably (in AE at least) I would use a 3rd party AE plugin particle effect.

[Dirk De jong]

[Nick Janes] “I’m looking for a titling plugin — compatible with Final Cut X — that would mimc ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption.”

I happen to be currently developing some titling effects for Final Cut Pro which I hope to release and offer for sale in the near future – so I’m already in that “mode” – and so I just took a quick stab at creating something like you describe. Here is a screencap movie (warning, no audio) of it being shown in FCP https://kingluma.com/pardon_the_interruption_title.mp4 and here is a link to download (and see install instructions for) the title effect https://kingluma.com/PTI_title_installation.html – As you can kind of see in the demo video there are basically 2 parameters you’re likely to need to keyframe ; one parameter that progresses through the different show topics, and another parameter which uses the Date/Time generator to do the timer countdown for each show topic. Hopefully it’s useful to somebody… and if not, at least I learned a couple new things while making it : )

[Dirk De jong]

[Robin S. Kurz] “And if you do, Motion, as of the most recent version, is the only app of them all that can actually automatically maintain the correct alignment/relation of them to each other, thanks to the “Align” behavior. Something you might want to look into, if the whole thing is a must-have.”

I find the Align behavior to be a little slow… and then depending on the context I’m using it in that slowness gets magnified to a point where it’s unacceptable (in the most straightforward simple case it is less noticeable)… and so I find myself using a combination of various other behaviors (Link behaviors mostly) to achieve it other ways… Does anyone else find that with the Align behavior ? One thing I haven’t (yet) figured out how to achieve another way is the “Ignore Sequencing” checkbox option in the Align To behavior… (and that’s a useful option…)

[Dirk De jong]

[David MacRae] “this turns all the particles in the layer to the main image color but does not turn the transparency so it does not work either.”

there are ways of getting it to follow transparency too (by arranging the comp a little differently) but if you’re finding it unacceptably slow on your machine and looking into other solutions then it’s probably not worth getting into it…

one thing I would suggest though, is that for the effect you describe, rather than a particle emitter you might actually want to be using a replicator which is a sort of particle array – since in the effect you describe I would think rather than particles constantly emitting with control over particle lifespan etc. you just need a sort of particle screen which you could animate by means of a gravity and/or attractor behavior etc. – this would probably give you better performance since a replicator (as opposed to an emitter) doesn’t need to spend cycles keeping track of the so called “history” of the emitter since it doesn’t include that same time element

[Dirk De jong]

[David MacRae] “In the emitter tab there is a “take image color” in the color mode however it is greyed out.”

This option (“Take Image Color”) is available if you have the Emitter’s “Shape” popup (first parameter) to “Image”