Create a Lower Third in Motion
In “Under 5 Minutes” Mark Spencer will teach you how to create your own custom Lower Third to introduce the subject of your video using some of Motion’s simple behaviors.
I’m Mark Spencer from RippleTraining.com. Welcome to Motion Magic, where you’ll learn visual effects and motion graphics in under 5 minutes.
So within Final Cut, I have a project here, and I have a subject, Mitch, and I want to introduce him. So I need a lower third.
If we look in the titles browser here, we have a category called lower thirds, which is a great way to introduce somebody.
And there are 71 different built-in lower thirds in this category, many as parts of themes. And these are great, but you might decide you want your own.
So I’m going to show you how to do that very quickly.
When you launch Motion, you’re presented with five different options for the type of project you want to create.
In our case, we’re going to create a Final Cut title, so I’ll select that and I’m also going to select Broadcast HD 1080 and 29.97 frames per second. That’s my particular project here.
A duration of 10 seconds is fine because you can trim it.
I’ll click open.
In this title project, we have a canvas where we already have a background that going to be the video that the title sits over, and we already have a text layer.
So as it is right now, it’s a title complete; it just doesn’t do much of anything, it just sits here.
So let’s jazz it up a little bit. First for the Type we might want to select a different font.
If you click the popup menu in this little floating transparent palette called the HUD, all of your installed fonts appear.
And as you drag over them they update in the canvas. So we can quickly slide down and find some other font that we might want to use; we’ll try this one called Avenir.
You can also change the font color and many other attributes, it’s size, tracking etc, I’ll leave it pretty much like that.
I also want to animate the text, and to do that I am going to go to the Library. So I’m going to choose behaviors which are ways of creating animation, and I’ll choose Text Sequence.
Then I’ll go into Text Basic and I’ll just choose this one called Blur In and I’m going to drag it onto the text. And if I play, the text now blurs onto the screen.
That’s great, but I think I’d like to have a little background behind it.
So for that, back in the Library I’m going to go to Replicators.
Replicators are objects that create copies of images or text or movies, and it has a category of built in objects called lower thirds. And if we select any one of these, it will play up in the preview area.
I’m just going to scroll down to this one called Melody, and I like that animation, so I am going to go ahead drag it into this group up here in the layers list.
Then, it appears on top, and I really want it below the text, so I’m going to drag it down below the text.
And if I move the playhead forward now, we can see that it’s up in the middle, and the text is way down here, so I’m going to drag it down to where the text is.
Then I’m going to select a corner and hold down Shift+Option to scale proportionally from its anchor point to make this background larger.
Now we have a nice background and some text. The background kind of just appears here, so I’ll use another behavior to animate the background to animate onto the screen.
In the Library under behaviors we have some basic motion behaviors. I’ll choose this one called Fade In Fade Out, and I’ll drag it onto this Replicator.
If we now play, the background fades in, and the type animates on.
I want the type to come on a little later so here in the timing pane, I’ll just drag it forward a little bit.
And there we have a nice simple animation. So from here, all we need to do is Save. So from the file menu I’ll choose Save. And because we opened a Final Cut title we will automatically Publish this title to Final Cut Pro.
So we need to give it a name, I’ll call it Red Boxes Lower Third, we need to give it a category, so I’ll give it a new category called My Lower Thirds, and I’m not going to give it a theme, I don’t need unused media, and I don’t need a preview movie.
I’ll click Publish. That’s done, let’s go back to Final Cut Pro.
And if we deselect and reselect the title browser, we have a new category, My Lower Thirds, and here is the title we just created.
So I will drag it onto my clip, it’s ten seconds by default but I want to make it shorter.
And if we play it, our title animates on the screen. To change the text we can just double click on the title to highlight the text.[Types Mitch Greenberg in the text section] And I’ll press Escape.
And that’s how fast and easy it can be to create your own title animation from scratch in Motion.
Click the Subscribe button below. If you have an idea, comment, or suggestion, leave those below as well.
Go to RippleTraining.com for fast professional training on Final Cut Pro, Motion, and DaVinci Resolve from industry professionals.
So within Final Cut, I have a project here, and I have a subject, Mitch, and I want to introduce him. So I need a lower third.
If we look in the titles browser here, we have a category called lower thirds, which is a great way to introduce somebody.
And there are 71 different built-in lower thirds in this category, many as parts of themes. And these are great, but you might decide you want your own.
So I’m going to show you how to do that very quickly.
When you launch Motion, you’re presented with five different options for the type of project you want to create.
In our case, we’re going to create a Final Cut title, so I’ll select that and I’m also going to select Broadcast HD 1080 and 29.97 frames per second. That’s my particular project here.
A duration of 10 seconds is fine because you can trim it.
I’ll click open.
In this title project, we have a canvas where we already have a background that going to be the video that the title sits over, and we already have a text layer.
So as it is right now, it’s a title complete; it just doesn’t do much of anything, it just sits here.
So let’s jazz it up a little bit. First for the Type we might want to select a different font.
If you click the popup menu in this little floating transparent palette called the HUD, all of your installed fonts appear.
And as you drag over them they update in the canvas. So we can quickly slide down and find some other font that we might want to use; we’ll try this one called Avenir.
You can also change the font color and many other attributes, it’s size, tracking etc, I’ll leave it pretty much like that.
I also want to animate the text, and to do that I am going to go to the Library. So I’m going to choose behaviors which are ways of creating animation, and I’ll choose Text Sequence.
Then I’ll go into Text Basic and I’ll just choose this one called Blur In and I’m going to drag it onto the text. And if I play, the text now blurs onto the screen.
That’s great, but I think I’d like to have a little background behind it.
So for that, back in the Library I’m going to go to Replicators.
Replicators are objects that create copies of images or text or movies, and it has a category of built in objects called lower thirds. And if we select any one of these, it will play up in the preview area.
I’m just going to scroll down to this one called Melody, and I like that animation, so I am going to go ahead drag it into this group up here in the layers list.
Then, it appears on top, and I really want it below the text, so I’m going to drag it down below the text.
And if I move the playhead forward now, we can see that it’s up in the middle, and the text is way down here, so I’m going to drag it down to where the text is.
Then I’m going to select a corner and hold down Shift+Option to scale proportionally from its anchor point to make this background larger.
Now we have a nice background and some text. The background kind of just appears here, so I’ll use another behavior to animate the background to animate onto the screen.
In the Library under behaviors we have some basic motion behaviors. I’ll choose this one called Fade In Fade Out, and I’ll drag it onto this Replicator.
If we now play, the background fades in, and the type animates on.
I want the type to come on a little later so here in the timing pane, I’ll just drag it forward a little bit.
And there we have a nice simple animation. So from here, all we need to do is Save. So from the file menu I’ll choose Save. And because we opened a Final Cut title we will automatically Publish this title to Final Cut Pro.
So we need to give it a name, I’ll call it Red Boxes Lower Third, we need to give it a category, so I’ll give it a new category called My Lower Thirds, and I’m not going to give it a theme, I don’t need unused media, and I don’t need a preview movie.
I’ll click Publish. That’s done, let’s go back to Final Cut Pro.
And if we deselect and reselect the title browser, we have a new category, My Lower Thirds, and here is the title we just created.
So I will drag it onto my clip, it’s ten seconds by default but I want to make it shorter.
And if we play it, our title animates on the screen. To change the text we can just double click on the title to highlight the text.[Types Mitch Greenberg in the text section] And I’ll press Escape.
And that’s how fast and easy it can be to create your own title animation from scratch in Motion.
Click the Subscribe button below. If you have an idea, comment, or suggestion, leave those below as well.
Go to RippleTraining.com for fast professional training on Final Cut Pro, Motion, and DaVinci Resolve from industry professionals.
