Trying to create new fcp effect with Quartz Composer
by Mark Palmos
on
Jul 29, 2008 at 6:22:56 pm
Hello guys,
I bought FXFactory and a few of the extras for myself a couple of months ago, and then bought another two of all those for my workplace (Tequila London)... so I am now trying to harvest the potential of the customising FX...
I have created a basic composition in Quartz Composer, it has an input connecting to an image transform box connecting to the Billboard.
When I open it in FXFactory to create a new plugin, it says there are no published inputs or outputs or something like that. When I save it anyway, then try it in Motion, it only has one parameter, MIX.
Im a pretty bright chap, but this is incredibly difficult, or at least, very unintuitive! Is there a beginners guide to create FCP and Motion Effects using quartz composer you could point me to, all I come up with on the web is stuff to make screen savers etc...
Re: Trying to create new fcp effect with Quartz Composer by Niclas Bahn on Jul 29, 2008 at 6:46:51 pm
Hi Mark,
Glad to hear that you are working on customizing/creating your own plugins.
You will have to publish inputs in quartz composer so that they can become parameters in FxFactory and therefore parameters in FCP/Motion etc. The Mix parameter is a standard parameter that is automatically added to all plug-ins. All other parameters must be defined as inputs in QC.
The best place to start if you are attempting to learn how to do this is the FxFactroy in application help. There is an entire section devoted to plug-in development, and there is a tutorial titled "Creating your first plugin" which give you step by step directions of how creating a plug-in with FxFactory works.
If you still have any questions, please feel free to contact us via email.
applied effects can make layer vanish - with no parameters altered... by Mark Palmos on Jul 30, 2008 at 6:49:56 am
Hi Niclas,
Thanks, yes, I managed to make SOMETHING work - basically one has to publish the outputs one by one, and also set the input to IMAGE.
But it is still hit and miss. I added the 3D Transform parameters and none of them do anything it seems... or perhaps the default settings are such that the image is invisible, or too small, or off to one side or another? One cannot tell.
The default settings, IMO should be that there is no change to the layer you are applying filters to... so any change will be a change you intend. At the moment the way it seems to be is you get given settings which may or may not have altered the position, scale, rotation etc, but you dont know what, and the guesswork is completely tedious.
Re: applied effects can make layer vanish - with no parameters altered... by Niclas Bahn on Jul 30, 2008 at 3:02:50 pm
Dear Mark,
If you have a look at the Pro Pack, you can see exactly how all the plug-ins in the Pro pack work exactly. You can check out the compositions, and the settings inside FxFactory. This should give you a good example of how things can be done. I don't know what it is exactly that you are trying to achieve, but it is probably best to base your plug-in on an existing plug-in in the Pro pack, that does something similar.
FxFactory tries hard to "guess" the correct settings for parameters, and automatically creates them, based on what inputs you have published in the composition. Sometimes, however, the "default" parameter is not what you would want, which is why you can change the parameter settings in FxFactory manually.
Re: applied effects can make layer vanish - with no parameters altered... by Mark Palmos on Jul 30, 2008 at 10:44:03 pm
Hi Niclas
I opened the Pro pack and chose "spotlight" then chose to Edit it in QuartzComposer. I published the XY positions, then saved it. I then opened that saved file in FxFactory to create a new plugin from an existing composition. I then saved it there and opened FCP.
I found that it did not work properly, there were no target points which I could click and move on the Canvas like with the default "spotlight" plugin. Also the X and Y position moved TO the mid point of the screen from the top right corner, but its impossible to move it OFF screen towards the diagonally opposite corner.
I managed to spend a few hours trying to figure out what was going on, and it seems when you go to QC you lose the XY target dragging button thing, and you have to add it, then assign it to the parameters again.
Basically it is extremely difficult for a reasonably capable person to do anything useful with the Factory part of FXFactory! Its a pity because I think it has great potential, but it has not developed at all in the year since I first saw the product. Im sure if this was a lot easier and intuitive, people would be enthusiastic about creating and sharing their plugins.
Alternatively, some really good tutorials (several of them, in varying depths) would be very welcome.
Thanks for the help, I will leave the factory part for someone else, at least till there is something I could learn from.
Re: applied effects can make layer vanish - with no parameters altered... by Niclas Bahn on Jul 31, 2008 at 12:43:23 am
Hi Mark,
I am sorry to hear that you have not been able to create the plug-in you desire. Clearly, it is a challenge to create plug-ins for FxPlug. FxFactory we think does a good job at making this process a whole lot easier than programming them from scratch. FxFactory in combination with QC makes this process much easier than any other path we know of. Clearly, there is still a lot one has to learn about how things work in QC, FxFactory and the host applications (FCP/Motion etc,) to successfully build plug-ins. We deliver lots of examples that work and can be examined (134 plug-ins in the Pro Pack) as well as tutorials. If you look at what it takes to write GPU accelerated plug-ins from scratch, I think you would feel different about FxFactory, as an aid to make this process more efficient and easier.
We have released multiple updates to FxFactory in the last year. To be exact, FxFactory 2 is not even a year old yet. Every version is better than the last, there have been lots of improvements that have been inspired by plug-in development partners. Obviously, it is in our interest to make the plug-in development process as easy as possible, and we work very hard to achieve that. We will continue to improve the process to make it even easier, but because creating a gpu accelerated plug-in for FCS is inherently a complex task, there is only so much one can do, to create a layer of abstraction that eases the process.
Over the past years we have found multiple partners, some of them who had no programming experience at all, who successfully built beautiful plug-ins, which are being used by editors and compositors around the globe.
I do hope you will give FxFactory another shot at some point in the future.
Re: applied effects can make layer vanish - with no parameters altered... by Mark Palmos on Jul 31, 2008 at 6:57:30 am
Hi Niclas,
Thanks for the gracious response.
What I was trying to do is relatively simple.
I make a lot of videos which incorporate lousy still images which have to be animated. I do this over and over again and its usually a zoom in or zoom out from and to full size image. The only thing that will change is the point it zooms in/to from.
I was trying to make a few generic, sexed up, slightly 3D moves and include things like lighting effects etc. but i started with just the spotlight.
What I think is most confusing, is how the connection between FXFactory and QC breaks the plugin. If you open a plugin in FXFactory, then select it and choose to Edit it. This opens QC. Then do nothing at all to that plugin, and Save As... Then create a new plugin in FXFactory using that unchanged new QC composition, it will not work, it is broken! This, at least, for me, is a major stumbling block for anybody like myself who hoped to make a plugin without understanding why it gets broken taking this (should be no-brainer) route.
Re: applied effects can make layer vanish - with no parameters altered... by Niclas Bahn on Jul 31, 2008 at 2:19:02 pm
Hi Mark,
I am not sure if I fully understand what you are expecting, allow me to rephrase it to see if we are both on the same page:
You are:
1. Taking an existing FxPack from the Pro Pack
2. Saving the quartz composition inside it to a separate file
3. Creating a new FxPack based on that composition
4. Expect your new FxPack to be the same as the original?
If this is what you expect, you are misunderstanding the concept of what FxFactory does. The composition contains a lot of information about the image processing, but the FxPack contains all the settings that link the host application to the quartz composition, including what parameters work in which way etc. If you simply save the composition and create a new FxPack, all the settings from the original FxPack will be lost. Yes FxFactory will attempt to create "default" parameters and settings when you supply it with a composition, but as mentioned previously, because there are so many potential things a plug-in should do, these "default settings" may not always result in exactly what you want.
If you desire to base your new FxPack on one from the Pro Pack, I suggest you don't duplicate just the quartz composition, but the entire FxPack, thereby preserving all the settings in FxFactory, as the composition only contains part of the picture.
If you are intending to create a plug-in that works with stills, I recommend you have a look at the slideshow generator plug-in in the pro pack.
