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When doing my research for my review of FX Factory Pro from Noise Industries, I found out something very interesting. Noise Industries made FX Factory Pro "open" so that other companies could write plug-ins based on its engine. At the time I thought it was a cool idea, but would we really see companies other than Core Melt doing this? Well I'm happy to say that answer is a big "Yes"! Motype from Yanobox is a text creation plug-in for Final Cut Pro, Motion and After Effects (yes, After Effects) that uses FX Factory as its foundation. Let's take a look at whether this plug-in should be added to your arsenal.
Installation
First things first. To use Motype you will need FX Factory Pro, which is a free download from Noise Industries' website. Once installed, you can download a free 15 day trial of Motype. Once you have downloaded the plug-in and unzipped it, you will see that it looks like it installs like any other application. Once the installation is complete, you will need to launch FX Factory Pro to get access to the plug-in. Something to keep in mind is that any licensing you need to do is done through the FX Factory Pro interface.
Overall, the installation of Motype is quick and easy, and the fact that it can be managed through FX Factory Pro is an added bonus, as I really like how they set up their plug-in hierarchy. Once FX Factory Pro is installed, you should be up and running with Motype in about five minutes.
What you get and how it works
Let's get this out of the way right now. Motype is one plug-in. Now, most people might say that $99 US for one plug-in is a little steep, but let me tell you that they have crammed a lot into this one plug in. I know that half of the readers of this article might write off Motype without even trying it, as it is an FXPlug plug-in, which means Final Cut Pro/Express and Motion only. Well, that's no longer the case. With the latest update to FX Factory Pro, you now have the ability to access Motype in Adobe's After Effects as well, and I thought that since I now have the ability to use Motype in After Effects, why not use it.
Motype is quick and easy to use. In After Effects, create a new Solid, and navigate to EFFECTS>YANOBOX>MOTYPE 1.0 . Once the effect is applied, you already have a very (very) basic text animation that you can use as a base.
Motype also ships with fifteen presets that you can use and alter to your liking. Here is one of my personal favorite presets.
But as we all know, presets are only half the battle. They are great if you are in a tight situation, and need to pull something out of your hat quickly, but how easy is it to create your own cool looking animations? Let me tell you, that it's very easy! Motype's effect window is broken down in a very logical, easy to navigate fashion that is great for After Effects (or Final Cut Pro/Motion) beginners, as well as experts alike.
Let's take a look at how to build a cool looking animation, one category at a time.
Text
This is where you will input not only your actual text, but you will also determine color, tracking and opacity.
Random Characters
Want to have your text transition on with random characters like in the animation above? You can even choose what type of random characters you want to appear. You can even create your own "random" string so that a pre-determined pattern will appear (just like "The Matrix").
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