Click the screenshot to watch a first look at the new motion tracking behaviors in Motion 3.

Click here to ask a question about Motion.

Ever since the release of our DV Enlightenment lighting course, people are always asking us, “How did you make those awesome light rays on your titles?”

In that case, we used an excellent plugin for After Effects called Shine. Shine worked for a bit in Final Cut Pro years back, but then Apple changed the plugin API, and Shine no longer worked in Final Cut. (It works now, however!)

I’ve always liked the super-dramatic light rays effect, but the light rays filters in Motion and Final Cut Pro take too long to render… and frankly, they are pretty lame. So I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to help you create those super long, awesome godlike light rays, and preferably in real time! And finally, that opportunity is here.

I bet you probably own an amazingly powerful 3D graphics program that you’ve never even installed- even though it’s on a disc within sight of where you’re sitting.

It taps directly into the awesome power of OpenGL, OS X Core Video and Core Image to give you incredible real time effects. And the project files can be dragged right into the Final Cut Pro or Express timeline (just like LiveType or Motion) for pristine, uncompressed SD or HD animations that will knock your socks off!

WARNING: This is not a tutorial for non-techies! If you don’t have a propeller on at least one of your hats, you may be a little overwhelmed. Also, you must own OS X 10.4 or higher.

However, if you fancy yourself a bit of a nerd, if you’ve tinkered with HTML, PHP, or Javascript, if you feel you have a good grasp of relativity, or predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown, or understand the movie Memento, this free tutorial will open up a whole new world of visual effect programming that will allow you to create some animations no other common software program will.

It was designed to be presented in our patented Chunkalized learning environment, so it moves pretty fast. You’ll want to keep a hand on your space bar to pause the movie after each step if you are following along hands-on. Some of the presets have some additional controls, and some are similar, but we have total faith that you’ll have fun with them even though they are not quite finished! We will keep teaching you about this impressive secret tool!

Also, this tutorial was done with Tiger, but Leopard users will find the tutorial is still 100% current. It’s even a little cooler in Leopard.

Ask questions about the course by clicking here.
Enjoy!

The student files are in this zip file:

Click here to download student files

Extract the zip file and place the folder in your Documents folder.

Click here to start your Rayz O Lite journey!

http://dvcreators.net/media/tiplets/complete_rayz_of_lite.mov

Here is a packet of freebie FX from the DVcreatorsFX labs… a snowy blizzard!

Just add a windy sound effect from Soundtrack Pro and you’ll want to huddle around the fire.

These animations are each a minute long and include an alpha channel so you can drag it right into Final Cut Pro (or Motion) over your video to add swirling snowflakes to any scene.

They utilize OpenGL and CoreVideo so they play in real time on most recent systems!

We’ve included versions for many video formats:

blizzard DV-NTSC
blizzard DV-NTSC 16:9
blizzard PAL
blizzard PAL 16:9
blizzard 720p HD
blizzard 1080 HD

Here’s how to use them in your project:

1. Drag the video clip you want to put snow over into track V1

2. Import the blizzard clip and put it on video track V2 (over one of your clips in V1)

3. Highlight the blizzard clip, and from the Modify menu, choose Alpha Type > Black

4. Grab your parka and make some hot cocoa!

Click here to download, should only take a couple seconds (only 75K for 6 uncompressed one minute clips)!