Following on from Dylan Higginbotham's very successful Fantastic Beasts and Rogue One movie title recreations in Final Cut Pro X, he's back with great tutorial. This time he builds the Assassin's Creed movie title in FCPX.
Also from Dylan:
Recreating the Rogue One Movie Title in Final Cut Pro X
Recreating the Fantastic Beasts Movie Title in Final Cut Pro X
Hello! This is Dylan from Stupid Raisins. The Assassin’s Creed movie is out and I’ve read it’s horrible. No worries! We’re still going to recreate the titles from the Assassin’s Creed movie and they’ll get way better reviews than the movie did!
Take a look at the trailer and pay particular attention to 1 minute and 45 seconds. That’s the title you'll recreate.
Below is the final product and what you'll end up with. It's pretty easy and all of it's done inside Final Cut Pro X.
Follow along in the video below to create your own version of Assassin's Creed's titles or you can use the step by step instructions to create amazing 3D titles. If you don't want to make the title yourself, download the free Assassin's Creed FCPX title template.
You'll need a special font, some smoke elements, lens flares, Fade, and Opacity effects. All of these are free!
The Set Up
Drag the trailer or an image of the title from the trailer to your timeline. You can use it as an example, as a reference image to line things up.
Next add a generator; a solid black one is fine.
3D Text
Go to the 3D titles and select Custom and change the duration to about seven seconds. Change the text to "Assassin$" and use "$" for the cool apostrophe S. Next change the font to the Assassins font that you installed. Make the text bigger and spread it out just a little bit with the tracking slider.
Go down to the 3D text section and make a few changes. Increase the Depth to 20 and make it a little thicker by increasing the Weight. Change Front Edge to Round and set the Front Edge Size to one and Inside Corners to Round. For the Lighting, turn on the Self Shadows and then open up the Environment. Change Type to Soft Box Above.
Go to the Material and set the Substance to Metal and then select Chrome. Add a Scratches layer and select Scratches 4. You don’t want the scratches too harsh, so set Depth down to about 20%.
Now change the Material from Single to Multiple and link the Front Edge, Back Edge and Back to Front. Now select Side and add a little bit of red to it. If you look in the trailer, you can see there's a little bit of red that hits the side making it red.
Add that red; go to Add Layer, select Paint, Reflective Paint. Set Paint Job to Custom and pick a deep red color. The red is too thick. You want it to show up on the highlights instead of the entire letter. Set Diffuse Brightness to 70%, Specular Brightness to 50%, Shininess to 30% and Face Opacity to 1.5%.
Go up to the Text tab and set the Spread to 100. This is how you're going to animate the letters. Select Decelerate for Speed:In and then set Move In to Zoom Down and Rotate:In set to left. If you look at the trailer, the text comes in past the camera rotating. The animation you've made has a similar look to it.
Duplicate the Assassin's title and put the duplicate on top. This will be your Creed layer. Go to Text tab and type "creed" and bring it down into the general area.
Set Spread to 11% and set Size to 230. Go to 3D text and crank up the weight TO .5, then in Lighting rotate the Z axis to -180. It lights Creed up a little bit more and looks good.
Assassin's Creed Symbol
Next create the background symbol. Duplicate the Creed title and put it below both the Assassin's and Creed titles. Go to the text field and type "?". Reset the tracking to 0% and line up the symbol with your reference image and set Size to 800.
Go to the 3D text section, set the Weight to 0 and then the front edge to Bezel. Set Front Edge Size to 65 and a 55. Now you've got some nice sharp angles on this symbol.
Go to the Material section and link all of the sides to the middle Side with the red reflective paint on it. Next change Material from Multiple to Single. This makes it so all edges and sides have the same red surface.
Set Face Opacity to 9%. You can see in the trailer some red on the symbol; mostly the reflection of the flare. It also might have some nasty blood on it.
The symbol doesn't animate or move so go to Text tab and set Move, Rotate and Scale In to None. You can see in the trailer the symbol fades in and you'll add that later.
Up in Smoke
Next, work on the smoke in the background. Mitch Martinez has some amazing free smoke elements you can download.
Grab your smoke element that you downloaded and put it into the timeline below the symbol. Rotate it completely so the smoke is moving from right to left and use the transform tool to move to the left at an angle. Set the Blend Mode to Add so you can see things below it and turn off the trailer example so you have a better idea on how to layout the title. Set the Opacity to 20%.
Now duplicate that and move it to the right side. Use the Trim tool to move it in time so that we don’t have the same smoke happening in both places. The smoke moves a little too fast, so select them and change the clip speed to 80%. Select the smoke clips and make a compound clip. Add the Color Board by pressing ALT+E and a little bit of green.
Flare it up
For this next step you'll need some lens flares. I used these lens flares. Add Lens Flares 12 and 16 to your timeline. This will be your main flare. Put it above the text and set the Blend Mode to Add. Scale down flare 12. Put the flare at the bottom of the A and add flare 16 for a little more flavor. Set the Blend Mode to Add and put it under flare 12. Reposition so the centers line up.
Select the two flares and make a compound group out of it and then change the Blend Mode to Add so we can see below it. In the trailer, the flare comes on just as the words are settling into place. Got to the point when your letters are settling in and move the main flare to that position. Drag and drop the Fade In and Out effect onto the flare compound group. Now the flare starts to glow right as the words settle into place.
You'll notice in the trailer that there is a flare over on the left-hand side coming from off-screen across the symbol and across the letters. Select flare 16 and duplicate it. Put it up above the titles and main flare and move it to the left-hand side. Set the scale to 300%. Put it off-screen to the side so just the streak runs across.
You'll notice the flares flicker. Instead of key-framing the opacity drag and drop the Opacity Wriggle effect onto the main flare. This will change the opacity value over time. Set amount to 25% and Apply Mode to Subtract. This will subtract up to 25% of the opacity over time.
Do the same with the side flare; copy the Main Flare compound group, then select the side flare and press Shift+Command+V. Select just the Opacity effect and press paste. Then go in and change the random seed so that it looks a little bit different.
Out of Focus
Next you need to create a shallow depth of field as the text flies by the camera. When the text is close to the camera it should be blurry and out of focus. When it settles into place it should be in focus. Select the Assassin's Creed title clips and turn them into a Compound Clip.
Add a Gaussian blur filter to the compound clip. Set an Amount keyframe at the beginning to 30 and just as it is settles into place add another keyframe and set the value to zero. Let's take a look at that. It comes in blurring and then it comes clear, that looks good.
Final Touches
The next thing you need to do is make it so that the smoke, symbol and side flare fade on first followed by the letters. Add a fade effect to the smoke, symbol and side flare clips. Set fade in to 20 and fade out to zero. Move the Assassin's Creed clip 30 frames after the beginning of the other clips. Copy and paste the Fade effect to the Assassin's Creed compound clip. Trim all other clips to end with the Assassin's Creed compound clip.
Next step is to add a letterbox so select all the clips and turn them into a compound clip. Add the fade and letterbox effects. Set Letterbox Aspect Ratio to 2.35:1. Set the fade in zero and fade out to 20. Lookin' good!
Can You Hear That?
The next thing you need to do is add some sounds. Put a 1 second gap at the beginning. Go to the built in sound effects; search and add to your timeline "Booming Reverse 02", "Crash Metal 2", "Sword Impact" and "Wind 2". Put "Booming Reverse 02" at the beginning and fade it out.
Next line up "Crash Metal 2" and "Wind 2" with the beginning of the title compound clip. Fade both out. Line up "Sword Impact" so it plays as the text flies into place. Adjust the volumes of all audio clips to your liking.
It looks and sounds fantastic! You've used some advanced techniques to create an amazing looking 3D title all within Final Cut Pro X! If you don't want to go through all that trouble to make it or you don't have the time, you can always download this as a free template from my website at stupidraisins.com. Thanks guys!
©2016 Dylan Higginbotham FCP.co
