Motion 5: How can I rig the duration of a behavior?

I want to rig the duration of the "Bleary In" behavior with a slider. How do I do that? The only thing I'
ve found to increase duration is stretching the behavior in the timeline. But apparently stretching stuff in the timeline can't be rigged.

Trying to do this one thing I've learned a lot about Motion 5, things that I think are more complex that a simple duration slider. But for the life of my I can't find a way to create a duration slider for a behavior and publish it to FCPX!!! :S

Once you have the behaviour applied set the max duration by stretching on the timeline like you have been doing.

Next go to the "Behaviours" Inspector and publish the "End Offset" slider, you will find this under "Controls". Or, if it suits better add the "End Offset" slider to a new "Slider" rig and set the max and minimum desired settings on that.

NocoDave wrote: Once you have the behaviour applied set the max duration by stretching on the timeline like you have been doing.

Next go to the "Behaviours" Inspector and publish the "End Offset" slider, you will find this under "Controls". Or, if it suits better add the "End Offset" slider to a new "Slider" rig and set the max and minimum desired settings on that.

Thanks for the reply. So that's what "End Offset" is for! I can now do what I wanted, but I'm sure there must be a more "elegant" solution for me. I'm going to describe what I'm trying to accomplish (it's pretty simple) so that if you have time, you may be able to shed some light on the best way to do it.

This is for a corporate video. I want a title to:
1. "Bleary In" at size "100" centered on the screen.
2. "Motion Path" from the center position to the lower right corner of the screen. I've keyframed the motion so that the text size is "100" at the start and "48" at the end.
3. "Illusion Out".

The idea is to have the company name displayed large and centered on the screen. Then have it move and reduced in size so it can sit unobtrusively at the lower right while the 3-minute promo plays. Then it should just disappear.

Does this mean that my motion project has to be 3 minutes long? What if my promo ends up being only 2:42? I think ideally what I would like is to be able in FCPX to set "Start" & "End" frames of the "Bleary In", "Start" & "End" frames of the "Motion Path" (the font size reduction would be automatically tied to these Start & End frames), and finally the "Start" & "End" frames of the "Illusion Out".

Do I need to set my motion project to be as long as the longest promo video I expect to make? I would think that time could be compressed somehow in Motion and the specified individually for each behavior in FCPX. Also, the "Motion Path" behavior apparently does not have a "End Offset" condition, so that kind of breaks my hopes for an elegant solution. Again thank you very much for your help.

You wont need to make the title template the same length as the FCPX project.

But first, this might (hopefully) be easier than you think. Is the reason you want to adjust the duration to compensate for the animation stretching when you put it in FCPX at different durations depending on what length FCPX project your working on?

If so and you always want the section to animate over the same duration of time, regardless of what duration the FCPX project is, all you need to do is add a project marker at the end of the in going animation (last frame of the motion path) and change it to a "Build In" marker, you can also add a project marker to the first frame of the "Illusion Out" behaviour and change that to a "Build Out" marker.

These markers should be on the project, not on a layer.

Now, with no need to rig anything, you can stretch the title on the FCPX timeline as long as you want and the in and out animations will always stay constant in duration at both ends with everything in-between remaining static.

You need to know the duration of your title template so you don't go shorter than it in duration (some form of visual indication to where build in and out points are on the FCPX timeline is an essential future new feature for me) but it doesn't sound like you'll have that problem.

The Motion title template only needs to be the same length as the animations with a bit of room in the middle between the markers.

If this isn't your problem let me know and I'll take a look at how to make it riggable. Which your right enough, isn't so straight forward.

I followed your instructions and it worked beautifully! THANK YOU!
What bugs me is I don't know what the heck I'm doing or why that worked. I chose "Mandatory" Build In & Out, I need to see what "Optional" does.

Ideally, I would like to be able to rig Start and End frames for the three behaviors; but you hit on the most critical part of what I was trying to accomplish so this will tide me over until I get more in depth with my Motion 5 "self training".

I've just begun dipping my toes in Motion and am amazed at the immense potential. I have two observations regarding Motion 5 and how it relates to FCPX:

1. I see why there are so many plugins for FCPX. Motion 5 is a FPCX dev tool! And an easy one to use since no coding is necessary!

2. I hesitated to purchase Motion 5 because of all the complaints that it is not "integrated" into FCPX like the old Motion was to FCP7. Honestly I don't know how that worked but I don't see how the current "round tripping" between Motion 5 and FCPX could be improved upon. (But then I'm a newb so what do I know). Motion 5 is awesome and it's current integration with FCPX is awesome-er!

No problem, I had a feeling that would work for you.

Motion is very easy to pick up and the more you do something, such as working with the "Build In" and "Build Out" markers, the more you'll understand them. Then as you pick up more and more things you'll build an arsenal of techniques so when you have problems requiring solutions you will have more places to begin.

I find the way way Motion and FCPX integrate is phenomenal and I think your looking at it in the right way. As an After Effects user I first looked at Motion and seen a GUI for expressions. I look at Motion in the same way, an FCPX Dev tool. A developer has their code and it is their creativity that makes what they make. The more they know about code the more they can do. Just like Motion it has restrictions but the more you know about the toolset the more creative you can get in problem solving.

I used to edit in Avid and/or Premiere before going to After Effects to continue with loads more work. Now I create my custom templates in Motion and use FCPX as both an editing and finishing tool in a lot less time.

The "Mandatory" and "Optional" build markers do the exact same thing. the only difference being that "Optional" automatically publishes a checkbox to enable or disable the animations before/after the markers.

I've found it most useful for lower thirds or repeat use graphics. Using the "Build In" animation the first time a certain persons lower third comes up brings attention to their name, then you can go easy on the viewer and just cut it straight in if using it again. Or if you want to end the tile as the shot cuts it looks cleaner to disable the "Built Out" and cut in line with the edit.

What your basically doing with build markers is sectioning off the Motion timeline.

If you have a 3 second timeline with a "Build In" and a "Build Out" marker at 1 and 2 seconds you split it into 3 parts.

The first part, before the "Build In" marker gets locked for that 1 second duration.

The last part, after the "Build Out" marker also gets locked for that 1 second duration.

Anything in-between gets locked too, but not for it's duration. It gets locked in motion rather than time.

So if you have a clock hand that does a 360 degree sweep in the middle 1 second duration section it will later get stretched in time when extending the title in FCPX.

I.e. If the full title duration is stretched from 3 seconds to 62 seconds in FCPX the in animation with take 1 second (always), the out animation will take 1 second (always) and the middle, clock hand sweeping, will take 1 minute to do its 360 degrees.

It does the exact same motion but you adjust the time it takes to do it. Often it's best just to leave the middle section static, or with rigged sliders to animate in FCPX if desired.

Got it. Thanks for the detailed explanation!

This is something that all Motion 5 new users should keep in mind. I'm sure I can't be the only one who agonized over this. Being able to create my own FCPX titles with the same quality of the ones included in FCPX, and getting to choose what is toggle-able inside FCPX is amazing!

Thanks again!

Great explanation, David!

No problem Jorge, glad to help. And thanks Ronny.

I'd just like to add a thanks as well as I build lower thirds all the time and I never knew about the build in and out markers. I'm ashamed to say that, like a lot of FCPX naysayers - a group I don't normally include myself in - I assumed it wasn't there. This will make my life easier.

I was just reading the official Motion 5 Apple feature descriptions and one sentence in particular stood out:

For titles, define fixed durations for intro and outro sections, and Final Cut Pro adjusts the title body to fit the timing in the middle.