Free Effect Friday – Final Cut Pro X: Alex4D Shape Grid plugin

My contribution to this week’s Free Effect Friday free Final Cut Pro X plugin is a graphic generator: Alex4D Shape Grid.

It draws a grid of shapes and animates the colours over time.

Here are the controls:

The shapes are drawn in a range of colours starting at Colour 1 and finishing with Colour 2.

Animate Colours controls the speed of the colour cycling. For no animation, set this to 0.

Shape Roundness controls the radius of the shapes’ rounded corners. 0 draws squares, 90 draws circles.

Shape Scale controls the size of the shapes.

Shape Angle controls the angle the shapes are drawn at – which is more visible when the shapes are less rounded.

Origin controls the direction in which the shapes are drawn in. If it is set to Upper Left the grid will be drawn from the upper left corner of the clip when the shapes are built in. When the shapes are built out, the shapes are removed so that the last shape to be removed is in the upper left corner.

You can also control whether the shapes are built on and off and the build timings.

All the parameters can be keyframed to change over time apart from  Origin, Build In and Build Out.

 
Left: Default settings.
Right: Rows 20, Columns 32

Left: Shape Roundness 0, Origin Lower Right.
Right: Rows 5, Columns 64, Origin Centre

Left: Rows 10, Columns 18, Shape Scale 36%, Shape Angle 22, Origin Left.
Right: Rows 10, Columns 18, Shape Scale 48%, Shape Angle 45, Origin Lower Left

Two copies of Alex4D Shape Grid connected to the primary storyline with the same Row and Column settings but with different Colour, Shape Roundness, Scale and Origin.

Two copies of Alex4D Shape Grid connected to the primary storyline with the same Row and Column settings but with different Colour, Scale and Origin building out, over another copy of Alex4D Shape Grid building in over a clip:

The copy of Alex4D Shape Grid over the IMG_0532 clip uses white as its two colours:

…and its Blend Mode is set to Stencil Luma…

…which acts as stencil for the video clip below.

Once installed, you’ll find it the Alex4D section of the Generators browser:

Download the installer

If you find this free plugin useful, you might like my Alex4D Animation Transitions plugin pack:

There are many more free plugins on my Final Cut Pro X page