Text Effects With Final Effects Complete

Are you tired of solid stroke and soft shadow on your text styles? Do you need something unique and catchy for your project? The new FEC 5 from Boris FX may offer a fresh treatment for the old title or lower third. Final Effects packs a great wealth of visual effects. Most are designed to work on full color images but some can be used on alpha channel bitmaps such as text slates. Here are a few examples.

Start by throwing a text generator slug in your timeline. That can be done in a variety of ways but I instinctively reach for my favorite Title 3D from the Boris Calligraphy set. Type any title in plain white text.

The first filter I am willing to try is Wiggle Edges RT. I will use it to stroke the letters with a natural, free style edge. The filter has a wide selection of controls. Note the Deep Color Rendering - familiar to those of you who use BCC. Reduce Flicker control may be handy to smooth out motion graphics in an interlaced project.

The fastest way to explore what this filter does is to flick through the installed preset options. I chose the Wiggle Stroke preset to get this look:

Wiggle Stroke is not part of the original Final Effects package. It was added later along with about 50 other filters by ICE, helping the product earn its "Complete" name.

Feel free to tweak the Amplitude slider to fine-tune the shape of the stroke. I can assure you that no vector text generator alone would give you this organic look.

Another fine example of the Edges group of filters added by ICE is the Burn Edges filter. It makes an interesting colored alpha erosion effect which works great on text.

This shot is done at the default setting with the Burn Width parameter slightly adjusted. I can imagine how well it will work with other FEC filters described below.

But let me explore our options further. How about something even more radical? How about Hair filter? From what the name implies it is not appropriate for text. However, you can create all kinds of particle treatments for any alpha shape. Again, I used a preset - Even Fuzz.

Perhaps something more colorful? 3D Relief has options for color channels added to the bevels of the relief effect (Colored Multi-Vision Alpha preset used).

3D Relief is also a recent addition to the package, not available with the original set.

Let's see what happens when we stack the two together - Hair and 3D Relief. A psychedelic look:

Now I'll try a monochrome effect. Since our original image is all black and white, Mr Smoothie will work perfect in that range. The preset is called TrippyPCFade. Adjusting Smoothness parameter (get it? Mr. Smoothie?) allows to push back the overflowing whites in the image.

Back to full color domain, FEC Glow filter can create an interesting 2D color treatment. Red Blue Soft Alpha Outline preset is chosen for this sample.

And the last one - the famous FEC Ball Action. You can make so many different effects with this filter, but this is what it does to a simple title.

Hint: Animate the Scatter parameter to break up this text into individual balls. Speaking of breaking up objects. FEC package provides many different ways to shatter and disperse text. Here is my favorite. FEC Pixel Poly. I'm going back to the first image with Wiggle Edges and apply Pixel Poly to it:

Simply animate the Scatter Speed parameter to achieve the shattering effect.

Needless to say, I am just scratching the surface with this tutorial. The time-proven Final Effects filters are behind many award-winning productions. Now available as native FXPlug filters in Final Cut and Motion. Enjoy.

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