In the meantime, you are given a user’s manual and two quick-start guides with the program: one for making your own light sword battle and one for compositing a pretty complex green screen set. To keep file sizes down on the initial software download, FXHome hasn’t included the video clips you need to run these tutorials, so you have to download them all after the fact. While this isn’t a huge issue, it is a bit of a hassle, especially since some of the downloads you need aren’t mentioned until halfway through the quick-start guide. Additionally, the opening green screen tutorial is a bit too complex, as it actually requires that you download a set of animated masks to complete the first compositing training. I would like to see them simplify the Getting Started guide for compositing, as well as add some less-specialized training to the light saber training (like a gun battle, an explosion, and a realistic blood spray). If they can do that and include it as part of the initial download, that’ll give folks some stuff to work on while they’re finishing up their Flash training. (I would love to see them work with the folks at Total Training, Video Copilot, ToolFarm, or Creative Cow to come up with some professional training products, as there is easily enough ability in this set to fill up a lot of training series!)
One thing that would improve the ease of use from a programming sense in future versions of the program is an increased number of top pull-down menus. As it is right now, there are only about six pull-down menus with only four to eight different options in each, which largely relate to things that just couldn’t be shown in any other place, like “Importing Image Streams” and “Rendering to…” files. I think a lot of the confusion of using the program for the first time could have been alleviated if there were ways to access some of the effects controls or grading options through the pull-down menus.
With that said, if you’re familiar with frame-based animation and programs, then you’ll be able to figure out the basic elements of this program pretty quickly. Just import a clip or clips on the seemingly After Effects-inspired timeline and begin adding effects. When you activate a property of that track and then move farther down the timeline to alter that property, the program creates tween frames between the two points in the property you activated. Where it gets complicated is the many different things that can be altered about each layer or effect on your timeline, most of which are not very intuitive when you first start out. (They make a certain sort of sense after you use them awhile, but they’re a bit confusing the first step out of the gate, especially with the fairly scarce number of pull-down menus I mentioned before.)
Depth of Options
I usually start out most of these sections by telling you what things a program can do and what things a program can’t do. In this case, it’s so much easier just to list what this program can’t do!
Basically, the only type of special effect this program isn't designed to do involves originating text based effects. Now, you can definitely create text in other programs and have this program come up with some very cool methods of interacting with that text. (The folks at FXHome masked a fire storm generated by the program into their logo, which is very impressive.)
Okay, now let’s break down what it does do. Basically, this program suite is designed to do three main things: create special effects, composite layers of footage, and, finally, color grade your footage. To some, color grading footage may seem a bit unusual to see in a special effects program. In reality, it’s so unbelievably necessary for believable special effects. The appropriate blending of saturation and coloration effects on both your stock footage and effects causes them to go from unbelievable to completely believable in a matter of moments. Many of the most glaring travesties in special effects that Hollywood has churned out have occurred because they did not understand this fact, whereas the most beautiful special effects movies of our time have completely understood it. (I’ll go more in-depth on grading later.)
