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CUBE

Presets

Four Cube presets make short work out of setting up your transition's directional movement. Simply keyframe the Mix duration (see below) and tune to taste! Find these presets via the blue Open Dashboard... button or the Choose a Preset... button below it.

As with all other Universe tools, you can modify or create a Cube look and then save it under its own name by pressing the Save Preset... button.

Getting Started in a Timeline

1. Drag the transition over your edit in the timeline, placing it at the end or beginning. Alternatively, you can place it between two successive clips.
2. Modify the Duration of the transition either by entering a length in the field or dragging directly in the timeline.
3. You can choose the Alignment (Center at Cut, Start at Cut, End at Cut, or Custom Start) either by positioning the transition in the timeline or by choosing from the Alignment drop-down in some host applications.

Getting Started in a Compositor

1. Apply the transition to the layer from which you want to transition.
2. Choose the footage layer you would like to transition to in the Transition B drop-down menu. (Note for Motion users: Drag the footage layer up to the Transition B box.)
3. Animate your transition using the Mix slider from 0% to 100 percent. Set a keyframe for 0% where the transition should start, then set another at 100% for the end.

Modify the Transition

• The Animation drop-down menu offers multiple interpolation styles for your transition's animation. Click here for more information about these animation presets.
• The Dolly slider lets you move the camera closer in or farther away along the z axis from the transitioning layers. Bringing the control to 0 will move the layer directly to the camera. Increasing the slider value will move the camera away from the layer.
• The Direction drop-down menu can change which direction animation Tiles are moving: Right, Left, Upwards, or Downwards. Compare this use of Upwards to the Right setting used in the "hero" clip at this page's top.
  
• Motion Blurz`
  • Add realistic motion blur by choosing a setting from the drop-down menu: Off (shown left, below), Low, Medium, or High (right).
    
  • The Motion Blur Shutter angle defaults to 180 degrees. Raising it will spread the motion blur iterations, with a high number of blur levels. Lower values can help minimize banding artifacts.
• The Edge Smoothing drop-down menu provides levels of anti-aliasing to your edges, making them less jagged. Options for smoothing strength are None, Low, Medium, or High. Higher settings may increase playback and render time.
  
• Lights adds lighting to your transitions.
  • Turn on Lights from the drop-down by selecting Local or Global.
  • Choose the Light Type:
    • Ambient activates the Ambient color picker and affects the overall composition.
    • Directional allows you to use the Light Diffuse color and Light Position X/Y/Z controls.
    • Positional activates the Light Specular color and Light Factor Constant/Linear/Quadratic controls.
    • Spotlight gives you the most control, activating the Light Direction X/Y/Z sliders as well as the Light Cutoff and Light Exponent controls. Note that some Light Types, including Spotlight, place a control marker (tied to the Light Position XY control) in the comp. In the following comparison, we show Lights being Off (left), then place the Spotlight control in the top-left and bottom-right corners.
      
  • The Light Intensity slider controls the brightness. The default value is 100, but a little bump can go a long way. The spotlights in the above examples use a value of 120.
  • Light Ambient/Diffuse/Specular color pickers allow you to control the color tones that appear within the light. You'll want to experiment with these parameters, but to give a rough idea of what to expect, here's a setup with Lights: Local, Light Type: Positional, and Light Intensity: 100. At left below, we have all light colors set to white. Then we changed only Light Ambient to yellow (center), then Light Diffuse to yellow (right). Notice how the Light Ambient change resulted in a darkening or muddying of the overall light.
    
• Camera allows you to enable the Local camera (as opposed to the Global default), then Zoom, Rotate, and Trans(late) its position in 3D space. For example, the following image shows Camera Y Rotate values of 40 (left), 0 (center), and -40 (right) degrees.
  
  Play around with the Camera X/Y/Z Trans controls enough and you just might "break" the cube-ness of your transition, as shown below.
  
  The Camera Ortho checkbox allows you to see the transition in an orthographically projected view that has no depth, which means you can view the layer with more accuracy without the distortion of parallax. As you can see below, however, enabling this box may negate the spinning cube effect that makes this tool distinctive.