General Specialist

2006-10-04

Write Your Own Plugin, The Way It Should Be

Here's a quick video tutorial showing how easy it is to create your own plugin in Final Cut Pro, created by Shane Ross at Little Frog in High Def.

After Effects' alternative, the animation presets can only span a single layer, and it's hard to build a user-friendly interface to an animation preset since there aren't any listbox effects or radio button effects you can use to expose tweakable parameters to the user. The other AE option is to use JavaScripts, but they too are relegated to a few geeks since they are so invisible in the AE GUI, and they are so hard to write since you can't click around and record your actions like you can in Maya or even Photoshop.

In Final Cut Pro there's a framework called FXScript which let's you script plugins and automate the program, much like Maya's MELScript. Both FCP and Maya let's you record and then edit the scripts that the program generates, where as AE forces you to start with a blank document, making the barrier to writing and tweaking your own scripts much higher.

Also missing from AE is a Maya-like shelf or palette in the GUI where you quickly access your favorite scripts.

- Jonas

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