LiveFonts in Apple Motion

By Alex on October 8, 2009 5:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a Comment(0) | TrackBacks (0)

As you may have noticed, Apple has retired LiveType as of Final Cut Studio 3. Fortunately for you LiveType folks, though, you can get to almost all of LiveType's functionality in Motion (plus a lot more).

Background

Our students really seem to like LiveType's LiveFonts -- sets of animated glyphs with which you could type as if they were a regular font. In my grouchy opinion, the stock LiveFonts quickly grew stale as they began to appear all over the place, but even I have to acknowledge that there are some really nice third-party LiveFonts available, and many of my students have chosen to invest in those.

Motion can indeed use all of your LiveFonts, although it might not be immediately obvious. If you're new from LiveType, you should first realize that the Inspector in Motion works very similarly to the Inspector in LiveType -- and all of the LiveFonts functionality is controlled there. Motion's Library also contains thumbnail previews of all of the LiveFonts you have installed.

Read on for the Step by Step ...

Step-By-Step

The Quick Way

Use the Text Tool to type your title onto your Canvas.
Over in the Text Inspector, select the Format subpane (it should be selected by default), then change "Font Type" to "LiveFonts."
Narrow down the LiveFont Collection if you'd like, then find your font in the Family dropdown list.
Notice that you'll need to move your playhead to see the font animate on -- and if you're used to LiveType's timing controls, you'll find those at the bottom of the Text Format Inspector, under the LiveFont Timing heading.

The Longer Way

Use the Text Tool to type your title onto your Canvas.
Go to Motion's Library (a). In the top-left pane, click Live Fonts (b). Then, click a category in the top-right pane to narrow down the Live Fonts that you see. Finally, select the Live Font you'd like from the list in the bottom pane (c).
Be sure your text layer is selected (d), then click "Apply" in the Library to apply the LiveFont (e).
Notice that you'll need to move your playhead to see the font animate on -- and if you're used to LiveType's timing controls, you'll find those at the bottom of the Text Format Inspector, under the LiveFont Timing heading.