Hey guys, thanks for joining us for another HitFilm tutorial.
This week we welcome back Justin Barrett from the Clever Tagline YouTube channel.
He's going to be showing you how to use the clone effect in HitFilm Pro.
Let's jump right in and get started.
The new version of HitFilm Pro released last fall came packed with lots of cool new features.
One that hasn’t received much attention, though, is the Clone effect.
This is Justin with Clever Tagline, and in this video, I’m going to walk you through
some of the features of this nifty little tool that can help you craft custom transitions.
If you’re a user of HitFilm Express version 8 or higher, you can also follow along, provided
that you have the Composite: Toolkit Pack.
Venetian and vertical blinds are classic transitions, and while HitFilm doesn’t come with a blinds
transition built-in, making one from scratch only takes a few minutes with the Clone effect.
After making a new 1080p composite shot that's the length of my transition, 15 frames in
this case, I'll make a plane, and set its dimensions to 192 by 1080.
This will be the source "slat" for my vertical blinds.
I chose 192 for the width because that will allow me to arrange 10 copies horizontally
and completely fill the frame.
The plane's color doesn't matter, so I'll just use the default mid-grey.
To place it, I’ll adjust the anchor point to -96 on the X axis, then move the plane
to -960, which will set it exactly on the left edge of the frame.
Above this plane I'll add a grade layer, then drop the Clone effect onto it.
Now, you may be wondering why I don't just add the Clone effect directly to the plane.
Well, the Clone effect reads the contents of a layer to find the source material, then
makes the clones in the same layer as the effect.
Because my plane is only 192 pixels wide, there's no room for the clones to be generated.
I could create my source in a separate composite shot, drop that comp into this comp, then
add the Clone effect directly to it, but putting the effect into a grade layer above the source
material makes it much easier to adjust the source and the Clone effect in the same place.
After opening the Clone effect, I'll set the number of clones to 9, and change the X value
in the Offset property to 192.
This creates 9 copies of the source slat, and places them all side by side in the frame.
And we’re ready to animate!
After selecting my source slat plane, I'll open its Transform controls and click the
link on the Scale property to unlink the X and Y values, then activate keyframes for
the Scale.
On the first frame, I'll change the X scale to zero, and on the last frame I'll set it
to 100, then set both keyframes to either smooth or manual bezier.
Here’s how it looks after a RAM preview.
To use this transition, I’ll first set up my source material in the main Editor timeline.
Here I’ve got two clips placed end to end.
I'll move the second one to a higher track, and shift it earlier by 15 frames, the same
length as the transition I just made.
Using the slice tool, I'll cut the upper clip right where the lower clip ends, then move
the latter portion back down to its original track.
I'll right-click on the overlapping snippet and choose "Make Composite Shot."
In that composite shot, I'll drop my vertical blinds comp, hide it, then add the Set Matte
effect to the footage, choosing my vertical blinds comp as the source.
The alpha of my blinds now controls the alpha of the footage, and after going back to the
main Editor, I've got a simple vertical blinds transition between clips.
To turn this concept into Venetian blinds, make the source slat horizontal, and set the
Y value in the offset property of the Clone tool to an appropriate number.
Now that we’ve covered basic blinds, let’s ramp things up a notch and make what I’m
calling progressive blinds, where the blind segments don’t scale in unison.
I'll start by duplicating my Vertical Blinds comp, and rename it to Progressive Blinds.
Because this progressive version is going to be a little longer than the original, I'll
adjust the comp length to 3 seconds.
I may change this later, but this will do for now.
After opening the comp, I’ll extend the length of my two layers, then change one property
in the Clone effect: Time Offset.
When the Time Offset property is set to anything other than zero, HitFilm creates each clone
as a time-shifted version of the one before it.
For this first example, I'll set Time Offset to 0.1, which time-shifts each clone by one
tenth of a second, or three frames at 30 frames per second.
My slats are all now different scales, with several slats on the right already at full
width.
Scrubbing through the shot, my blinds transition now moves from right to left, but I need the
shot to start with the frame clear.
To make this work, I can take my original slat layer and shift it to the right until
the first slat scales down to nothing.
In this case, shifting by 27 frames gets the job done.
So what if I want my progression to move from left to right?
I can move the slat layer back to the beginning, and use a value of -0.1 for Time Offset.
Now let’s tweak this transition even further using another property of the Clone effect:
Clone Mode.
Before we do that, though, I want to reset my base slat to the center.
Set the layer's X position and X Anchor Point values to 0.
By default the Clone Mode property is set to Normal.
In this mode, clones are only spawned in a single direction based on the original.
However, if I change this Dual, you can see that I now have clones on both sides of my
original center slat.
Scrubbing through the shot, notice that the clone progression now moves from one side
to the other through that original slat, rather than starting with it.
However, I’m back in the situation where some slats are too far ahead with their scaling.
In this case, sliding my original slat layer 15 frames later takes care of it.
Depending on what you want to do with your clones, Dual mode might be a better choice
than Normal mode.
For example, here’s a transition I made where using Dual mode was essential.
It’s pretty much the same as what we’ve been doing so far, only with wider slats that
are on an angle.
Because of this angle, though, I couldn’t have my original begin on one side or the
other because it would be cut off by the frame border, leading to cut off clones as well.
However, using Dual mode allows me to put the full original slat in the center, and
then the clones all pull from that on either side.
The third Clone Mode option is Mirror, which behaves as you might expect from its name,
with clones being generated away from the original in opposite directions.
For the final examples, I’m going to build some transitions using a simple recognizable
shape: the HitFilm logo.
After making a new 1080p composite shot, I’ll drop the logo into it, then set some keyframes
on its Scale property so that it scales from zero to 100 percent over 20 frames, using
Manual Bezier keyframes.
Because we’re only going to use this shape as a matte, I’ll also drop the Fill Color
effect onto it and crank it up all the way.
It’ll be a little easier on the eyes to have the shape a solid color (as beautiful
as that logo may be).
Next I’ll add a grade layer and drop the Clone effect onto it, setting Number of Clones
to 9, and the Clone Mode to Mirror.
The secret sauce for this transition lies in the combination of settings between Position
Offset and one that we haven’t talked about yet: Rotation Offset.
Knowing that Position Offset shifts each clone’s position based on its predecessor, you probably
have a good idea what Rotation Offset does.
In Position Offset, I’ll set the X value to 109, then set Rotation Offset to 180.
This gives us a nice line of logo shapes, with each one shifted and rotated to fit neatly
against its neighbor.
You can see the rotation more clearly if I temporarily turn off the Fill Color effect.
To fill in the top and bottom, I’ll add a second Clone effect to the grade, setting
Number of Clones to 3, the Y Position Offset to 190, Rotation Offset to 180, and Clone
Mode to Mirror.
This makes enough rows to fill out the frame, with each row being a flipped version of the
one next to it.
And with that, we have a full frame of expanding triangles, which looks like this when used
as a Set Matte source to transition between clips.
Want to spice it up?
Just add a time offset to the first Clone effect, the second, or both.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using the Clone effect to craft custom
transitions.
With some small changes you could make something like this that's meant to fill the frame,
then reveal something new.
Or use the same transition as both a background and a matte source.
I hope this sparks some ideas for clone transitions you can create.
There are lots of possibilities.
All it takes is a little time, and a willingness to play.
Until next time…
[character] Liver Hangtime!
Uh, No, let’s try that again.
[character] Weather bagline!
Look, just read the words that are on the…
[character] Better landmines!
That’s not even close to what it says…
[character] Heather Locklear?
Forget it.
Next!
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Thanks for watching and I will see you all in the next video.