Apple Motion Interface

Trapcode 3D Stroke has been ported to run as an FX Plug in Motion 3.0 and later. While the plug-in may run in earlier version, we do NOT recommend running Starglow in Motion 2.1.2 or earlier versions, due to stability issues.

Accessing 3D Stroke

The 3D Stoke Filter is accessible from the Library tab under the Filters > Trapcode category.

Motion Library

Interface

Trapcode 3D Stroke offers nearly the same controls as the After Effects version, except for the lack of a Mask menu option at the top of the interface. Unfortunately, you cannot use the built-in mask shape tools in Motion because they are not supported by Apple's FX Plug API.

Motion User Interface

Options

The Options button the top of the user interface can be used to enter a serial number to authorize a copy or get purchasing information. See the Installation section for more information.

Shapes and Scale

3D Stroke offers two options for working with shapes. Either open an arbitrary .SVG shape file or choose one of the 40 preset shapes under the Preset menu. You can see the options for the presets in New in version 2.5 section.

Open

The Open File... button will bring up a dialog where you can choose a .SVG shape file to use as the 3D stroke source shape. This file can contain one or more open or closed shapes, but should not contain animation of the shape.

Open SVG Dialog

Preset

Choose one of the four preset shapes as the base for 3D stroke to render.

Scale X

Use the Scale X control to modify the height of the base shape. For example, if you wanted the shape to appear larger than the canvas, then enter a value of 3 or greater to expand the shape outside the visible canvas. This will scale the corresponding stroke and any other transforms as if the shape had been drawn outside the canvas window.

Scale Y

Use the Scale X control to modify the width of the base shape. For example, if you wanted the shape to appear larger than the canvas, then enter a value of 3 or greater to expand the shape outside the visible canvas. This will scale the corresponding stroke and any other transforms as if the shape had been drawn outside the canvas window.

Motion 3 Camera

The current version of 3D Stroke does not support integration of the 3D camera features in 3D stroke with the camera in Motion 3. Instead, all 3D animation must happen inside the plug-in. A future version may support this capability, as Apple updates the FX Plug support in Motion.

Apply 3D Stroke


It is best to apply 3D stroke to a Color Solid, a clip, or other Generator objects that share the same dimensions as your project. This will avoid any clipping of the 3D stroke output. You can see the proper setup in the image below.

Timeline in Motion

Floating-Point Support in Motion

The Trapcode Starglow filter will support greater than 8-bit per channel output, but you have to change the Project settings to render using 32-bit Float settings. Choose Edit > Project Properties... and then click the Bit Depth pop-up to change the value to 32 Bit (Float). Click the Dither button if you plan to output to lower-bit-depth formats.

Motion Float settings