Timeline Fx - Transitions - Dissolves and wipes

So far we have covered the editorial and trimming tools in Autodesk Smoke. The final functionality to go through before we move into visual effects is transitions like dissolves and wipes. Use the UP and DOWN ARROW keyboard shortcuts to navigate to a cut. And ensure the focus point is positioned over the cut on the specific track. A point to remember is that Smoke is sensitive to selection, so please ensure nothing is selected in the sequence. You can do this by clicking in the dark grey region below the tracks to deselect everything or press SHIFT+COMMAND+A. Looking at the menu bar above the sequence, will give you an indication whether or not you have something selected. In the menu bar, all you should see is the outgoing and incoming frame at the cut point as well as the transition button being enabled. To add a dissolve to this cut, you can do this in a number of ways. Click on the transition button and this will bring up the transition ribbon to choose the effect. Or you can right-click on the cut and choose a transition through the pop-up menu. Finally you can press COMMAND+T to quickly add a dissolve to the cut. The dissolve is only added to the track aligned with the focus point. If you wanted to add a dissolve across multiple tracks, you press SHIFT COMMAND and press T. This will add dissolves across all the aligned video and audio tracks. I’ll press COMMAND+Z to undo that last operation so we can focus on the single dissolve. The first thing I’d like to mention here is that the default duration of the dissolve is 10 frames. This default duration can be modified in the preferences menu under the timeline options. You can access the preferences via the top menu bar or press COMMAND+COMMA. Now looking at the middle toolbar above the sequence, you will see information about the selected transition. So you can choose whether your dissolve is centered on the cut, starts from the cut or ends up to the cut. You can also set a custom position over the cut. You can set the dissolve duration numerically, or by dragging the edge with the trim tool. You can also set the type of dissolve where an additive mix creates the standard cross dissolve effect. And finally you can dip to any colour by choosing the last option. There are a number of ways to remove transitions in the sequence. You can simply select it in the sequence and press BACKSPACE to delete to it. Or you can gesturally drag the transition to the bottom of the screen to delete it. I am sure you’ll choose your favourite. The other transition I want to cover is the wipe. As before, click the transition button on the tool bar and choose the wipe button. The adjustment settings are the same as the dissolve for duration and start point. In addition to those functions, you can also adjust various aspects of the wipe. For example, the wipes in Autodesk Smoke are based on the standard SMPTE patterns. To change a wipe, click on the pattern button in the toolbar. This will take you into the file browser where you can scroll through the various patterns. To display the patterns as proxies rather than titles, click the proxies button at the top left corner of the screen. You can now scroll through the patterns and choose the most applicable. One final point to mention is that all the transition FX have an advanced editor to tweak the effect. If you enter into the editor, you will discover, in the case of the wipes, that they are actually vector masks that you can grab and animate. You can even create your own ones from scratch. This is just a taste of things to come. In the next video, I’ll go though all the basics and understandings of how Timeline FX work in the sequence.