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About Rigging and Widgets
When you rig an object in Motion, you create a set of master controls called widgets.
Widgets reside inside the rig and can affect nearly any parameter in any rigged object,
including behaviors, filters, particle systems, replicators, lights, cameras and so on. Widgets
can even control other widgets. There is no limit to the number of parameters each widget
affects, and you can use multiple widgets in a rig to create a customized control panel
where a few controls modify a wide range of parameters in the project.
You can publish widgets for use in Final Cut Pro X. When the template is opened in
Final Cut Pro, only the rig controls you specified in Motion are visible, allowing you to
modify a complex of parameters with a small set of controls.
Rigging is useful for a number of reasons. In addition to simplifying the workflow in
template modification, rigging can be used to limit the kind and value of changes
allowable in a template, ensuring that junior compositors and others in the production
pipeline adhere to established specs and client needs.
How Rigging Works
Rigging works through the use of snapshots. A snapshot is a record of the current state
of selected parameters in your project. Widgets allows you to switch between or even
interpolate between stored snapshots. For example, you can create a snapshot where
several text objects feature black type with a white shadow, and another snapshot that
features white text with a black shadow. A checkbox widget in a rig toggles between the
two states.
A checkbox widget that toggles between two states is the simplest rigging control. Slightly
more complex is the pop-up menu widget, which lets you select between multiple
parameter states. The slider widget offers more advanced control over multiple parameter
states. For example, a slider widget lets you make gradual changes from one state to
another or even use keyframes to control how the slider widget changes. You can choose
which parameters are modified in the snapshot in a number of ways (described in more
detail in Managing Parameter Snapshots.)
480 Chapter 10 Using Rigs