Review: MotionVFX’s mFlare 2 Plugin

• Download file - motionVFX mFlare 1.3.8.dmg.zip.
• MFlare 2 includes over 100 presets for enhancing the look of your film, but even more impressive is that it lets users build lens flare packages from scratch using various elements like glow.
• MFlare is the most advanced multi-platform plug-in for designing and animating realistic lens flare effects. Features Over 200 professional presets Over 170 realistic textures Direct FCPX access 2D / 3D light effects 3D light-tracking in Motion 5 Luma tracking Automatic dynamic animation Real-time dynamic preview Real-time presets library 64-bit architecture Multi-platform support and much more!

By: Braden Storrs

MFlare is the most advanced multi-platform plug-in for designing and animating realistic lens flare effects. Over 200 professional presets; Over 170 realistic textures.

Flare 2

MotionVFX recently released their long awaited updated to their excellent flare generator suite mFlare, aptly called mFlare 2.

Funny enough I believe the original mFlare was the first plugin I ever bought, 6 years ago, after I saw this promo video. I was sucked in by the pretty lights, haha. I’ve used it on a number of projects since though, including compositing into some still photos for some magic wand effects. Flares can easily be overdramatic and overused but with prudent use can enhance a drab shot. It all depends on the subject matter of course.

Mflare 2 Not Working

The level of control in crafting the flare in mFlare was always impressive to say the least. If you could dream it you could make it. There were some drawbacks though to the original. To edit the flare you had to open a separate interface outside your composition that didn’t update in the composition till you finished editing, so you couldn’t see the changes in relation to the image. This led to a edit>check>edit>check workflow. Not efficient. Switching out to a different flare was not as easy as it could be. In FCP X there was no tracking option except manual. Tracking in Motion was limited to the strength of Motion 5′s point tracker. Which isn’t great to be honest (please Apple do something about that).

I’m happy to say that along with a UI refresh that is familiar but better, all of those shortcomings have been addressed. While you still have a separate window for a lot of the changes many of the controls have been added to the inspector. Including a new color picker tool. Also a big improvement is that any changes in the external window are immediately reflected in the FCP X Viewer. No more back and forth.

Switching out flares is super simple. You click on the “Presets” onscreen control button and click on a different one. The flare is replaced while maintaining all your settings and tracking info.

To customize a flare just click on edit and you can tweak to your heart’s content. There’s nearly endless combinations and controls for all the various flare types and elements. You can of course save your own customized presets.

The on screen position, size, and brightness controls are a nice addition too.

The previous version of mFlare had a form of brightness tracking but I found it’s uses limited without decent position tracking. It is now an option in the inspector and has a very helpful preview option to show your the luma matte it’ll be using. Using the smoothness and threshold sliders to fine tune it will give very nice smooth transitions to the flares.

Easily my favorite thing is the new tracker. It utilizes the widely praised Mocha Pro planer tracker and works right in the FCP X or Motion interfaces. MotionVFX’s implementation of it is the easiest tracker I’ve ever used. In conjunction with brightness tracking it is very powerful and can give very realistic results. I really wish I had this system for everything else I do in post. What they’ve done is allow you to use one tracker but reference multiple track points in time. So say you are tracking something but it is about to leave the frame, you can then choose another point, and another, etc. You just go to a point in the clip where the tracker is about to exit and reposition then tracker box over something new. The tracked position data is independent of the effects general position data giving you a ton of flexibility. Brilliant. It was even able to deal with an arm passing completely over my tracking point and it maintained the track no problem. Focus changes didn’t throw it off either which is something most regular point trackers have trouble with. Mocha for the win.

To test all this I took my son out and shot a simple little video of him wandering around a local park. I chose mostly natural looking flares for this video (not an alien invasion, haha) but it gives you an idea of what you can do. There are side by side examples of the flare shots at the end.

There’s a few gotcha’s and constructive notes I’ll add:

• If you track and then resize the clip the tracking data won’t always scale completely correctly. I had to re-track at the new scale level on one of the clips to get a good track.

•I really want the ability to resize the Edit/Presets window. It’s annoying because I want to be able to access more/all the parameters at once or see more elements/presets.

•Another thing is there were a few times where I hit track and it popped up for a second and then disappeared and I had to hit track again. Not a big deal but something to look at.

•Lastly I’d love to see support expanded to Photoshop/Affinity Photo and After Effects. Which I use from time to time. Replaygain download. This tool makes it so I don’t need to leave FCP X but it would be nice to have when the workflow calls for it.

•The final thing is an issue with the FCP X plugin API I think. I have the same issue with Color Finale at times. The windows that pop up are specific to the clip you are working on. If you move to another clip without closing and reopening the Edit or Presets windows they will still be affecting the previous clip which could lead to unintentional changes. Just be aware. I really wish it auto updated to the new clip’s plugin when the clip is selected.

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Flare 22

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Mflare 2 Review

MotionVFX has just updated its popular mFlare plugin for Final Cut Pro X and Motion. In mFlare 2 you will find many more real-life flare elements to choose from, an improved colouration system and of course Mocha tracking.

It is true everyone loves lens flares, but there has been a shift over the last few years from very obvious 'over the top' flares used on almost everything, to better more realistic effects. MotionVFX's mFlare 2 follows that path.

The flares are not motion templates, each of the 100 effects in the FCPX or Motion browser is a preset for the native plugin which opens up with its own user GUI.

The GUI has controls for enabling or disabling elements of the flare and sliders for settings such as brightness, size and smoothness. Onscreen controls position the various elements of the flare to get the spread just right as if it was being caused by internal lens reflections.

Two new additions to mFlare. The first is Mocha tracking which will automatically track an item onscreen so that a flare can be attached. A lot easier and more accurate than keyframing. Tnt adobe photoshop 2021. The tracking controls can be found onscreen in the bottom left hand corner.

Mflare 2 Torrent

Also new is an innovative colour picker for the flares. It uses values from the colour spectrum to match the flare into the video in a more convincing way.

Mflare 2 Crack

mFlare 2 is priced at $149, existing mFlare 1 owners can get the update for $79. The good news is that MotionVFX has also posted a free trial version so you can take the flares for a test drive yourself.

FCP.co friend Robin S. Kurz has been very busy. He's put together a series of tutorials on Vimeo for mFlare in FCPX and Motion. Time to grab a coffee and learn!