Moglyph FX 3

Well known by Cinema4D users, Mograph still remains one of the most powerful and robust procedural cloning and animation module.
AfterEffects users can taste a little bit of its power for free, thanks to the "Fracture" and 2 "Effectors" (Plain and Random) that come with the Cinema 4D Lite version, packed with every AfterEffects CC version. But it is definitely limited and frustrating, since the most interesting tool is still missing : the CLONER !

How many times a motion designer has to duplicate and animate sequentially a bunch, sometimes dozen, of similar graphic shapes in their projects ?

Of course you can animate your designs with keyframes, then duplicate them, sort them with a time offset... but it is time consuming and what if you are asked to change the whole animation later ? Well, you'll have to redo the entire process, again and again, until your client is really satisfied !

Some existing tools aim at making this process way more efficient and less tedious, but you'll still end up with a lot of duplicated layers in your timeline, and, who wouldn't prefer to keep a well organized timeline, just like in Cinema4D, where you can just deploy or close objects hierarchies to keep things tidy up.

Introducing... Moglyph FX, a mograph like toolset that allows you to
clone some predefined glyph shapes and animate them proceduraly,
all within one single text layer !

Moglyph FX comes with a neat UI panel divided in 3 tabs, that let's you concentrate on how you'll first generate and manage your glyph clones first, then on how you'll want to animate them thanks to the different effectors available. The third helpmate tab (introduced in version 2) gives you some useful tools to optimize your Moglyph FX setups, create new custom fonts, change settings (new in V3) and retrieve the products and licenses informations.  

NEW in version 2 !

NEW in version 3 !

NEW in version 3.5 ! 

"inTheStyleOf_FR" collaborative font

Here are the two main tabs (GENERATE and ANIMATE) and their tools shown side by side :

Moglyph FX allows you to use these C4D like Cloner setups (drag your mouse over for animation)

Moglyph FX comes with the following C4D Mograph like effectors (+ the Sound Effector since V2) :

The MoglyphFX cloner's properties, generated glyph shapes and effectors are all handled by a single text layer, which allows you to  :

• Keep your After Effects timeline light and clean (and you can add as many cloner setups as you want in a same comp)
• Extrude the generated glyph shapes within Element 3D (just choose your Moglyph Cloner layer as a custom Text & Mask layer in E3D)
• Use "3D per character" to animate the glyph clones in 3D (you can customize it and add any animator or property like any text layer)
• Use 3rd party text scripts and presets on top of the cloners (animate clones with cool tools like Animation composer or Text Evo)
• Save your setups as reusable presets (drag and drop all the Cloner's text groups, mask and effects in the preset library to re-use them later)
• Use the thematic Moglyph fonts in Illustrator’s glyph panel (perfect for the design and storyboarding process)

Tutorials

Please click on the VIDEOS tab above for a full series of in-depth video tutorials. We strongly recommend new users to begin with the 2 last - most updated - videos ( "Quickstart tutorial (updated for v2 and v3)" and "What's new in V3 - Full video overview") !

Installation

• First install all the Moglyph fonts (like you would install any other font on your OS) contained in the folder called Fonts > MoGlyph-OlderFonts and MoGlyph_NewFonts (users who had installed previous versions may only have to install these new ones)
• Allow Scripts To Write Files and Access Network by turning on the corresponding option in your AE Preferences > General tab.
• Either use the aescripts + aeplugins manager app (easiest) or manually copy both the "MoglyphFX.jsxbin" file and the whole "MoglyphAssets" folder, then paste them at the same level inside your Application > After Effects' current version > Scripts > ScriptUI Panels folder. 
• Restart After Effects
• Launch the toolset called "MoglyphFX.jsxbin" from the Window menu, then enter your license code.
• Depending of your OS and permissions, a few more steps may be needed ; just follow the instructions that appear on the screen and restart AfterEffects again when the message asks you to do it.
• Once AfterEffects has re-opened, dock the panel wherever you want in your AE's layout and you are ready to go !
• Note to CS6 users : you can still use the V3 but you will always end up with annoying "Missing effect" error messages (it will still work anyway). In the V3 zip folder you won't find any PE installer to install the Pseudo Effects properly, so, if the error messages bother you too much, please stay with the V2 of the product instead (of course you won't be able to use the V3 new features and improvements in this case ; if you want to, please upgrade your After Effects version !)

Important Disclaimer :

Some of you may have noticed that another tool, called Cloners+Effectors available here on aescripts.com, aims at animating clones in same Cloners setups procedurally, like Mograph as well. It is true, and this tool is really cool and efficient for this purpose, so... What are the differences between both products ?

In order to help you make your choice, here are a few arguments and comparisons :

• Moglyph FX relies entirely on Afters Effects Text layers, which means that you will always be bound to use some one-color glyphs, provided in the different thematic Moglyph Fonts or created by you thanks to awesome Custom Font Creation Assistant introduced in V2 (in the Helpmate tab). This is the main limitation of Moglyph FX and where it really differs from its contender Cloner+Effectors, since this one lets you use any layer (that can be precomposed with animated graphics in it) as clones. And this is mainly why, Moglyph FX costs almost half the price of Cloners+Effectors.
  I will do my best to provide as many useful and nice glyph shapes as I can in a continuously growing font library, and the template available lets you create your own glyph fonts, but not being able to clone and animate some layers is definitely something to keep in mind while purchase this product.
• Another major difference between both products is how the "Falloff" options for the Effectors affect the clones. In Cloners+Effectors, you'll find the 2 most used Falloff shapes that Cinema4D (and other procedural modules like Mash for Maya) offers : "Linear" and "Radial", which allows you to animate your clones just by dragging the Effectors accross them, just like in Cinema4D. Moglyph FX is an entirely different beast while dealing with Effectors falloff ; since the effectors are in fact some complex "text animators", you'll never be able to separate their position from the cloner and, then, to animate your clones in this way. Moglyph FX Effectors' falloff rather consists of a bunch of "completion" sliders (with a "Start", a "End", an "Offset"...) than will help you animate your clones one by one, depending of their index order, from the first to the last by default, or row by row if you check the corresponding option in the "Animate" tab. Note that you can randomize these clones indexes with another cool Effector's option from this tab, if you do not want to animate clones in a sequential way.
• Moglyph FX offers ALL the 5 Cloner types that Cinema 4D has (and even more since C4D doesn't even offer a "Fibonacci Cloner" !), including the really awesome "Spline cloner" (which I use a lot in real productions) and the "Honeycomb" that appeared for the first time in Cinema 4D R18 versions, while Cloners+Effectors has only the Linear, Radial and Grid types. Note that Cloners+Effectors offers another great feature that mimics the "Fracture" object from C4D (called "Cluster"), that MoglyphFX will never be able to reproduce due to After Effects Text layers limitations. 
• Since Moglyph FX is based on presets with all the properties linked to some effects, it is faster (almost in realtime, just by playing with "Count" slider) to generate a large amount of clones in your comp, while Cloners+Effectors is a bit slower on this point because of the way the script duplicates each layer. But keep in mind that both products, whichever it is, will become to slow down your composition's preview and render, as soon as you try to animate a large amount of clones with the help of effectors. This is totally normal, and this is mainly due to After Effects own limitations. If you feel that you have reached the limits and it slows you down in your workflow, just consider learning and buying a real 3D software like Cinema4D (but even there, large amounts of clones can become very slow !).
• Moglyph FX is based on Text layers, so you'll benefit from all the arguments already written above (see the paragraph called "The MoglyphFX cloner's properties, generated glyph shapes and effectors are all handled by a single text layer, which allows you to...")