Laser gun effect

Well, you can build one in FCPX, but if all you have is access to the default accessories (titles, etc.) available, you'll run into issues if you want to be able to animate "different angles" etc. So you really have to build something customized in Motion and publish the parameters you want to animate.

I mention titles because I used a text character to build this laser effect — a "bullet" character from Bebas Neue to be precise. Since Bebas Neue is installed *with* FCPX, everyone will have that font available.

The text character was converted to 3D Text and various (3D Text) features applied. Building this effect is a lot easier than trying to explain how to do it.

All you need to do is apply one or more of the Laser effects to your clip, title or generator. You will have parameters available to handle the Thickness of the laser beam, the Length, and the Taper (a fiction, but in 3D space you will encounter parallax and depending on the view angle, it will appear to widen considerably — taper can be used mitigate the parallax.)

You have a parameter to control the color of the laser (they seem to be any color, typically reds and greens, but blue, cyan, yellow and even magenta have been used).

There is a published position parameter (dial down the disclosure triangle for access to Z position -- not generally useful in flat video, but can be utilized when a perceptible depth is required). The same goes for Rotation (dial down the disclosure triangle for access to X and Y rotations).

I added a Glow and you will have parameter access to Amount and Intensity and you can fade it in or out with Glow Mix.

The following 3 parameters are from the feature of 3D Text that gives it the transparent and sort of "shiny" appearance. They are all rather interactive with each other. The text effect used was a custom Paint finish that utilizes transparency and specular lighting. Fresnel interacts with the Face and Edge transparencies — you can use these to change the general "look" of the laser beam. These three things will also "set off" the glow element depending on settings so you may need to make adjustments to the glow.

The Alignment Offset is provided to change the relationship of the bullet character to a center point. (I set it fairly well, but you may find you might want to play with these parameters some time later on... in the meantime, just leave them alone.)

The upside of having this as an Effect: you can set up new versions of it (without leaving FCPX) like different color lasers and save them as Effects Presets. The other benefit is you have access to Effects Masks which will give you even more control of the appearance in a clip.

If you make sure the effect is selected in the Inspector and click and drag across the laser end that appears on screen, you can activate a 3D on-screen control. You can drag the effect to any location on screen and use the 3D control to rotate the effect on screen. You won't need to specifically deal with the parameters (unless you need to keyframe something).

If all you need is the laser, you can download one here:

https://fcpxtemplates.com/laser-effect/

If you need the "gun" too, I'd need a description (a screenshot would be better).

I don't have any clips with guns, so I used this model:

I used the Thickness parameter keyframed from 0 to 1.5 (over about 5 frames) then from 1.5 to 0 on the other side.

You can use this effect for a light saber effect as well -- just use the Length parameter and "grow" the beam to length.

Hope this helps!

You're very welcome!