Motion object disappears outside project boundaries and appears as a square

Okay...

I think you are mixing and matching two different tutorials... albeit with similar concepts and constructions... but still different.

#1 Marten's tutorial:

He's using 37 drop zones arranged in a circle (one at the center). The radius of the circle for the drop zone arrangement is 20,000... units (or pixels if you like). The Camera is set at Z (position) = 20000, lined up with Drop Zone 1. ALL drop zones face forward — they are NOT rotated to match the circumference of the circle. This project does not need to be arranged in a circle — a straight line would have done just as well.

#2 Bates' tutorial

He's using a Circle shape as a Motion Path AND he rotates the drop zones to align to the circumference of the circle path. The Circle path radius is only 2160 units.

The camera is going to behave differently with the face-forward drop zones and the path-aligned drop zones. The circle aligned drop zones are going to introduce **parallax** which is that drifting left/right effect you're experiencing since the camera does not stay "face aligned" with the drop zone.

So, if your project is heavily reliant on Bates' tutorial, then you 1) really cannot use the Throw behavior, OR, 2) ignore the Point At behavior step and keep all the drop zones facing forward (Y rotation = 0). You will probably also have to increase the Circle Path radius so that the camera doesn't basically pan over the edges of the drop zone as it is leaving one framing to go to another. And, adjust the Camera's Near Plane parameter so that Drop Zones appearing to move forward after Framing will fade away quickly.

You need to be a little more specific about your project.

It looks like:

Your project is approximately 3:4 aspect and you are drawing a Circle object inside a 3D Group and you have the 3D Group selected for the screen capture above. Try typing Shift-V to "Show Full View Area". (You can also go to the View menu and select Show Full View Area to toggle between the project size and the full canvas.)

If you have the Circle selected for the image above, then I don't know why you can't see the outer edges — the control points should always be accessible and the complete shape visible if you are editing control points.

The Rectangle ("Square") shape you see is called a "Bounding Box" (every object will display one) — it can be used to do onscreen scaling of the object by utilizing the small blue dots at the corners and centers of the outer edges.

Hope this helps...

The only thing I can think of that's happening is that you have Framing behaviors that are exactly "aligned in time" and Throw has more time to decrease the Z position of the camera in the time space between two Framing behaviors. Each successive Framing behavior needs exactly the same amount of time "layout". What does Marten do? Each Framing Start is offset by 7 seconds and each length is 4 seconds? Variations in these lengths will make Throw appear differently (in between the Framings) along the timeline.

Are you using the Starter Project provided by Marten? Have you modified it (less drop zones, smaller circle radius, etc.)??

PS - I don't think Dolly will serve you well because it is geared to override z-axis position (more or less) of the Camera and kind of combines with the other Camera behaviors. Throw is a different kind of action which can be overridden by camera behaviors until it can operate by itself... (hard to explain...)

Can you post your project somewhere I can download it? I'll look it over. (I am really trying to avoid filling in Marten's project... LOL).

Download this project:

https://fcpxtemplates.com/sdm_downloads/10-drop-zone-carousel-project/

Open it in Motion and Convert Project To: Generator.

This project is set up to be 60FPS (it helps with the animation making it look smoother and not requiring Motion Blur.)

This project is a different way to make carousels from those outlined by Marten and Bates.

I'm going to say up front that I do not like projects with a lot of drop zones. They eat up parameter column and makes it more difficult to set up than projects without drop zones.

It seemed to me that the "push in" for each drop zone was important for you and this project handles that. This project can also be used as and inside or outside view of the carousel. Also, the drop zones are preset to be 4:3 aspect.

Anyway...

The basic setup is a Group (called "All Zones") of all the drop zone sub-groups. Drop zones set up similar to Bates' tutorial. Each sub-group is named "drop 1", "drop 2", etc...

The "drop #" groups all have their Anchor Point Z parameter set up so that when they are rotated around in a circle, it's only necessary to set up the Rotation Y angle for the group, so: 0, 36, 72, etc. The Anchor Point Z parameters of drop 2 through drop 10 are linked to drop 1 which makes it easy to spread out or tighten up the appearance of the drop zones with one setting.

Rotation is handled by a series of Ramp behaviors*. The All Zones group rotates for 2 seconds with a 1 second pause between each drop zone. That doesn't sound (or look) like a lot, but there are **TEN** drop zones to deal with and this project is already 30 seconds long! To slow down this project in Final Cut, apply the generator and drag out its time length to a minute or more.

Ramp behaviors will ramp a value from Start to End over the life of the behavior. If you set In/Out points for Ramp, any effect it has on a parameter is reset to the original (before Ramp In point) when it ends, therefore, all Ramp behaviors are 100% the life of the project. However, the Start Offset and End Offset of each Ramp can be used to "add" values only in a limited space of time. There are 10 Ramp behaviors, ALL simply Start at 0 and end at 36 (degrees) because the values are additive (not replacements) and for this project the Start Offsets begin at frame 30 and the End Offset is set to provide 120 frames of animation and then it waits for the next Ramp to begin to take effect (1 second or 60 frames later).

The "push in" for a close up is handled by animating the Camera Angle of View — so, no Dolly or Throw behaviors necessary. Since the rotations are precisely timed, an Oscillation behavior is applied to the Angle of View with a slight hack. Since Oscillate forces exact values from the Amplitude, all we do is send that to a Numbers generator Value parameter then Add to Souce via Link to the Camera Angle of View... (see how that works??) Additionally, the upper and lower limit for values can be "clamped" so that different portions of the oscillation wave can be "captured" and applied to the "dolly".

This project was expanded to provide in "Inside Carousel" view *and* and "Outside Carousel" view. A few of the parameters are Rigged to alter the view and order to keep things "consistent".

The Carousel starts on Drop Zone 1 in both views. That requires rotating the carousel by 180º and rotating all of the individual drop zones by 180º (on Y) as well. That's handled by the Viewpoint Rig widget.

The Spread rig widget basically changes the Anchor Point Z value and creates separation between the drop zones by Z axis distance.

The Osc. Control (Oscillator Change widget) is another manipulation of a Numbers value used to manipulate the Oscillator amplitude. It varies the amount of amplitude that affects the Camera Angle of View.

The Zoom rig widget can be used to "zoom in" on the carousel, but it does so by Scaling the Camera Viewpoint after the oscillation value has been "captured", so - with the AmplitudeValue Numbers generator.

The Osc. Control and Spread parameters can be used to manipulate the timing/shape of the oscillator with respect to the animation, and the Zoom can be used to **amplify** the animation...

Carousels are rather complicated as you might be able to tell. You might be able to use this project "as is" and there is definitely plenty that can be customized (publishing gradient colors, reflection parameters, publishing aspect ratios of all or each drop zone... etc.)

Have a look. Consider the technique... Make it your own if you want. If you have any questions, let me know.

I've made several, even a "CoverFlow" version...

You might not like this version as built because I only made it 30 seconds long (not really enough for 10 drop zones). It will look better in FCP with the generator stretched out to about a minute or more.

Ask away!

Are you following Dylan Bates' tutorial?

Bates' tutorial doesn't work as a template in FCP (from what I remember). Got a link to the Martens tutorial? (I couldn't find him on youtube.)

Okay - I've bookmarked those videos for reference. Let us know if you run into problems...