By Brady Betzel

Did you ever see a plugin preview and immediately think, “I need to have that?” Well, Nodes 3 by Yanobox is that plugin for me. Imagine if Video CoPilot’s Element 3D and Red Giant’s Trapcode and Form had a baby — you would probably end up with something like Nodes 3.

Nodes 3 is a MacOS-only plugin for Adobe’s After Effects and Premiere Pro and Apple’s Final Cut Pro X and Motion. I know what you are thinking: Why isn’t this made for Windows? Good question, but I don’t think it will ever be ported over.

Final Cut Pro

What is it? Nodes 3 is a particle, text, .obj and point cloud replicator, as well as overall mind-blower. With just one click in their preset library you can create stunning fantasy user interfaces (FUIs), such as HUDs or the like. From Transformer-like HUDs to visual data representations interconnected with text and bar graphs, Nodes 3 needs to be seen to be believed. Ok, enough gloating and fluff, let’s get to the meat and potatoes.

A Closer Look
Nodes 3 features a new replicator, animation module and preset browser. The replicator allows you to not only create your HUD or data representation, but also replicates it onto other 2D and 3D primitive shapes (like circles or rectangles) and animates those replications individually or as a group. One thing I really love is the ability to randomize node and/or line values — Yanobox labels this “Probabilities.” You can immediately throw multiple variations of your work together with a few mouse-clicks instead of lines of scripting.

As I mentioned earlier, Nodes 3 is essentially a mix of Element 3D and Trapcode — it’s part replicator/part particle generator and it works easily with After Effect’s 3D cameras (obviously if you are working inside of After Effects) to affect rotations, scale and orientation. The result is a particle replication that feels organic and fresh instead of static and stale. The Auto-Animations offering allows you to quickly animate up to four parts of a structure you’ve built, with 40 parameter choices under each of the four slots. You can animate the clockwise rotation of an ellipse with a point on it, while also rotating the entire structure in toward the z-axis.

Replicator

The newly updated preset browser allows you to save a composition as a preset and open it from within any other compatible host. This allows you to make something with Nodes 3 inside of After Effects and then work with it inside of Final Cut Pro X. That can be super handy and help streamline VFX work. From importing an .obj file to real video, you can generate point clouds from unlimited objects and literally explode them into hundreds of interconnecting points and lines, all animated randomly. It’s amazing.

If you are seeing this and thinking about using Nodes for data representation, that is one of the more beautiful functions of this plugin. First, check out how to turn seemingly boring bar graphs into mesmerizing creations.

For me Nodes really began to click when they described how each node is defined by an index number. Meaning, each node has even and odd numbers assigned to them, allowing for some computer-science geeky-ness, like skipping even or odd rows and adding animated oscillations for some really engrossing graph work.

When I reviewed Nodes 2 back in 2014, what really gave me a “wow” moment was when they showed a map of the United States along with text for each state and its capital. From there you could animate an After Effect’s 3D camera to reproduce a fly-over but with this futuristic HUD/FUI.

Adobe Premiere

On a motion graphics primal level, this really changed and evolved my way of thinking. Not only did United States graphics not have to be plain maps with animated dotted lines, they could be reimagined with sine-wave-based animations or even gently oscillating data points. Nodes 3 really can turn boring into mesmerizing quickly. The only limiting factor is your mind and some motion graphic design creativity.

To get a relatively quick look into the new replicator options inside of Nodes 3, go to FxFactory Plugins’ YouTube page for great tutorials and demos.

If you get even a tiny bit excited when seeing work from HUD masters like Jayse Hansen or plugins like Element 3D, run over to fxfactory.com and download their plugin app to use Yanobox Nodes 3. You can even get a fully working trial to just test out some of their amazing presets. And if you like what you see, you should definitely hand them $299 for the Nodes 3 plugin.

One slight negative for me — I’m not a huge fan of the FxFactory installer. Not because it messes anything up, but because I have to download a plugin loader for the plugin — double download and potential bloating. Not that I see any slowdown on my system, but it would be nice if I could just download Nodes 3 and nothing else. That is small potatoes though; Nodes 3 is really an interesting and unbridled way to visualize 2D and 3D data quickly.

Oh, and if you are curious, Yanobox has been used on big-name projects from The Avengers to Rise of the Planet of the Apes — HUDs, FUIs and GUIs have been created using Yanobox Nodes.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on Life Below Zero and Cutthroat Kitchen. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.