Creator Composer: Animation Plugin for DaVinci Resolve

Try it free for 7 days. Made by Kriss Norde, Blackmagic Design certified trainer.

Motion graphics at the speed of layers: an animation plugin for DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is excellent for editing and color grading. Fusion is unbeatable for compositing and visual effects. But for motion graphics, nodes are slower than layers, and some basic tools are missing. Just drawing a simple dotted line means hacking it together with shapes that mask pieces of the stroke. Animating a title means a Follower, keyframes, a curve to adjust in the Spline editor. And for the next title, you start over.

Creator Composer opens next to your timeline, on the Edit page. You double-click an animation: your title or your logo comes alive instantly, your cut becomes a transition.

Why I built Creator Composer

About fifteen years ago, I was an editor and someone asked me for my first animated videos. I knew nothing about it. I used the software of the time, built in Flash: you picked from their characters and their images, and you couldn't use your own photos unless you bought another pack. I made videos like that for months. It was hell.

Then I learned motion design and visual effects in After Effects. Two tools never left my screen: Animation Composer, to apply an animation in one click, and Flow, to adjust a curve without opening the graph editor.

When I realized Fusion was more powerful than After Effects, I switched. For compositing, no regrets. For motion design, it left a bitter taste. With practice, nodes get fast and they're a pleasure to use, but every animated title took me longer than with layers. And with every title, I missed those two tools.

Even today, when I teach Fusion, the motion design part always brings the same questions. And I have to admit to my students that in Fusion, motion design often means detours, shortcuts and patches. Fusion gets better with every version, but it wasn't designed for this.

Creator Composer is the animation plugin I was missing, built for DaVinci Resolve. I'm Kriss Norde, a Blackmagic Design certified trainer, and I built it for my own videos first.

A tool that grows with you

On day one, you click a preset. A few weeks later, you're building your own animations letter by letter. Creator Composer follows your level, from the first click all the way to Fusion.

Level 1: one click

You pick an animation, it's applied. 48 title animations, 48 for your logos and images, 125 transitions, tuned to look great as they are, with any font.

Level 2: your style

The same typewriter effect, three settings.

You change the speed, drag the curve with the mouse, add a bounce or an elastic, choose the order the letters arrive in. Then you save the result as your own preset. Your videos keep the same style from one project to the next, and your titles stop looking like the ones from the pack everyone uses.

Level 3: your compositions

Every animation is built from layers, grouped in three phases: the In, the Middle (what lasts while the title is on screen) and the Out. Each layer has its own bar on a timeline: drag it to shift the timing, stretch it to slow it down.

On each layer, you choose whether it animates the whole text, word by word or letter by letter, and you stack effects: 129 in total, which can all be combined. One button turns on real motion blur for every In and Out, with Resolve's own settings, like the Shutter Angle.

A letter-by-letter In with a bounce, a pulsing Middle, a blurred Out: three layers, and you save it as your own preset.

Level 4: with Fusion

Morph, pixel sorting, crumpled paper, burnt film, 3D cubes, layered glitches, and real letter-by-letter motion blur, cleaner than Text+.

And when you build your own animations with Fusion's tools, Composer stays right beside you: its curves and keyframe graph shape the motion of your nodes without going through the Spline editor.

Motion blur on the same frame: on the left, Text+ in DaVinci Resolve; on the right, Composer. Drag the slider.

Text+Composer

Text+Composer

How it works

1. Click your Text+ title in the timeline to select it.
2. Click "Convert to Composer title" in the Composer panel. The title keeps its text, font and settings.
3. In the Library, a click plays an animation in the preview, on your own text. A double-click applies it: your title is animated.

No title yet? "+ Create", then "+ Composer title" places one at the playhead. For a logo, a photo or a video, it's the same move: select the clip, "Convert to Composer", then double-click the animation. For a transition, "+ Create", then "+ Transition" places it on the cut closest to the playhead. And every setting stays yours, today and six months from now.

A podcast on Monday, a property tour on Tuesday, a vlog on the weekend

Every video needs its own style. Until now, that meant one more title pack, or an evening in Fusion redoing what you did the week before.

These six videos all come from the same panel, with the same Library. You go from the punchline in red to the real estate agent's neon without switching tools, and without starting from scratch.

Three lines, three styles, one clip

You want a title where the first line slides in, the key word drops in red, and the last one arrives with a glow. In Resolve, that's three Text+ stacked on three tracks, three animations to set up one by one. And the day the edit shifts by a second, you realign all three.

With Composer's Multitext, the three lines fit in a single clip. Each keeps its own font, color and animation, set in the panel. Move the clip and everything follows. The client wants to change a word: you fix it in the Inspector, and each line keeps its style.

Subtitles that move with the voice, without placing them one by one

On a Short or a Reel, a lot of people watch with the sound off. Your subtitles are what keeps them watching. But animating them in Resolve means one Text+ per sentence, synced to the voice by hand, then animated, then resynced every time you touch the edit.

With Composer, you set an in and an out, then "+ Create" and "+ Subtitles". Composer listens to the voice: 16 seconds of speech take about 7 seconds. Every word lands on the right frame, already cut into short subtitles.

A misheard word? Double-click it, fix it, and it stays synced to the voice. Then pick an animation in the Library: it goes on all your subtitles at once, each on its own words.

1. Set an in and an out on the voice, then "+ Subtitles".

2. A misheard word: fix it in the words window.

3. The panel preview already shows the words arriving one by one.

4. A last touch in the Inspector, and the result in the Resolve viewer.

Already have Resolve subtitles on your timeline? Select them and they become animated subtitles, with the same timing.

What you get

The Composer plugin panel in English and French, 48 title animations, 48 animations for your logos and images, 125 transitions and 129 effects to combine, Multitext and subtitles from audio, with an installation guide and a user guide in PDF. A license for two computers, Windows or Mac. Updates are included.

For the price of a title pack, you get the tool that makes your own, for all your next videos.

Launch price: €50 instead of €100, for a limited time.

Try it free for 7 days. During the trial, you get a short course by email, one level at a time.

What you need

DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.2 or later, on Windows or Mac. Creator Composer doesn't work with the free version: Blackmagic Design keeps panels and scripts like this one for DaVinci Resolve Studio.

Installing it takes one move: you drag a folder to the right place, and the guide shows you how. No installer, no script to run.

Coming from After Effects or Premiere Pro? I compare the ways to get that workflow back in Animation Composer for DaVinci Resolve: is there an alternative?

Your next title can land letter by letter, in one click.