FXHome just released Ignite Express 2017, a free pack of 90+ VFX plugins that will work in almost any modern video editor. In this post I want to take a closer look at what type of effects you can create with these free plugins!

Ignite Express 2017 supports most modern editor, including Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Motion, DaVinci Resolve, Nuke, Media Composer, Sony Vegas and more. Once you installed the plugin pack, you should see the new Ignite effects appear in your effects panel. Here is a screenshot of what this looks like in Adobe After Effects:

The effects are organised into 17 different categories and include everything from color correction and grading to generating lightning, distortion and working with 360 video. This post is not intended to cover everything that is included with Ignite Express 2017. I just want to give you a glimpse into some of the cool effects that are included.

Included Effects

You get access to a variety of different looking light flares with the Light Flares effect. This effect has lots of different presets for you to choose from and simply apply or you can take it a step further fine tune the look of your flare by tweaking the effect parameters. If you have a moving shot and you need to track your lens flare to follow your light, you may want to consider simply applying the Auto Lens Flare effect instead. This effect will automatically add a lens flare to the brightest part of your clip and this will follow nicely even if your camera is moving.

Ignite Express 2017 contains lots of effects for colour correction and colour grading. There are standard effects for managing levels, contrast, hue and saturation as well as more advanced effects such as day to night conversion. For more dramatic looks you can also add rain drops onto your shot using the Rain On Glass effect or add some lightning into your scene with the Lightning & Electricity effect.

If you are into sci-fi, you might enjoy the Dimension Rift effect within the Ignite Express 2017. this effect creates a 3D portal that you can easily place on a wall within your shot. Various effect settings allow you to animate the portal appearing and disappearing and you can switch between two states to essentially ‘open’ and ‘close’ your portal.

Light swords are a fundamental effect required for any decent Star Wars fan film. While there are quite a few ways to create this effect, the included Light Sword effect in Ignite Express 2017 makes the process a whole lot easier. You only need to animate (or track) the hilt and tip position of the light sword and apply the effect. You can adjust the flicker, colour, intensity, thickness and plenty of other settings easily in the effect controls.

No respecting plugin collection for VFX could call itself complete without some decent keying tools. Ignite Express 2017 contains various effects for masking and keying that you can utilise depending on your situation and needs. For example, you can apply a Color Difference Key effect to a shot that includes a green screen to easily remove the green screen within a couple of seconds.

While you may already have a lot of these effects, especially the more basic ones, included in your video editing or compositing software, the fact that Ignite Express 2017 works in so many different tools is guaranteed to add some value to your workflow. And best of all, it’s absolutely free so go grab yourself a copy today!

If you are yearning for more, make sure to check out the paid version of this pack, Ignite Pro on the HitFilm store.