Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 371)

365 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
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Last updated 12/21/2009
Richard Harrington provides a detailed, step-by-step video tutorial on the Peachpit website that covers the basics of
animating text using text animators and selectors.
Colin Braley provides a tutorial and example project on his website that show how to use an expression on the Source
Text property to animate text to overcome some of the limitations of the Numbers effect.
Eran Stern provides a set of video tutorials on the Creative COW website that show how to use the text animation
features to create a variety of simple animations, including some that use punctuation and other non-alphanumeric
symbols as simple vector graphics elements:
• Part 1
• Part 2
Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that demonstrates how to use per-character 3D text
animation to animate text along a path in the shape of a 3D tornado.
Rhys Enniks provides a video tutorial on his website in which he uses expressions and multiple text animators and
range selectors to animate text as if it is being typed onto a computer screen.
Chris and Trish Meyer provide a video tutorial on the ProVideo Coalition website about entering, editing, formatting,
and typesetting text.
Harry Frank provides a tutorial on animating text with text animators on the Digital Arts Online website .
Aharon Rabinowitz provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that shows a few ways to make 3D extruded
text in After Effects, using duplicate layers or the Shatter effect.
In the “After Effects Text Tips” series of video tutorials on the Creative COW website , Aharon Rabinowitz
demonstrates how to use multiple text animators to create and fine-tune complex text animations.
Angie Taylor provides a tutorial on the Digital Arts website that shows how to use per-character 3D text animation
together with a common workaround for simulating extruded 3D text.
Example: Animate characters with per-character 3D properties
This example illustrates how you can easily animate individual characters in 3D so that each character steps out of line
and takes a bow.
1 Create a new composition.
2 Create a new text layer with the word ovation.
3 Choose Animation > Animate Text > Enable Per-character 3D.
4 Choose Animation > Animate Text > Position.
5 Choose Animation > Animate Text > Rotation.
6 In the Timeline panel, in the Animator group, set the X Rotation property to 45, and set the Position value to (0.0,
0.0, -100.0).
7 Expand Range Selector 1.
8 Click the stopwatch icon for the Offset property to set an initial keyframe with the value at 0 seconds.
9 Set the Offset property value to -15%.
10 Set the End property value to 15%.
11 Move the current-time indicator to 10 seconds, and set the Offset value to 100%.
12 Press the R key to show the Rotation properties for the entire layer.