Adobe After Effects CS3 - Manual (Page 297)

AFTER EFFECTS CS3
User Guide
292
In addition to the expression elements you use elsewhere, you can use the following attributes to animate selections
in any number of interesting ways:
textIndex Returns the index of the character, word, or line.
textTotal Returns the total number of characters, words, or lines.
selectorValue Returns the value of the previous selector. Think of this as the input from the selector above the
expression selector in the stacking order.
Note: The attributes
textIndex
,
textTotal
, and
selectorValue
can be used only with the expression selector. Using
them elsewhere results in a syntax error.
Fill color changes randomly using an expression animator.
Set a text layer’s anchor point properties
Text animators animate character position, rotation, and size-related properties relative to an anchor point. You can
use the text property, Anchor Point Grouping, to specify whether the anchor point used for transformations is that
of each character, each word, each line, or the entire text block. In addition, you can control the alignment of the
characters’ anchor points relative to the anchor point of the group with the Grouping Alignment property.
Original text, then rotated and with Grouping Alignment set to Character, Word, and Line
1 Expand the text layer in the Timeline panel, and expand the More Options property group.