Adobe After Effects CS3 - Manual (Page 300)

AFTER EFFECTS CS3
User Guide
295
Examples of text animation
For examples of using an expression on the Source Text property to animate text to overcome some of the limitations
of the Numbers effect, see these posts by Rick Gerard on the Adobe user-to-user forums:
www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_rickcountingexpression1 and
www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_rickcountingexpression2 . Colin Brailey provides a tutorial and example project that
show how to use an expression on the Source Text property and a null control layer to achieve a similar result:
www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_colincountingexpression .
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.
13 Set the Y Rotation value for the layer to -45. This rotates the entire layer so that you can more easily see the 3D
motion of the characters.
14 Preview the composition.
Example: Offset characters
This example illustrates how you can easily animate random characters so that they gradually form a legible word or
phrase. To do this, specify a Character Offset value and animate the range selector.