How To Change Text Color In After Effects

Creatively Using Text Animators in After Effects, Part ii

THINKING FURTHER OUTSIDE THE [TEXT] BOX

If you lot watched the showtime half of our two-office series on using Text Animators in After Effects, you already understand that the Text Animator is a procedural (or, stride-by-stride) effector-based animator for vector shapes (and, specifically, text).

You've also practiced creating tapered strokes, path arrows, abstract dots and extruded rotating patterns.

And, as a result, you know — better than most — that this powerful, complex tool tin can do a lot more than than add a fade to your type.

Today, follow along with Kansas City-based designer, video editor and SOM Teaching Banana and alum Kyle Hamrick, equally we have information technology a step further , using uncomplicated rigs and some — gasp! — Expression Controllers to (mathematically) command diverse elements of your text-based animation.

MASTERING TEXT ANIMATION WITH EXPRESSION CONTROLLERS IN AFTER EFFECTS: TUTORIAL VIDEO

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MASTERING TEXT ANIMATION WITH EXPRESSION CONTROLLERS IN AFTER EFFECTS: (PARTLY) EXPLAINED

USING .repeat IN A LAYER'Due south SOURCE TEXT PROPERTY

If y'all want to clone your text grapheme(southward), all you need to do is utilise .repeat.

To try it out:

1. Type a single character into a text layer
2. Create an Expression in your source text by alt/opt-clicking the stopwatch, which will automatically insert "text.sourceText"
3. Add .repeat() to the finish of that line of lawmaking
4. Inside the parentheses, insert the number of times you want your character(s) repeated; if you want to repeat information technology 100 times, it should look like this:

To avoid returning to the Expressions editor to tweak and re-tweak your hard-coded values, you can create a Slider: Effect > Expression Controls > Slider Control.

Select and delete that "100," keep your cursor between the parentheses, and so apply the expression pickwhip to select the Slider.

Your code will update to this (unless, of course, you've renamed your Slider):

Now you can utilise this Slider control to change — or animate — the length of your text line.

Be mindful of the paragraph alignment (Left/Center/Right), equally it volition decide the starting time and end of your line and, thus, where your repeated characters are added.

Simply THAT'South NOT ALL

Likewise included in Kyle'south tutorial are several other useful Expressions features and functions, including:

• Pickwhips/Property links
• Basic expression math
• time
• speed
• Math.abs
• clamp
• valueAtTime

Kyle also hand-writes a six-line Expression; and demonstrates how to create and apply variables.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Text Animators and Expression Controllers are not necessarily intuitive or easy to use, but when leveraged finer and at the initial stage of your design, they can significantly improve and expedite your workflow.

Learn More nearly Text Animators and Expression Controllers

If yous haven't yet watched our founder and CEO Joey Korenman'southward Animating Blazon tutorial or role one of our Creatively Using Text Animators in Subsequently Effects duology, nosotros highly recommend it.

For a collection of tutorials on using Expressions in Later on Furnishings, click here.

Invest in Your Teaching

Now that you know more than virtually animating text with Expressions in Later on Effects, it might be fourth dimension to get-go mastering the Afterwards Furnishings animation process itself. Fortunately, we can help with that.

As the number-ane online motion design school in the earth , we specialize in providing determined motion graphics artists with intensive online-simply courses on 2D and 3D animation.

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Tutorial Total Transcript Below 👇:

Kyle Hamrick (00:10): Hey at that place. This is Kyle Hamrick with school of move. In a previous tutorial, nosotros looked at creative ways of using the after effects, text animator. Today, nosotros're going to have some of those ideas even further and combine them with a few expressions to create some really cool, useful elements that would otherwise be really difficult or even impossible to build. If you didn't have a chance to scout the previous tutorial at a highly recommend watching that first, that lesson has an in-depth caption of all the backdrop within the text animator. And while I'll exist giving some explanations during this tutorial, you might get lost. If you don't already have a expert grasp on how these work, in that location's a gratuitous projection file included with the commodity on schoolhouse of motion.com. Just all the examples are things we'll be edifice from scratch direct with an afterward-furnishings. So let'south get started.

Kyle Hamrick (00:53): The techniques nosotros'll be covering are things I apply all the fourth dimension. And hopefully subsequently this, y'all will too. We're going to begin by creating a uncomplicated rig that nosotros'll utilize for the other examples. In this tutorial, it's also just generally really handy for this kind of stuff, and it helps to accept some of the trial and error aspect out of it. I'g going to accept a second here and testify you my text settings. Everything we're using today is bachelor on Adobe fonts. And just a reminder that yous tin utilize whatsoever type confront you like your settings may merely exist a niggling different than mine. In the previous tutorial, we did a lot of creating these long lines of dots then compressing the tracking to make a solid line. We're going to practice that same strategy here, but we're going to make information technology more than controllable.

Kyle Hamrick (01:30): So I'k going to brainstorm by double clicking to highlight this whole line of text, and then just type one period. Now I'1000 going to hit y'all, you to reveal all properties that have been changed from their default. In this case, the source text is the only one that has. Then I'grand going to click on this stopwatch here and we really need the part that had already gave us. And then nosotros'll only striking the cease key to get to the end of that. And then I'm going to blazon dot repeat with the parentheses. See the motorcar consummate helps u.s.a. out there, and then I'yard going to blazon 10, right between the parentheses. Then now it'south taking a unmarried character and repeating it 10 times. If yous give it more characters, it would echo that entire grapheme string. This seems pretty helpful, right? And then let'southward get ahead and prepare this upwardly to 100.

Kyle Hamrick (02:15): Nice. And allow'southward perhaps come downward here. We're going to condense the tracking. I found that near minus 2 75 is a pretty good value for this example. This is keen, only I don't want to take to keep changing this value every fourth dimension that I want to change the length, that'south even worse than manually typing characters. But if we add effect, expression controls, slider control, open this up here. You could obviously access it over here as well. Let's go alee and type 100 right here. If nosotros link this up, now we tin apply the slider control to control this instead of a hard coded value. So I'1000 just going to click right here then highlight this portion with the hard coded value. Let's use the expression, pick whip here, merely drive that right to the cider control.

Kyle Hamrick (03:04): And now this controls how many characters in that location are. And in this instance, that to me feels like length. So I'thou going to go ahead and rename my slider to that. Y'all can encounter nosotros've got this handy link slider. Now the controls exactly how long this is. This values may be a little abstruse in terms of the actual length of the affair, but it'south definitely easier than manually calculation characters. Since we're going to be reusing this several times, I'grand going to go over to my projection panel, select my composition here, and I'll hit control or command D to duplicate it. And then I'thou going to proper noun this length rig.

Kyle Hamrick (03:42): I'm too going to come up back to my composition and highlight both the text and the effects. And and so I'm going to go to blitheness, save animation preset. You could salvage this with whatever title, whatever location you want, and and so you'll be able to call it up whenever you need it. Okay, we've got this all set up upward. Now allow's practice something with it. I'll select my layer, printing G to get the pin tool and depict a overnice soft S curve hither. Then I will control or control click this twirly right here to expose all the properties on the layer. Permit's choose path, set information technology to the mask. We just drew. Now I'm going to create an animator for scale. Set that to zero. Equally I explained in the previous tutorial right now, the entire range of these characters is being set up to scale zero. If we desire to alter which characters are being affected past any we've done to information technology, that'southward what the range selectors for.

Kyle Hamrick (04:38): So nosotros'll open this upwardly and I'll set the shape to round. So that'southward most what we want, only I would actually similar the opposite. So to hands get the contrary, we can set the manner to decrease. At present we take this prissy double ended, taper shape. At that place's a couple of fine tuning things I'd similar to do hither. So you lot tin meet this is actually sitting sort of next to our path. And the characters are really scaling from the baseline, not the center. So I'm going to modify the grouping alignment, which is the per graphic symbol anchor point. You tin encounter information technology moving around at that place. I'yard going to just going to effort to become that every bit centered up as I tin about minus 8.8. In my case, I also similar things to be centered up. So I'm going to adjust the baseline setting here so that it sets right nearly in the middle of my shape.

Kyle Hamrick (05:22): You could besides practice that with another position animator, if yous wanted, I'm going to go ahead and rename my animator to taper. Since that's what information technology's doing, so you tin see, nosotros have a little issue upwards here with a bit of separation. We can fix that past merely irresolute the tracking a chip. We could round it up to minus 300, make information technology nice and dense. Although you'll see now it's manner too short. Well, that's piece of cake to fix because we requite ourselves a length slider. You can only kind of eyeball this in my case, looks like right effectually two 20 is virtually right. In that location is too a force alignment belongings here, which will make your shape fit exactly to the path y'all drew that would make your length slider, that we created more than of a density slider. This is substantially how the stroke effect actually works.

Kyle Hamrick (06:08): So nosotros've got our shape. Let's actually animate it on and off. So I'm going to indistinguishable this animator. I'm going to change the name to on off since that's what going to do. So let'due south open up this up. I'm going to add together belongings opacity, fix that down to nix equally well. This doesn't make a huge difference hither, but I think it looks simply a little bit nicer. And then we actually don't need advanced this time. We're going to get out that the same, but what we are going to practise is play with the beginning property and run into how we can kind of button the shape through this path now. Then if you breathing it from, in my example, I want to go from 100 to minus 100. And I'll just kind of stretch that out over about two seconds. Allow'due south do a quick preview. Nosotros take this nice little snaky tapered shape that goes from 1 end to the other. I'yard sure you could come up up with some cool uses for this. If you created a couple copies of this, perhaps first the position just a little bit, offset the timing just a little bit. You have this prissy cartoony steamline look that you lot could perhaps put over a illustrated teacup or something like that.

Kyle Hamrick (07:15): I'd similar u.s.a. to brand one other variant of this. Then let's come over to our project panel. Nosotros'll rename this one to steam line and and then control or control D to create a duplicate and named this i speed line. So we'll open up speed line hither. The starting time thing I'k going to do is get rid of the on-off and go rid of the mask. Nosotros don't need this. Then I'm going to fix my alignment to right aligned because that's how we're using this one. I'k going to create some other animator for opacity. Allow's open this up, set the opacity to zero, and then we tin modify this shape to ramp down. You tin see just a lilliputian chip at the end here. Let's creepo in this ease high value. So we get a prissy long fade out and we'll become ahead and rename this fade considering that's what it'south doing.

Kyle Hamrick (08:05): Close that up. Then we tin add a unproblematic expression to our length slider that nosotros created to give this a little bit more than of a dynamic organic feel. So I'thousand going to click on the stopwatch for the slider and correct there nosotros'll type wiggle. I'll permit the auto-consummate at our parentheses and all type i, comma 50, close that out and do a quick preview. Okay. So we have this prissy kind of flowy length going on. That's nice. I feel similar this could use one more little punch here to really make it special. Let'due south add together 1 more animator anime position, and we'll call this wiggle because that'southward what it'due south going to do. You might exist ahead of me here. Nosotros're going to add selector wiggly, but we're going to use the range selector likewise. So let's go ahead and crank up the Y value on this position so that we can kind of really run into what's happening.

Kyle Hamrick (09:01): The wiggly selector is going to accept this holding and value that nosotros feed it and kind of randomly feed that to the characters, but I don't want it quite so scattered. So nosotros're going to apply the range selector to clamp that down. We'll open the advanced gear up, the shape to ramp down, and you can see that clamps down the beginning and then expands out to letting it jerk. I'd similar to ease into that more than. Let's crank the ease low, uh, quite a bit. Y'all can run across, we can really ease into that shape. So I don't desire this to besprinkle quite and then much. I desire information technology more to kind of be swimmy and wiggly. So let's open upwardly the wiggly selector and the style to really get things to sync upwards like that is the correlation I'm going to set mine to 99 then that these shapes are doing almost the same thing.

Kyle Hamrick (09:46): Just slightly beginning. Allow's practice a quick preview. Okay. That'due south non as well bad. It sort of feels a niggling bit more swimmy than like the kind of flow that I desire though. Personally, I similar to prepare the wiggles per second to nada and animate either the spatial or temporal phase. You lot can scrub through those real quick and kind of see it's basically doing the same thing. I just feel like this is a little more controllable. So I'm going to click on the spatial phase and blazon time times 400. Nosotros're really taking the time of this comp and feeding that to this value, only so multiplying it so that information technology actually goes fast enough for usa to see. So now nosotros take this nice kind of swimmy flowy look here, which I like for what we're doing. Now, if you take just a little fourth dimension to practice some coloring, maybe some elementary parenting similar this, and y'all can even create a gradient over the life of this shape, which I showed you how to do in the previous tutorial.

Kyle Hamrick (10:42): Yous could brand some squeamish swimmy speed lines on whatever shape you like. So that wiggle on the tail length is pretty cool, but I'd similar to explore making this a little more reactive here. I've taken our length rig. Y'all tin run into hither'due south the slider. So it's 200 and there's that same code we were using. I've tapered that a flake by creating an animator for scale set to twenty so that it fades away to a smaller size, just non all the way to zero. So that, and then setting to ramp upwards are the only changes I made at that place. And so you can see, I created a path for this to move forth. I animated the offset margin property and I created a key frame where the lead character hits the bottom of each of these bounces.

Kyle Hamrick (11:29): I then spend a little chip of time finessing these in graph editor. You can use my instance in the downloadable project file, or yous tin do this yourself and so your values will be slightly different here. So this is pretty cool already, only the tail doesn't feel very dynamic right now. Of course we could breathing this length slider manually, only that feels like a lot of work. And it's not very adaptable. 1 affair I do want to signal out nigh this technique, these values right here, if you change the path, they're not going to country you in the aforementioned identify anymore, considering this is based on the overall length of the path.

Kyle Hamrick (12:06): So if yous end upwards having to manually key frame, several things on here, it's going to be kind of a pain. If you end up having to adjust the path quite a bit. And so that's why I'd like to make this very dynamic and adjustable using some more expressions. So the commencement affair that I'm going to practise is duplicate our length property. I'm going to rename that speed. And I'm going to become ahead and button that above the link property. We're going to exist feeding a couple expression controls into a larger expression that nosotros create in length. So I'm going to continue length at the lesser because it'southward kind of the cumulative event of all these things that we're doing. Some other affair you're going to see me do a couple of times is hide properties. I don't need to run across if you hold alt and shift or pick shift on the Mac and click on a property.

Kyle Hamrick (12:49): It will hide it. Information technology'southward nonetheless there. It's just subconscious. One annoyance is that expression controls still come with the compositing options that are very useful on other effects, but meaningless here. And they just kind of get in the mode. And so I'm going to take this speed slider, and I'one thousand going to pick with this up to my commencement margin belongings. So right at present it's just giving us the same value. But what I would similar to do at the terminate of this is blazon dot speed. Now information technology's going to give us the speed of the changes of that belongings.

Kyle Hamrick (13:24): And so you can meet that value hither gets to the finish. It hit zero. Pretty cool. It's non doing anything yet. While I could accept just plugged this directly into the length slider, we're going to exist doing some other things. So I think it makes more than sense to keep it carve up, but permit's go alee and only option with our link slider directly to this. Okay, well, it's going to break because this is negative and our length can't exist negative. Permit's go ahead and disengage that. So this is merely because of the way that I have blithe this. I could have used the last margin belongings. Information technology could have reversed the path, et cetera, merely it was a good opportunity to point this out. If yous need to strength a property to be positive, you lot can use a function called math dot absolute. So I'll blazon that in hither, math dot absolute open parentheses, become to the very end of the line, close parentheses.

Kyle Hamrick (14:18): Now it'southward e'er going to requite us a positive version of that number, whether it's positive or negative. So now if nosotros pick with the length slider to our speed slider, nosotros're going to get a tail length that represents the speed at which the position is irresolute hither. I mean, that'south okay, only, uh, probably not exactly what we're later. And so the easiest way to fix that is probably just to do a niggling piece of cake partition here. Right? We could just add something at the end, like divided by l and now it'll always be much shorter. Well, that's too brusque. Maybe we want divided by five.

Kyle Hamrick (14:56): Uh, well that'southward clearly not the right instance either. Let's go ahead and take that off there. Let'south create another expression control here. I'll duplicate speed and telephone call this one divider. I'll open this upwards and just gear up this to 10 for now. Now nosotros certainly could just divide this right here, but we're going to be adding more to this expression. And so to keep things clean, I'm going to get-go establishing some variables. So let's say variable SPD for speed equals so it's choice whipped to that speed slider, right? We'll add a semi-colon to end the line, go to the next line, variable divide DVD equals, and we'll simply option what to that dissever or value semi-colon. So now we could only type speed divided by divider and that'll work the same as if nosotros were hard, coding the value, but now it's a lot more than accessible.

Kyle Hamrick (16:00): You lot can see we're getting closer, but things obviously aren't quite right yet. You need to add a little fleck more. The next thing I'd like to exercise is utilise the clench function to plant a minimum and maximum value for this tail length. One of the issues you can see is that our dot disappears when we get to the end of the path. And then there's as well some times where it's sort of extending back into a previous bounce and that's just non really what we want. So I'1000 going to create another expression, command effects, expression controls, point control. At present, manifestly I'grand not really using this every bit a signal, but I really similar signal controls. If you demand two values independent within a unmarried control, I'm going to become ahead and push button that above the length. I'm going to name this clamp and then I'll set these values to, I don't know, 2, 1 50, once again, you lot can only ignore this. This is but here to hold both of these values. I'll open up this up.

Kyle Hamrick (xvi:59): Let's come up downward to our expression. So since we're going to be using clamp, allow's become ahead and set up this speed divide to some other variable. We'll phone call this variable tail equals speed divided by divider semi-colon. Then now we demand to link to our clench minimum and clamp maximum, which is what nosotros're using the X and Y of this 0.four. So allow'south create a variable called clench min equals variable clamp max equals. Then for clamp men, we'll just apply this pick whip right here. Pick me upwards to that beginning value. The minimum semi-colon come down to clamp max pick whip to the maximum semi-colon okay, and then now we're going to put all this together to phone call the clench office. We just ride clench and then it gives you lot some parentheses. So we feed it the property we want to clench. And so the minimum maximum, we merely established all those. Then tail comma, clamp, men, comma clamp, max. Then now the tail will never be less than ii. Never exist more than ane 50, but it's nevertheless reactive to the speed of the change hither. Almost there. You can see, we accept one little problem. And so things are just a little bit jittery.

Kyle Hamrick (18:30): I explored a couple of different ways to fix this, including the smooth part, but I ended up landing on value at time, which I think is really useful to know for a lot of other things besides. So I'grand going to add together ane more than, little bit to this expression and and so we'll be done. Now, if this were a existent life object, the modify in the length of the tail would exist very slightly delayed from the actual bounces. And so we're going to use value at time to judge that to the stop of this beginning line, I'll come simply to the left of the semi-colon. Then I'm going to blazon a dot value at time. Again, y'all tin can see the motorcar-complete took care of it for us, and I'one thousand going to type time minus 0.1. So now this speed value is actually referencing a very slightly different moment in time than the current i, which will help offset at just a little bit and makes it wait a fiddling bit smoother.

Kyle Hamrick (nineteen:21): Go alee and shut this out. Have a look at that and come across how that's a scrap smoother. Information technology doesn't have those kind of jerky points from where it'south hitting the bounces, right? You lot could certainly exist using variants of this on things that aren't text layers. You lot could use this to drive a trim paths, for example, to practise something similar with a shape layer. I establish this to be pretty handy doing these little Zippy tail rigs similar this. And over again, if you salve this every bit a preset, and so you lot can employ it all the time and not accept to ready all these expressions up again, manually. We tin take this idea fifty-fifty further by calculation a couple more text animators and using some bones expressions to make those dynamic as well. Here, you can run into, I take basically the same rig. I but changed upward the path and some of those key frames on the offset margin property, and so that it moves a piffling differently. You can create your own path like this, where you lot can notice mine in the downloadable projection file.

Kyle Hamrick (20:15): So instead of just a tapered stroke tail, we're going to make this more of a magic wand trail. The first thing I'thou going to do is disable the visibility of the layer controls. Cause they're going to kind of go far our way here. You lot can practice that right here from your view menu, where in that location's a hockey for information technology every bit well. We have our taper animator from before. We desire to make sure that's non selected. I'g going to breathing position. So again, we could be changing the whole thing. That's not what nosotros want to exercise. I'grand going to go ahead and name this besprinkle, and then we're going to add selector wiggly. Then if we crank these values upward, now yous can encounter nosotros get that nice randomness, just like we did an before instance, but I'd like to start linking some of these properties to some of the other things that we've already set up so that they're all reactive. Allow's accept this position property and just pick, whip it straight up to that speed slider. Okay. That'southward a piddling bit much, but if we divide information technology by, permit's say 40, information technology's actually pretty skilful. You could obviously create another divider control if yous wanted to, or you lot could connect this to the existing one and multiply it by four. Information technology's all most how much control y'all want to give yourself, but also how many controls you desire to deal with. It just depends on what works for your specific example. Let'due south do a quick preview.

Kyle Hamrick (21:36): Okay. That's already pretty interesting, right? Maybe a niggling more cluttered than I'd similar it to exist. Let'south clamp that in a little fleck, using that range selector technique we saw earlier open upwardly advanced ramp up in this case, and we tin probably but leave everything else lone. Let'south have a quick await at that. Pretty cool. I remember there'due south ane other holding I would like to mess with here in the wiggly selector. You tin really determine the range of these wiggle values hither. You could clamp them in a fleck if you want it to. So nosotros're going to link that upward and then I'grand also going to tweak this correlation, set that to zero, just to make it as random as possible. Yous're manifestly welcome to tweak all of these until you're happy with the way they look. I'one thousand going to link this Proverb out to the speed slider up hither, open this upwards. And again, just separate by 40. I constitute that worked pretty well. At present our maximum corporeality of wiggle is taking that speed property divided by xl permit's take the minimum value, just link it to the max. And if you but put a minus sign at the outset, it'll accept the negative of that value. It just helps smooth everything out a scrap. Once again, feel costless to tweak yours to get in await however y'all'd like.

Kyle Hamrick (22:54): I'm going to do one more matter to add a fiddling bit more than complication. I'll take this whole scatter animator duplicate and change the proper name to colour random. I'll open this up, delete the position property and add property, fill a color RGB. And so now it's randomizing the make full color of these characters over the life of the path gives united states of america this nice particle trail expect correct, simply information technology'south all speed reactive. Only for one more than little flourish I'd similar to add on here. Let's find a proficient frame kind of there. Great. I'd like to add the echo effect time echo and you tin run across it just adds additional copies of this, that kind of follow just barely backside it in time more than backdrop that you're welcome to tweak if you like. I think this looks pretty good stock, but when it's in motion, it kind of just looks like yous fattened everything up and added a little bit of extra sparkle on top of it here.

Kyle Hamrick (23:56): Now you've got this swell particle Chasey sort of expect, this worked actually well for maybe a magic wand or just a cool magical trail sparkly trail that needs to follow something. Y'all could apparently exist using dissimilar characters for this alternating characters, randomizing some of these characters. I think the possibilities hither are actually cool. If you just have some of these techniques and combine them in different ways, see what yous can practise. Let's finish upwards with one terminal case that uses some of these ideas in a slightly different way. Nosotros're starting off with a very similar build here. This is substantially merely the length rig. You can come across, we have the same expression here tied to the link slider and everything. I've drawn this curvy path for it to follow. The only major alter is that I'm using Quatro slab this time because I wanted squares instead of circles. The first thing I'1000 going to practise is extend out the length over hither, considering we're actually going to exist pushing these characters along the path similar this. So nosotros're going to need more than of them. Let's go ahead and set this up to 500. You tin see it extends the bounding box. It'south actually merely extending this manner off the terminate of the path here in a straight line and zoom back in. I'm going to first past choosing animate position, and then we can gear up this to 0, 1 seventy.

Kyle Hamrick (25:15): We can actually get rid of this range selector. Nosotros're not going to utilize it. Yous can just highlight and delete information technology and then I'll choose, add together selector weekly. Now you can see information technology'south randomizing these characters upward to ane seventy and Y off the path in both directions. If we do a quick preview, y'all can run across what'southward happening at present. That's way too fast for my taste. And like I said earlier, I kind of similar to animate the wiggles per 2d in a dissimilar mode. So I'm going to set that to zilch. Allow me become alee and set my correlation to ten. Then it's almost totally random, simply has a fiddling bit of linkage. And then for the spatial phase, that's another mode to advance this. I'm going to create a simple expression here, time times 100.

Kyle Hamrick (26:00): And that's what nosotros're dealing with now. Only a dainty trivial vertical menses. Let's accept a second. Rename this position, randomness, close that up. Now we're going to advance this along the path, using the first margin property. Let's come to the first frame, encounter how this just scrubs information technology forth the path hither. Permit'due south go to where that'due south just barely off. Make a key frame, come up to the end. And I'm going to scrub this into the negatives I'grand holding shift. So this goes faster, maybe somewhere around minus 2000. See how that feels pretty good. And you lot see how that slight vertical position wiggle that we did is giving information technology a piffling chip of a swim. Almost like it's twisting the path a little flake. Just gives it a nice look. Next. I would like to randomize the shapes of some of these a lilliputian bit. So making sure that we do not have this other animator selected, I'm going to choose animate calibration.

Kyle Hamrick (26:59): Let's go alee and proper noun this one, rectangles and we'll set the scale to 300, 100. You can run across information technology stretched all of them out. I don't quite want all of them. If we open up upward our range selector, let's choose peradventure 80% of them. And we can't really see a divergence at present because it's off the end of the screen. And so if we go into advanced, permit's maybe set our shape to smoothen and randomize order on. Now y'all can come across, nosotros have kind of a squeamish mixture of squares and rectangles. Some of them are all the mode to that. 300% rectangle. Some of them are kind of in the middle, just gives it a overnice randomization, right? Mix this stuff up.

Kyle Hamrick (27:43): We're washed with that and then we can close it up. Then I'd similar to add a little bit more than slide to this, but information technology wouldn't really piece of work if we did it in that aforementioned animator as before. So I'1000 going to duplicate this i. Let'south rename that slide and open this up. All we really demand to alter hither is the position. Let's change that to 500 zero. And then at present this is going to give u.s. a prissy horizontal slide along the path. It's simply kind of upping that randomization kind of making it look like we've virtually got some parallax going on here. Just add some more visual complication, right? Like the previous case, I'd like to add together a little bit of colour randomness to this, merely to make it a little more than interesting. So nosotros could re-create paste it from the previous example where we can build it real quick here.

Kyle Hamrick (28:27): I'll simply indistinguishable my slide, rename this to color, open this up. We can delete the position, add property, fill up colour RGB. Allow's open this upward real quick. We can just alt click to impale that expression. Go ahead and set the correlation to zero. And that's pretty good. Then one time again, we take a nice randomization in the look of the characters, but information technology's very easy to control and to tweak. So we probably could telephone call this done, but I wanted to indicate out a couple of ways that you lot can brand this even more interesting. Obviously you've got this nice path. Yous can take all these characters flow along this path like this. And so real nice way to do sort of a catamenia of particles in a very specific direction. One matter that's absurd about this is you lot have this path here, so you lot can still do other stuff on this.

Kyle Hamrick (29:18): Like you could add consequence generate stroke. Let'due south crank this up then nosotros tin can really come across it. You can use the stroke effect on the path on this layer. Permit'due south fix the castor actually high up to maybe like 200 and the hardness to zero. Let'south ready the opacity down to 14 and then permit'southward make this, I don't know, kind of a warm yellow color. I could probably, I drop her that one, but I'm kind of but eyeballing information technology hither. Maybe for this data flow that nosotros've been kind of making hither. We desire to take something that kind of represents mayhap like the big chunk of data coming through. So this might exist a good way to do it. Y'all could breathing your starting time and end values here. Perchance y'all could animate and from zero up to 100 hither, then you could animate start from zero up to 100 to wipe information technology dorsum off.

Kyle Hamrick (30:15): Let's hitting you to reveal those key frames and y'all'd spend a footling fourth dimension finessing that stop up with something that looks kind of similar this. That's sort of interesting. Maybe non exactly what you want, but it could be an thought. Maybe another interesting way to apply this is actually to reveal the information menstruum. You could set this to reveal original paradigm, crank that opacity back upwards. And y'all know, yous'd probably want to tweak some of your settings a bit, but you could use this as kind of a way to wipe this on and off. That could be interesting. I'm going to become ahead and turn this off. I like that, but I'm going to bear witness you one other idea too. I think this is pretty cool, similar this with this kind of chunky techie feel, just it's as well really like shooting fish in a barrel touch stylize Ruffin edges to make this kind of a blobby cartoony look. And even with merely the stock settings, you can come across you're getting this squeamish kind of swimmy paint glob trail hither. And again, this is all totally controllable. If I wanted to, I could come up in here and just kind of reformat the way this path is curving around.

Kyle Hamrick (31:24): Now it swims this way, or I could have this following a shape, moving around. In that location's all kinds of actually cool possibilities here, because this is essentially an effector setup. It's very easy to tweak the overall wait and motion of this thing without having to do a whole bunch of stuff manually. Hopefully I've gotten you excited to continue exploring these techniques and to expand upon them, yourself, finding new means to arroyo the tools y'all were already using is a slap-up way to freshen things up and perchance help you think differently about a lot of the other tools likewise. If you want to learn more, bank check out the article [email protected] In that location you can download the free projection file, which has all the elements we built today. If y'all want to learn more than about movement design, cheque out all the other great tutorials, podcasts and [email protected] And of grade, if you want to pace up your skills, even further, check out the awesome courses they offer. I've taken auntie aid for several of them, myself, and they really are an excellent way to level up your skills. If y'all'd like to share anything cool, you've created using the text animator like this. Please let the states know in the comments or on our social media channels. And if you have any questions, of class, feel free to send those our way too. Thanks for watching. This has been Kyle Hamrick for school of motion. We'll run across you side by side time.

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Source: https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/mastering-text-animation-expression-controllers-after-effects

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