Animate text with text animators

Animating text with animators and selectors consists of three basic steps:

• Add an animator to specify which properties to animate.

• Use a selector to specify how much each character is affected by the animator.

• Adjust the animator properties.

Note: To always affect all characters in the layer, delete the default selector. In this case, animating a text layer is not much different from animating any other layer.

Usually, you don’t need to set keyframes or expressions for the animator properties. It’s common to only set keyframes or expressions for the selector and specify only the ending values for the animator properties.

For example, to animate opacity gradually from the first character to the last, you can add an animator for Opacity, set the Opacity value (in the Animator property group) to 0, and then set keyframes for the End property of the default selector to 0% at 0 seconds and 100% at a later time.

Animating the opacity of a text layer using the Opacity animator and the End property

You can create elaborate animations using several animators and several selectors, each of which adds its influence to the text animation.

Harry Frank provides a tutorial on animating text with text animators on the Digital Arts Online website: www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_harrytextanimators.

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: www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_cowaftereffects.

1. Select a text layer in the Timeline panel, or select the specific characters that you want to animate in the Composition panel.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Choose Animation > Animate Text and then choose a property from the menu.

     Note: The Enable Per-Character 3D menu item does not add an animator. It adds 3D properties to the layer and to the individual characters, for which you can then add animators.

   • Choose a property from the Animate menu, located in the Switches/Mode column of the Timeline panel.

     

     Animate menu

     
     
3. In the Timeline panel, adjust the animator property values. Often, you simply set the property that you want to animate to its ending value and then use the selectors to control everything else.
4. Expand the Range Selector property group and set keyframes for Start or End properties by clicking the stopwatch for the property and doing one of the following:
   • Set the values for Start and End in the Timeline panel.

     You may find it easier to think in terms of numbers of characters than percentages for the Start and End properties of a range selector. To show these properties in numbers of characters (including spaces), choose Index for Units in the Advanced property group of a range selector.

   • Drag the selector bars in the Composition panel. The pointer changes to the selector movement pointer when it is over the middle of a selector bar.

5. To refine the selection, expand Advanced and specify options and values as desired.

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