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How do you animate text tracking in AE 6.5?
Hey all, is there any way to animate text tracking? I want the space between the letters widen, without changing the size of the actual letters.
Thanks so much for your help.
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4 Replies
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Just type your text, in the timeline twirl it open and you’ll see “Animate” with a popup triangle next to it, choose tracking there and you get the property so you can key-frame it.
Please read the manual-section regarding animating text, because a lot has changed in After Effects’ text-capabilities since 5.5 -
You need to apply TWO text animator properties for total control of tracking when using the Text Tool in AE6.5 .
Take note that a Text Layer’s Transform property for Anchor Point has no effect for applying the anchor for a tracking procedure.
Apply the Tracking Animator to control the amount of tracking. However tracking is anchored to the left of your text. To have the anchor anywhere else, you will need the second Animator, Line Anchor. There are 3 values you should be interested in here – 0% (anchored left), 50% (centrally anchored) adn 100% (anchored right). Of course you could make things more interesting by animating the line Anchor property.
Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files -
The tracking is not always calculated from the left, it depends on your paragraph alignment.
Setting the text to center would give the most predectable results IMO.I had never used the Line Anchor property before, and I must say: it gives interesting results, allmost like parallax movement when you shift it around in combination with tracking.
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Hi Filip, I see what you’re getting at. But the paragraph alignment doesn’t allow for keyframes. I see the paragraph alignment more to set a text layer’s contents – for a single paragraph alignment type (see next para for more info). For animation purposes, I feel that it is more intuitive to use the Text Animators.
Further, if you have a text layer with two or more paragraphs with differing alignment settings, you will still require Line Anchor to dictate the anchor for the tracking motion – for all the paragraphs. Otherwise, tracking will default to the center.
Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files
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