• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Is it possible to link Text fields to expressions

  Posted by Richard Squires on December 21, 2007 at 5:42 am

  I am trying to figure out an elegant way to set up an AE project for a promo rundown that allows an inexperienced operator to type in team names and time into an adjustment layer and for these text changes to be linked to animated text layers in the project.

  I would love to be able to set up a series of text changers in the adjustment layer for say team 1 then team 2 then time of show. Does this make sense. Essentially I’d like an expression container that allows for text to be changed.

  Is this possible or is there another way to do this.

  Doug Nash replied 18 years, 4 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Filip Vandueren

  December 21, 2007 at 2:53 pm

  The only way to do this would be by pick whipping the source-Text property of your text-layer to that of another text-layer.
  You can put that ‘parent’-layer to be changed in another composition if you like, so they only need to type it into a “harmless” comp where they can’t move anything else.

  The problem with text-expressions is:
  Only the “text” gets copied. Meaning: if the font, color, kerning, weight etc. is changed in the original, the copy does not change, only the words get copied over.

  Perhaps if there’s no fancy animation, just fading/scaling, moving of the entire text-layer, you might just precompose the words and edit the precomps.
• 

  Doug Nash

  January 8, 2008 at 4:59 am

  You know, I’ve had limited success with this sort of thing, myself. It is a simple matter to pick-whip the text layer, and have that update from the parent, but indeed once you kern or change colors, all bets are off.

  Has anyone created any kind of custom script which might overcome these shortcomings of the basic pick-whip system?

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up