• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Split letters from source text and randomize

  Posted by Tom Theys on August 22, 2013 at 11:24 am

  Hi guys,

  I’m not that good with expressions, and I would like to do the following.

  I would like to split every letter from a word, and then show each letter every 5 frames. I know how to split the word, and just show 1 letter from it, but now I want each letter to show every 5 frames (and loop maybe).

  I got this so far in my Source text:

  letters = “design”;
  split_letters = letters.split(“”)[0];

  So this shows the first letters, [1] would be the seconds, and so on. I think I have to count the total letters, and output that split_letters, and then add a time interval.

  Thanks!

  Tom Theys replied 13 years ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  August 22, 2013 at 5:22 pm

  Since a string is already treated as a array, you don’t need to split it. This should work:

  letters = “design”;
  dur = 5; // frames per letter
  idx = Math.floor(timeToFrames(time)/dur)%letters.length;
  letters[idx]

  Dan
• 

  Tom Theys

  August 22, 2013 at 5:33 pm

  Thanks Dan! Works perfect!
• 

  Tom Theys

  September 5, 2013 at 1:15 pm

  Another question, how do I start the script at a specific frame, for example frame 15?
  Sliding the layer in time doesn’t work. I tried adding this, but that doesn’t work neither.

  if (time > .6) {
  letters = “design”;
  dur = 7; // frames per letter
  idx = Math.floor(timeToFrames(time)/dur)%letters.length;
  letters[idx];
  }

  The generated character are linked to an animation that starts at frame 15. So it starts with the letter s and not d, it skips the first two characters.
• 

  Dan Ebberts

  September 5, 2013 at 5:34 pm

  Maybe like this:

  tStart = 15*thisComp.frameDuration;
  if (time > tStart) {
  letters = “design”;
  dur = 7; // frames per letter
  idx = Math.floor(timeToFrames(time-tStart)/dur)%letters.length;
  letters[idx];
  }else “”

  Dan
• 

  Tom Theys

  September 5, 2013 at 7:32 pm

  Thanks Dan, I will try that.

  I kind of fixed it for now with this

  letters = “design”;
  dur = 7; // frames per letter
  idx = Math.floor(timeToFrames(time – framesToTime(15))/dur)%letters.length;
  if (time > framesToTime(15))
  letters[idx]
  else
  letters[0]

  This shows the first letter until the animation starts.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up