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Letter Combination Animation
I’m seeking the best way to create letter combinations of 3 at a very quick rate. I’ve done many different versions, all versions were to too time consuming in changing the different combinations. My client wants a version where the letters can be easily changed and produced at a quick rate. Theirs over 17000 different letter combinations. I need the letters to cycle threw a-z then each land on a letter until all combinations has been made. i currently have a project set up 480×320, 24 frames per second with a vertical text layer a-z that has an offset effect. the letters are scaled up to reveal only one letter at a time. i set a keyframe on the offset effect to animate on the y axis at 0 seconds and another at 3 seconds. (50.0,0.0) i set another keyframe at 5 seconds (50.0,0.7000) the same at 8 seconds and then i repeat the process by adding 5000 more to the y axis every go around. this layer was duplicated to have 3 sets of letters horizontally with just the beginning offset a bit different so that the letter animation begins with a different letter. i also added a directional blur so that when it cycles it blurs.to do this for every combination will be to time consuming. My client wants something that isn’t time consuming. Is there anything I can i do to speed up this process using this same process or a different type of animation? it has to be a rendered video of all combinations.
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8 Replies
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In other words your client wants something complex and difficult for a cheap price. Sounds familiar… I wonder whether you might use the Text Animation tool, and the Character Offset. I think this would be random though, so you may have to dive in to expressions to get the exact control over which characters display.
If you check out this thread on the COW and go to Darby Edelen’s post, you’ll find something which will probably do the trick:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/975198
However, it may just be as time consuming as the method you’re currently using, and you’ll have to give your client the bad news.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I’m not sure why you’d have a client that would ever need something like this. But I figured out an easy way to do it. Here are all 17,576 frames. At 24fps it’s 12 hours, 12 minutes, and 7 frames long. I hope you’re not intending to actually render it! It’s hard to check out, but it seems like it’s accurate. I did notice a mistake from using 23.976 instead of a pure 24fps. It starts on aaa, ends on zzz, and at certain points like azz it’ll change to baa (frame 676 By the way).
So, since I’ve gone to the trouble to figure it out, can you please explain why anyone would ever need this? Haha, I’m dying to know.
You can download a project file here. I’ll leave it up for a while in my Dropbox.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/80cgbrn66c6pvgt/3LetterCombos.aep?dl=0Joe Clay
Workbench.tv -
I should note that the 23.976fps mistake was corrected. The linked version should be exact without any omissions or repeats. Also, I hope you can use this and charge them like you had to key in all 17K of them by hand. And if you did, I have paypal, haha. 😉
Joe Clay
Workbench.tv -
Also, if you need them to blur past, I’d just fake it with a few extra layers and some directional blur. 😉 Obviously I got you all the combinations, the rest is up to you!
Joe Clay
Workbench.tv -
I really wish I could edit my posts.
There’s also this excellent old tutorial by Creative Cow legend Aaron Rabinowitz that might help for a more complex animation: https://vimeo.com/38563795
I still can’t believe you need to render all the frames out! You might want to figure that part out first. It’ll be harder if you need to see all 12+ hours of it (or more if it’s more than one frame per combination). A five frame animation for each combo would be 61 hours long. :/
Joe Clay
Workbench.tv -
Thank You Joe, The letters was for some sort of game that was going to be combined with a story which hasn’t been revealed to me. I didn’t get all the details because im no longer on the project but it was recently changed after the client decided to simplify it. Thank You for your hard work. I appreciate the help.
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Also wanted to add that i saw and used that tutorial first before coming here for help. Haven’t seen your file because you have a higher version of after effects than me but thank you again.
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Interesting. No problem, sorry, I think I’m on the latest version! I saved it back a version in case you want to check it out. It sounds like a project it’s better to not be involved in. 🙂
Joe Clay
Workbench.tv
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