• Adobe After Effects

  Create Translucent Boxed Text Effect

  Posted by Isabel Farrington on June 20, 2018 at 3:11 pm

  Hi all,

  I’m relatively new to AE (please go easy on me!) & have been scouring the web to find an answer to this. Figured I would try my luck here.

  I’m trying to create a typical boxed text effect (that changes based on the length of the text inputed), and went with the technique here as a quick go-to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD5xw9m-sc4. However, I need to be able to change the opacity of the box color so it creates a translucent box effect. I’ve have tried changing the opacity of the fill color- but it doesn’t have an effect. Any idea on how to achieve this?

  I’ve also tried creating the same effect with expressions, but it’s my understanding that you need a monospaced font for it to work, and the client I’m doing this for has a specific (non-monospace) font/style guide that I have to adhere to.

  Any help would be much appreciated.

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  Steve Bentley replied 8 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Lee Adamson

  June 21, 2018 at 2:15 am

  I think this is a drawback of this solution.

  I would use this method to create your box behind text visual, you then have full control of the box and all its properties.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVliDoNgoCg

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  Steve Bentley

  June 21, 2018 at 4:28 am

  Put another way – because the text is controlling the box anything you do to the text will affect the box, so reducing the opacity of the box means you need to also reduce the opacity of the text – but then you will have weakly translucent text.
  Why not just add another layer that is text only on top and link the source of the text in the box (with the pickwhip) to the new text only layer and then you have full control over each.

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