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adding a “cursor” to animated text (using the “Typewriter” preset)
While I absolutely love the text animation presets introduced After Effects 6.5, I must admit that I am completely baffled by them. I have absolutely NO idea about how to create my own, and even just tweaking the existing settings in order to customize one of the animations seems scary to me. When I have tried altering the existing effects, it isn’t long before I’ve made a mess.
I’m wondering how I might create an automated “cursor” to work in conjunction with the “Typewriter” text animation preset (under “Animate In”). I tried looking into making modifications to the “Underscore” preset in the “Mechanical” set, but I was not getting the desired results. I want exactly what the “Typewriter” preset gives me, but I want a solid, rectangular “cursor” to precede each letter as it appears. Pretty much what you would see in a Unix terminal window as you are typing, or something like that. I want the cursor to be part of the text animation as opposed to “faking it” so that I can then repurpose the preset over and over with different source text. Or maybe it needs to be done with an expression. But like I said, since I don’t really understand how the text “animators” work, I don’t know where to begin. I know I could animate a solid by hand to achieve the desired effect, but I don’t want to have to do that over and over again if I want to replicate this effect with numerous titles.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions! 🙂
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3 Replies
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The preset “Word Processor” (AE 6.5) under “Multi-Line text” looks like what you want.
But I can’t get the cursor to blink like it does in the Gallery of Test Animations.
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Hi
[yikesmikes] “But I can’t get the cursor to blink like it does in the Gallery of Test Animations”press the spacebar at the end of the word and add another letter!
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Thanks for pointing me toward the “Word Processor” preset since that is closer to what I’m looking for. But I’d still like to ask a few questions about it. I spent some time analyzing the settings after I applied the animation preset, and I’m starting to understand some of it (I think).
There is a “Slider Control” (an expression control effect) named “Type-On” that is used by the various expressions that drive this animation preset. I have determined that the slider value controls the “Offset (By Index)” values that reveal the source text as well as animate the “cursor” character. By adding one more character to my source text string than necessary, I can set the end keyframe for the Type-On property to the length of my text string minus one. That way the cursor remains and blinks after typing the desired text string as seen in the Gallery of text animation presets. My question is:
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