3D spiraling text and explosion

[D Langley]

Hi Rob, I had replied to your post at CG Talk, perhaps you haven’t rechecked there. Anyway, the short answer is yes AE can do spiraling text.

There is a tutorial on this site by Joe Chao which does a spiraling text thing. However, each text string is a flat plane. Here’s the link:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=1&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/chao_joe/textstream/index.html

If you are looking for text where individual characters flow smoothly around curves, up and down slopes and even changes in pitch, I may have your solution. I am currently finalizing a tutorial for creating such true 3D text. My “Ribbon” text flows beautifully around any motion path including a spiral, and it is true 3D in that it will flow around other 3D layers in the scene.

Considering you intend to explode the text, the shatter effect may work. It can give depth to the text (if you require it) and do the exploding. Shatter can use a comp camera, but I am not sure yet if it can do exactly what you want. Do you want the letters to remain intact but blow out in all directions? or do you want the individual letters to break apart and blow out in all directions?

Either way, I will run a test of applying shatter to my work and see how it looks. I will post a reply and let you know what happens.

As for my tutrial, I have contacted the folks here at the Cow and hope to publish it on this site very soon.

Dave

[D Langley]

Looks like shatter isn’t going to cut it easily if at all. However, I think an expression solution is in order. I have an interesting idea but will need to check it out first.

[D Langley]

Gee it looks like I’m talking to myself, but after experimenting with a couple of expressions, exploding the letters at the top of a spiral is workable. So long as you want the individual characters to remain intact. What I have done so far will need some tweaking however. As the solution is tied into my tutorial, which will be appearing here on the Cow soon, I cannot provide specifics yet. I hope you are not in a time crunch.

[Rorkdude]

Hi,

Sorry about the late reply. I’ve been a bit busy the last week and didn’t have time to (re)check all the forums…..
I’ll hope I have the time to wait for your tutorial, i’m very interested in how you solved things, but I’m not sure if I have to fall back on real 3D if something has to be created very soon.

Will keep a close eye on the tutorial corner,

thanks for all the replies,

rob

[D Langley]

Glad you had a chance to check back. I am putting final touches on the tutorial text and just shot some green screen footage to use in the demo movie for the tutorial. I hope to submit it later this week.

I have had some luck with the exploding text and will share the expression code with you when I get it finalized. It may however require adjustment to suit your particular needs, but the good news it it can be done in AE.

[Rorkdude]

Hi,

Sorry about the late reply again. Will eagerly await your tutorial to see how it’s done 🙂

Thanks for taking the time for this, I know how much time a tutorial can take..

rob

[Rorkdude]

Hi,

Just found your tutorial in the CCNewsletter. I just wanted to give you a -big- thanks on making the time to write down the tutorial, I know this takes a lot of time to do. I’m gonna tear it apart to get some more insights on scripting, as this is not my strongest point (yet)…. 😉

Thanks for making me go out the door a bit sooner some days,

Rob

[D Langley]

Glad to be of help. I have not revisited the explosion aspect of this lately, but I was having some success, when I had to drop it and do a couple of matte paintings. Are you still in need of the exploding letters?

[Rorkdude]

HI,

Sorry for the late reply, its been hectic. If you have the time I would appreciate anything regarding exploding text in AE, esp. on a path.

cheers,

rob

[D Langley]

I haven’t done too much with it lately, so I will need to pull it together. As I recall he basic concept was there but it needed tweaking. I will post what I have.

Dave