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Animate font to look as it is being written
I have seen the tutorial before in animating a signature to make it look like it is being written, but is it also possible to do that for a font to look as it is being written? THanks.
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4 Replies
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yes
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Signature or font, it’s the same technique.
There is no information contained within a font or typeface that allows us to write it on any other way. That would be nice, but face it, the biggest buyers of fonts (print designers) don’t need to write them on.
We AE folk have to approach the type as a graphic, manually using the write-on effect, or drawing masks and applying the Stroke effect … as indicated in the various tutorials. No shortcut, sorry.
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What program would you suggest to use to animate a font?
can you briefly describe what animating Chinese calligraphy would entail? or if there is a tutorial I can refer to?
THANKS AE folks! -
Use After Effects.
Look for the “signature” tutorial here on the COW. The process for Chines calligraphy would the same as for Roman text: it’s all about revealing the strokes.
Apply the Stroke effect to the text layer and draw an open mask (a line, straight or curved) along the center of a stroke. Set the Stroke effect to “reveal original” and animate its end parameter from 0 to 100. This should reveal the stroke — adjust the stroke width.
Repeat for the other strokes in the text.If you have a lot of text on a layer, you have a lot of work ahead of you. As I wrote, there’s no automated way to do it, since fonts do not contain any information on how to animate their strokes.
If you have a lot of text, consider faking it by using the Gradient Wipe effect, using an image of a fractal noise pattern or a precomposed layer with Fractal Noise applied. Animate the transition completion to reveal the text.
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