Animating 3d Text Overlap

[Filip Vandueren]

Looks to me like you’re only using the “square” selector. Try using “ramp up” or “ramp down”,
and a world of possibilities will open for you 🙂

[Rex Polanis]

I am using square and I’ve tried ramp up and ramp down, but that’s where I am having trouble. When I’ve tried ramp up and ramp down the animation doesn’t complete the cycle. It doesn’t end at 100%. NO matter where I place the final key frame, the animation ends with the letters not all at the same Z position.

One man with courage makes a majority.

Canon 7D
Adobe CC Master Suite
Digital Juice
Video Copilot

[Filip Vandueren]

When you use Ramp up or Down, you should keyframe the Offset parameter, not the start and end percentages.

[Rex Polanis]

I’ve done that too, with the same result. I’ll upload some screen shots of my settings tomorrow when I get back to the office. I’m sure I’m missing something.

One man with courage makes a majority.

Canon 7D
Adobe CC Master Suite
Digital Juice
Video Copilot

[Filip Vandueren]

It really isn’t explained very well in the manuals I find…

example:

“THIS IS LONG TEXT”

say I want to apply an effect (Z-position in your case ?) on that text,
but I want it to spread out over about 4 characters:
The text is 17 characters long I think, so let’s say that’s 25% of the text-layer.

Create a Text animator (per character 3D enabled)
– Push Z position forward as you want the end result to be

Go into Animator -> Range Selector -> Advanced
– Set Shape to “Ramp Down”
– Keep Range start at 0%
– Set Range End to 25%

Immediately you should see a ramp: The first letter T should be all the way pushed out, while the subsequent letters H, I, S are gradually less pushed out, the rest of the string is at it’s original position.

Now if you set offset to -25 -> everything is at its original position.
Set offset at 100% -> everything should be at its final position (affected by your animator’s Z-position push)

Just animate the offset from -25 to 100% over time and you get a left to right sweep of your effect. With the effect from start to finish.
Adjust Ease High and Low to change the animation per character of moving form 0% to 100% affected from a linear animation to an eased animation…

[Rex Polanis]

Wow! That did the trick! Thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate it. I’ve been trying to figure this out for almost a week now. I’ll post the final result in a day or so, once it renders.

One man with courage makes a majority.

Canon 7D
Adobe CC Master Suite
Digital Juice
Video Copilot

[Rex Polanis]

Ok, so now the render is taking over 120 hours to complete?

The last time I rendered the project it only took about 3 hours. The only setting that’s changed since then is the ramp down setting?

Do you have any suggestions? Thanks

One man with courage makes a majority.

Canon 7D
Adobe CC Master Suite
Digital Juice
Video Copilot

[Filip Vandueren]

Are you rendering on a Mac laptop? They can be very fidhety about sometimes rendering 3D with, but often Without hardware acceleration.
Restart your computer and only start up After Effects and try to render again.
(You can check in the preferences if the hardware acceleration is active)
Without GPU, after effects 3D ray tracing is hopelessly slow.
That’s the only explanation I have

[Rex Polanis]

I have a Windows 7 PC, Ae CC 2014, with GPU hardware accelerator turned on in Ae and Media Encoder. It’s strange that what once took 3 hours now takes 120? I’ll keep playing with.

Thanks so much the help though. I really appreciate it.

One man with courage makes a majority.

Canon 7D
Adobe CC Master Suite
Digital Juice
Video Copilot

[Filip Vandueren]

I wonder, if you disable the extrusion depth (just as a test) or maybe even use the classic 3D engine,
Would the two different types of animation also have a different rendering time? It would be just minutes instead of hours, and you can’t use the results, but I’m just curious…