animating text with photoshop layer styles and motion blur help

[Chad Perkins]

If I understand your problem correctly (and I might be totally misunderstanding here, so take this with a grain of salt), but the problem seems to lie in the render order. The stroke is being applied AFTER the blur, so the blur is being stroked. You need to apply the stroke BEFORE the blur is being applied.

I haven’t seen your project, but would it be possible to apply the stroke (or other effects) on the layer in one composition, then pre-compose that layer, and then apply the blur on the pre-composed layer?

If you’re trying to apply blur using the text animation engine, that method might not work. You may need to go back to Photoshop and apply the effects there. Also, in the After Effects render order, layer styles are one of the last (maybe THE last?) things to get rendered. You might try simulating the layer styles (like stroke) with an effect (like the Stroke effect).

I think this is the official worst forum response ever (I should probably open the application if I’m giving advice in it), but hopefully something in here helped out a little!

[Dean Bergmann]

No, this is using photoshop layer styles, so it’s not an EFFECT being applied, it’s a layer style.

So any time I put on an animator that blurs or scales or fades a layer, i get the effect on the right.

I can’t re-order them as they’re layer styles.

Also, the motion blur applied there is just the standard motion blur layer toggle that you set beside the 3d Layer option.

[Chad Perkins]

I understand that you are referring to layer styles. In Photoshop, each component of a layer style (e.g. drop shadow, bevel and emboss, etc.) is referred to as an effect.

One of the things that I think might work for you is on import (assuming you are using After Effects CS3 or CS4), you can import the footage as a composition and choose the option to Merge Layer Styles into Footage (something like that – you want to NOT choose the option to keep the layer styles editable).

I misunderstood that you weren’t trying to add new layer styles in After Effects, only animate text. This should solve your problem. All the best.

[Julia Salgueiro]

Hi, I know this post is not new, but I am experiencing exactly the same problem.
My text layers have a stroke to them and when I apply a preset like evaporate or any blur, the blur turns solid!
Except that the problematic text layers that I have in my composition are typed in and native to after effects…. The thing is,
I am about to try to replace all of them now (there are several of them) and follow the advice given previously. But it seems rather odd that I must go though all this trouble to solve something apparently this simple. Can’t I really directly apply a stroke to text without losing the ability to apply certain effects in AE, without having to recur to other software like photoshop?

Squiddy