Can’t create a paragprah text with several lines…

[Robert Headrick]

Check your leading value in the Character palette (should be in the center on the right side of the screen if you’re using the Standard workspace layout). If it’s set to “0” or some other small number, then it’s not allowing for any space between lines. Change it to “Auto” and try typing something.

[Esther Casas]

Robert! thank you so much, it worked! couldn’t see that setting…

another question…I am doing a scrolling text (ending credits), and it’ every very long…i am doing it with keyframes in position and is fine. But when you have a super long text…do you use several compositions and you add them together or you use one comp that is going to be very long? If I am planning to use a single comp…I think it will be a problem as your position start point is way too far…meaning you will not see it in your screen unless you really zoom out a lot..I hope I am making myself clear…I just like to know how I am suppose to be setting up the whole text, I am assuming with several compositions and adding together so I can see my position keyframes?

Thank you again!!!

[Robert Headrick]

No need to worry about keyframes. There’s an easier way to set up a credit roll.

1. Create an expression for the Position value of your credit layer, and paste this into it:

rate = 6; //value in px/sec.
value – [0,rate*timeToFrames(time)]

2. Navigate to the point on the timeline where you want the credits to start
3. At that point, position your layer so that it’s just below the bottom edge of your frame (note: if you move your anchor point to the very top of the layer, that will make repositioning a little easier with larger layers)
3. To make the credits go faster or slower, edit the “rate” value within the expression (this controls how many pixels per second your layer will move)

Note: Use even numbers when adjusting the rate if there’s ever any chance of your footage being interlaced in future deliverables.

(For reference, I didn’t come up with the expression, I found it here. But, I found several of the steps to be unnecessary, at least in the little bit of testing I did just now)

[Esther Casas]

thank you R, but sorry my ignorance..what do you mean with creating an “expression”? can’t find it in the position…i can only create keyframes…?

[Robert Headrick]

When you reveal the Position properties, instead of clicking on the stopwatch like you would to create a keyframe, hold down Alt and click on it. This will open up an expression for that value. The default value will be “transform.position” in the case of a Position property, and the text will be highlighted; as soon as you either type something in or paste in the expression you copied from somewhere else, it will replace that default expression. When you’ve finished entering the expression, you need to close it either by hitting the Enter key on the numpad (note: hitting Return will *not* close the expression, it will jump down to a new line within the expression!) or by clicking anywhere outside of the expression box.

Expressions are basically scripts that operate solely within a particular value of a layer in After Effects. They’re based off of Javascript and can do more complex things by interacting with other layers and performing mathematical calculations to dynamically change the value of a property without having to manually keyframe it.

In the case of this expression, the first line

rate = 6; //value in px/sec.

is creating a variable called “rate” that holds a value of whatever you edit that number to be (to edit an expression, just twirl down the property containing it and click on the text of the expression in the timeline). The second line

value – [0,rate*timeToFrames(time)]

is telling After Effects to set the x and y values of the Position property relative to the variable you created.

[Esther Casas]

Robert! this was a great explanation, thank you! I tried and yes, put your two lines in the expression in the text, so:

rate = 6; //value in px/sec
value – [0,rate*timeToFrames(time)]

but what this does is putting my text way to far from my frame, when I zoom out my comp i see that my text is now scrolling but outside of the comp, it basically went all the way up in position. So what i did was to set up the Y value to positive(as it was negative).
what i don’t understand is how you got to number 6 for rate and what the second line is telling to do….I guess i will save these two lines every time I have to scroll a text…

Now, should I do exactly the same expression for each comp then? if you want all your text to move at the same rate, the expression should be the same for all the comps I am adding? I have a very loooong text separated into 320 different comps, i will put one after teh other with this same expression, correct?

thanks Robert! you are a great teacher!!

[Robert Headrick]

320 comps is a lot!! I think it’s going to be easier on you if you simplify that down into one single comp. It can be done this way with multiple comps, if you feel it’s necessary – what you’ll need to do is parent them all to one main comp that will have the expression, and then they’ll all move relative to that one. But it seems like an unnecessary extra step to me. If you have Photoshop, what might be a nice solution for you would be to create your credits as a .psd file. This can be imported directly into AE without needing to even create a text layer. You’ll have the added bonus of being able to just update the .psd file and reload the footage in AE if you ever need to make changes (this is basically just making AE relink to the file by right-clicking it in the Project pane and selecting “Reload Footage”).

As far as the expression moving your layer to somewhere you don’t want it to be, that shouldn’t be an issue at all, unless I’m misunderstanding something about how your layer is structured. When you first apply the expression, what it will do is begin scrolling from the original position of the layer (wherever it was placed before you applied the expression), from the first frame of the comp – remember, the position is now being controlled by an equation that is based on the “time” value of where you’re at in your composition. That’s a key thing… so if you’re looking at it at, say, 45 seconds into the comp when you apply the expression, everything is going to look like it just moved, because you’re essentially looking at it after it’s already been scrolling for 45 seconds. What you can do then is manually move it back down into place so that the scrolling starts at that point instead of at the beginning of the comp. If you have an extremely long composition and you’re adding the credits at the very end, then what you’ll notice is that it moves the layer way, way up because the time value is already so large.

One way around this would be to precomp your layer. That way you can apply the expression within the precomp, and then it’s totally fine if it starts scrolling from the first frame, because now you can just drop the precomp into your main composition and move it so that it begins at the exact point you want your credit roll to start.

Hope that makes sense. I feel like I’m getting really wordy now… if this is still confusing, maybe send me your project file so I can take a look at what issues you’re experiencing.

[Robert Headrick]

320 comps is a lot!! I think it’s going to be easier on you if you simplify that down into one single comp. It can be done this way with multiple comps, if you feel it’s necessary – what you’ll need to do is parent them all to one main comp that will have the expression, and then they’ll all move relative to that one. But it seems like an unnecessary extra step to me. If you have Photoshop, what might be a nice solution for you would be to create your credits as a .psd file. This can be imported directly into AE without needing to even create a text layer. You’ll have the added bonus of being able to just update the .psd file and reload the footage in AE if you ever need to make changes (this is basically just making AE relink to the file by right-clicking it in the Project pane and selecting “Reload Footage”).

As far as the expression moving your layer to somewhere you don’t want it to be, that shouldn’t be an issue at all, unless I’m misunderstanding something about how your layer is structured. When you first apply the expression, what it will do is begin scrolling from the original position of the layer (wherever it was placed before you applied the expression), from the first frame of the comp – remember, the position is now being controlled by an equation that is based on the “time” value of where you’re at in your composition. That’s a key thing… so if you’re looking at it at, say, 45 seconds into the comp when you apply the expression, everything is going to look like it just moved, because you’re essentially looking at it after it’s already been scrolling for 45 seconds. What you can do then is manually move it back down into place so that the scrolling starts at that point instead of at the beginning of the comp. If you have an extremely long composition and you’re adding the credits at the very end, then what you’ll notice is that it moves the layer way, way up because the time value is already so large.

One way around this would be to precomp your layer. That way you can apply the expression within the precomp, and then it’s totally fine if it starts scrolling from the first frame, because now you can just drop the precomp into your main composition and move it so that it begins at the exact point you want your credit roll to start.

Also, as for where the 6 came from for the rate, that’s just a value that I thought looked nice when I tested it very quickly while I was writing the post. The comment in the expression is actually inaccurate, I just realized – it actually should say pixels per *frame*, not pixels per *second*. 6 pixels per frame means that a single small line of text will move from the very bottom of the comp to the very top of the comp in about 5 seconds on a 1280×720 frame (720 pixels tall, divided into 6 pixel increments is 120, divided by 24 frames per second, is 5 seconds).

Hope this makes sense! I feel like I’m getting really wordy now, which might just be confusing you more. If this doesn’t help you out, maybe send me a copy of your project file so I can see what’s causing issues for you.

[Robert Headrick]

Ahhhh… sorry for the double-post! Thought I was editing my previous one instead of creating a new one entirely. Disregard the first one, the second one is identical but also attempts to answer your question about the rate value.

[Esther Casas]

hey R! not 320, but 20 comps!! 320 will be waaay too many! ha!

thanks for the tip, yes, i think i will make pre-comp of the 20 comps and parent to a null that has the expression. i will let you know how that goes…
not wordy, you are helping me a lot Robert, be as wordy as you need to be, hope i am not making you to be more wordy than normal…