Can’t get “Emerge” Preset to work on text

[Steve Roberts]

Try making your text with stroke, no fill, and set the stroke width to zero in the character palette.

[James Moore]

thank you. that worked. but what do i do if i don’t want to end up with a font with outlines and no fill?

[Steve Roberts]

Tricky. It seems that the effect depends on animating the stroke width to get the text to appear.
You could add an opacity animator instead, or use a preset that does the same thing … but it wouldn’t be the same.

I think you’d like to see an effect that animates the simple choker from a positive value down to zero, but for each letter. AE can’t animate that automatically, so you’d have to create separate letters and animate the simple choker property for each. Not automatic by any means, but i think its the look you want.

Anybody else?

[Blake Tucker]

After some intense thinking, I came up with this solution. Basically the idea of the “emerge” effect is to draw the whole letter by ramping up the fill as if it were stroke width. Since the latter ends up creating an outline with the preset, I thought you could mimic the effect by using two layers: one to fade in the filled letters, and the other to subtract the outline of the letter over the top. Here’s my fix, which doesn’t require much effort.

1) Apply the effect to your text. Duplicate the text layer in your comp.
2) On the lower layer: add an animator for fill opacity and delete the stroke width animator. This layer’s text should have fill but no stroke. (Set the animator to 0%)
3) On the upper layer: This layer’s text should have stroke but no fill. Adjust the stroke width animator so that it’s approximately a full letter at the end of the effect. Then set the mode to Subtract and Shape to Ramp Down.
4) Set the lower layer to have the upper as its Alpha Inverted Matte.

Let me know if it works for you!

[Doog Vandi]

4 years after the questions was raised.. I am sure there are more people that are like me with the same problem.

Anyways, I was able to figure out that this preset uses stroke width to initially hide the characters and then over time reduces to the stroke width to 0 so that the actual character fill may be visible.

Now a few gothas:
1. make sure that the background color is the same as the stroke color that will enable the characters to hide at the beginning of the animation.
2. make sure that you set the “Stroke over Fill” property next to Stroke Width option in your character panel (does not work if the “Fill over Stroke” option is selected.
3. Does not work if you apply ramp or other effect that is applied to the layer property i.e. ramp, colorista, etc.

Hope this helps other like me.

[Laura Sobrado]

Hello! I’m also trying to get the Emerge preset to work and my text is black on a white background. I’ve tried several times different solutions posted in these forums, I’ve even had my supervisor (who’s a graphic designer) try but we can’t get the preset to work. Could anyone possibly take a screen video of you applying the preset so that I can find what I’m doing wrong? If time is an issue, I’m willing to pay for your help!
Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from anyone

[Laura Sobrado]

Oh my god, I just figured it out. There was another setting applied to the text I was using which is why it didn’t work the first time. Thank you for your help!

[Niel Jorgen]

See “Blake Tuckers” description above. It works and its simply brilliant.
I added a 100 to 0 opacity, so as to fade out the effect as it finishes but kudos to Blake.
This is no doubt the best way to handle the workaround on the Emerge text plug-in.

[Caroline Graves]

It seems we revisit this every 4 years – how often does brigadoon reappear in the movie?

I just made a minor tweak and it works like a charm. Then I saved it as a user preset and done.

So. The Puck Solution is:

1. Add “Emerge” to the text in question
2. Open the Stroke Width Animator
3. Click Add>Property>Fill Color
4. Set Fill Opacity to 0%

Should now work like a charm.

For those who aren’t familiar with saving the new preset:
1. click Animator – Stroke Width
2. Animation – Save Animation Preset…

Now 100% of the time — it works every time.
No need to match background and text color or create alphas.

See y’all in 4 years!