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Controllable Font Weights – style.setFont with an Expression Selector
Hi all,
First post here after years of googling and nabbing sections of code!
I’m trying to create a MOGRT with some unique functionality I haven’t seen anywhere else online. Our clients use two weights of font on their Video Captions (which currently they type manually) in order to highlight specific words within the text. So for example, they might like to style:
“The Quick Brown Fox, jumps over the lazy dogs”
as
“The Quick Brown Fox, jumps over the Lazy Dogs“
The solution i’m currently using is a bit of a workaround, based on Jarle Leirpoll’s example in making Mogrts ebook.
string = thisComp.layer("Highlighted Words").text.sourceText.split("+");
result = 0;
for (i = 0; i < string.length; i++){
if (textIndex == parseInt(string[i],10)){
result = 100;
break;
}
}
result
Using this running through an expression selector in the Amount Setting, I can successfully tie this to a stroke width to give the characters a bit of extra thickness based on a simple code in a separate hidden text layer i.e
1+3+4+5+9+10 Applies the effect to the corresponding word. Its quite intuitive for the client to understand.
However this is a bit of a workaround and the font used with the 3.0 stroke weight doesn’t exactly match the other weight of font i’m trying to replicate. Is there a way to combine this method with something like style.setFont so that the highlighted words utilise the correct font weight?
Hopefully that all makes sense!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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10 Replies
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Unfortunately No: After Effects does not allow you to set different Styles to differnt characters/words within a sourceText
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That is unfortunate, as I’m aware there is no way to do this using the Essential Graphics Panel, other than using the faux styles adjustment which affects the entire Source Text?
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Actually, I’m working on something.
I have it working for single and multi-line textlayers, but still some tests to do.Unfortunately it’s not sourcecode I’m willing to share publicly right now, as I’m pondering wether to offer it as a script on aescripts.
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Keep me posted on this too. I’d love to know!
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Either way I’d be very interested!
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Here’s the state I’m at now.
It works perfectly well (though rather slow) inside of After Effects.But unfortunately it’s glitchy as hell once it’s a Mogrt in Premiere:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wprxdr5rzw2ueut/Screen%20Recording%202020-10-06%20at%2022.21.03.mov?dl=0
Quite frustrating as you can tell…
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The “randomly sometimes work” could be caused by using the sourceRectAtTime() on a layer on which you modify the leading, fontsize, fonWeight(basically anything that changes the sourceRectAtTime).
I tried decreasing/increasing a font size until it filled the boxText and had the same behaviour.
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Thanks for the tip Andrei, we can see the numbers (that I visualized to debug) glitching too. Very annoying.
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Wow, Filip this looks great, despite the bugs, functionally this is exactly what I was looking for. I’m too much of a noob when it comes to expressions to help figure out why its glitchy but If you do end up making any progress on this I’d love to see it. Paid Script or otherwise!
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I’m also trying to find the solution for this if there’s a way to do this. I’m in the same boat
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