Duplicating a text rotation/flicker effect in After Effects

[John Cuevas]

That could be done using per text animators. You would create your text, twirl open until you see the “Animate” fly-out and “Enable Per-character 3D”. Now create an animator for “Anchor Point” and move the anchor points Y value so that the anchor point is approximately in the center of the text. Change the Z anchor point to aproxemately 1/3 to 1/2 the text height. Name this Animator “Anchor Point”

Deselect the Anchor Point Animator, Click on the “Animate” flyout and select “Rotation” and change the X rotation to -90.

Now use the “Add” flyout and select “Opacity” and set it to 0

Your video has the characters coming in with random letters, to do that “Add” a character offset and put in some random number.

Now open up the “Range Selector”, open “Advanced” and change “Mode” to “Subtract”. Change “End” to 0% and set a keyframe, move forward in time and change “End” to 100%. Finally Change the “Randomize Order” to On.

If you want your characters to rotate off, you would just need to duplicate “animator 2”, change the X rotation to 90 and reverse the end keyframes.

Here’s a pretty simple project illustrating the techniques. 7055_percharacter3d.aep.zip

Also Andrew Devis has created a bunch of tutorials on Text Animators, you should check them out: After Effects basics tutorials by Andrew Devis, they start at about halfway down the list.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Kevin Slop]

Thank you very much, I appreciate your help very much. I shall check out and learn the tutorials immediately, I believe I need to solidify my understanding of this program.