Horizontally slice and offset text?

[Matthew Appleton]

Hi there… new to Creative Cow and messing around with text in After Effects. I found some incredible inspiring type animation by Alex Slobzheninov…

I wanted to ask how I would go about slicing text horizontally (and then pushing it about) a bit like this:

I have tried using a stripy displacement map, but that doesn’t work, gives me this effect:

Any tips much appreciated ☺

Matt

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Matt, is text meant to be in a single layer, or could be exploded into separate letters?

So in other words, whether it should be a procedural edit, available for easy change, or single time execution with custom phrase.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Matthew Appleton]

Hi Tomas — this doesn’t need to be live text necessarily, is that is what you are asking?

So a single word or set of words would be fine.

So far I tried dropping in the words as vector shape mask layer, then applying a displacement map (based on simple stripes)

Problems is that pushes / pulls the slices back and forth, whereas what I am after is a progressive shift outwards of my letterforms. I am wondering if one of the slicing scripts is actually the right answer…?

thanks

Matt

[Oleg Pirogov]

When it comes to splitting, there’s a popular Utility Box script by Voxyde (https://voxyde.com/content/utility-box/ – yes, it’s free). A Grid feature there “cuts” a layer into peaces* placing each peace in a separate layer. Moving them is up to you.

Technically, for each peace it has the original layer pre-comped and then masked to the piece.

[Matthew Appleton]

thanks very much for the tip Oleg!

Next problem I have is moving them (as you correctly pointed out!) — is there any way of moving all these separate layers according to one controller, say on a radial gradient basis?

So layers in the middle move more than those at the edges?

[Oleg Pirogov]

>is there any way of moving all these separate layers according to one controller, say on a radial gradient basis?

That’s exactly what Linked->Radial feature does. There will be two Null layers with various controls. On one you can change Position and on the other – Transition Completion. Grid_Transition_Helper layer contains the actual gradient.

[Matthew Appleton]

Hey Oleg

— just wanted to say a big thanks, that script is definitely starting to pay dividends…

I haven’t managed to get ‘radial’ working yet, but by feathering a linear ‘split’ I am starting to get the kind of progressive offsetting I was hoping for…

Matt

[Matthew Appleton]

Further update — the slice technique is pretty interesting, but looks like these guys have pretty much nailed it… not entirely got my head around how time displacement works yet, but it certainly does the trick!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF-xVGxBOiY

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