How do you animate Text on a 3D carousel circle

[Kevin Camp]

cc cylinder is an effect that can wrap a layer into a cylinder. it will work on text layers, it will function in ae’s 3d world and camera systems if you have a 3d carousel built in ae. you have control over rotation and radius and a basic lighting system.

it is a statndard effect in cs3, but was bundled with ae pro for last several versions, so there is a good chance you have it… if you have a pre cs3 pro version, and it is not in the effects menu, look on the install disk in the extras folder for a folder called cycore… it’s part of that package.

essentially just apply the plugin and it will wrap your text into a cylinder… you can set it to only render the outside (front) and you can easily animate the y rotation. the lighting may be enough to tcreate the falloff you are looking for, if not you will need to use a separate layer as a track matte, using a mask to ‘crop’ the matte layer and feathering the edges to give you the faded edges you mentioned.

that should probably get you close….

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Antoni Jones]

This article might also help:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/dewaele_tielman/simple_ring.php

-Regards

[Mike Clasby]

If you want the text to have the curvature of the ring, go with the first two suggestions. But if you want flat text (or any regular flat layers really), there’s a script to automate all, takes a few minutes (if you’ve done it before).

First you need to download the script before you open AE.

1) Get script

Here’s the script, “createCylinder”, distributes the selected layers around a cylindrical shape (using expressions):

https://www.nabscripts.com/Downloads/downloads_en_1.php?id=6

Choose the createCylinder, I think the page opens with createCube, you want the one just below that.

Download the .zip file, then unzip it, then copy the .jsx to your Scripts Folder (Programs>Adobe>AfterEffects>Support>Scripts).

2) Create you four text layers with the text Tool.

Note text has it’s anchor point in the lower left corner of the layer, so it will be positioned and scale from there. To get it to scale from the middle, move the anchor point to the middle of the text with the Pan Behind Tool (in the Tools Palette, looks like a little game sight, it’s nest to the right of the Zoom Tool).
Stack the text layers in front of each other, all in the middle of the screen.

3) Create Cylinder for Carousel with a script.

Then startup AE, and Select all four of the text layers you made above (it will make them 3D for you, but it’s OK if they’re already 3D). Then click File>Run Script>choose “createCylinder” (you might have to navigate to the Presets Folder). The first parameter corresponds to the number of layers per level, so type in 4 for your example. If you have a smaller number here than the number of layer you apply the script to, they’ll start to stack up above, so 4 is the number you want. The second is the Radius (rayon, French) of the cylinder. I made that 200 for a 200 pixel radius. You can change these numbers later if you mess up, there are sliders on the Null to change as needed.

Now click Create (Creer).

It makes the layers 3D, arranging them in a cylinder, parented to a control layer (Null). Rotate or change position with keyframes of the Null to animate the cylinder.

Note: You can get all his Scripts (29 so far) with the zip in the paragraph above on that same page.

4) Opacity Fade with distance from Camera.

First you need to add a camera, or the expression will break, make sure your at the beginning of the timeline when you add the camera. Layer, new Camera, I chose the default 50mm camera.

This expression from Dan Ebberts on Opacity should do the trick you asked for. To apply the expression, Copy the expression below, Alt-Click the Opacity stopwatch, Paste. Here’s the expression:

C = thisComp.activeCamera;
startFade = 700;
endFade = 1200;
d = length(toWorld(anchorPoint),C.toWorld([0,0,0]));
linear(d,startFade,endFade,100,0)

Change the “startFade = 700” and “endFade = 1200” as needed. The way it’s setup now, with 700 and 1200, it will go from 100% opacity to 24% opacity as the layers revolve if the radius of the carousel is 200 pixels. So if you used the script above and set the radius to 200 then your revolving fade should be good.

To apply to many layers at once, do the above to one, then select the expression (select the Opacity) then Edit>Copy Expression Only, then select as many other layers as you want the expression on (the other three text layers), and then Paste.

Note: as the layers fade, you can see thru them, if you don’t want them but just want them to get dim, but opaque, Dan has an expression for that, it needs a light and goes on the Material Options, “Diffuse” and “Specular”, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/falloff.html

5) Size Falloff

You might not need to do anything to scale, as setup above, with a radius of 200, and the 50 mm camera in the default position (about – 812 pixels in Z space) you get the far away layer to be about half as big as the closest layer (well about 60% as big really).

You can change the camera to a 28 mm camera (double click the camera and choose 28mm from the dropdown) and change the radius of the cylinder to 400 pixels (Hit “E” on the keyboard, on the Null reveals the “rayon” slider, change the 200 to 400).

If you want the scale to be more dramatic, say 100 down to 25%, try this hacked expression (hacked from the above opacity expression) for scale (Alt-click the Scale stopwatch for this one):

C = thisComp.activeCamera;
startScale = 700;
endScale = 1200;
minScale = 25; //minimum scale %
maxScale = 100;
d = length(toWorld(anchorPoint),C.toWorld([0,0,0]));
s = linear(d,startScale,endScale,maxScale,minScale);
[s,s,s]

Like I said you might not need the scale expression.

6) Make a Preset

If you think you’ll use this setup again, make a preset by selecting the Opacity and Scale in any one of the layers, then Animation>Save Animation Preset, name it something like “OpacityScaleFadeToCameraDistance” or whatever you want. Then you can apply it to any layer by selecting the layer, and clicking Animation>Apply Animation Preset> and choosing “OpacityScaleFadeToCameraDistance” (You might have to navigate to the folder you saved it in, hopefully the Presets folder).

[Janeane Wolfe]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions!!! It all worked out well, and of course, now I want better! So now I am tweaking like a mad woman and adding to it. You all are genouses! (hope i spelled that right!)
Thanks again.