-
Isolating a string of text (within a larger paragraph)
Hi all, I’m trying to
I’m guessing regex is useful here and have been experimenting and trying to “cobble” a solution together.
Wondering if anyone can get me started and or well on the way to an implementable solution.
In the broader paragraph I’m searching for text that begins with an @ symbol and them the following letters, until the next word/space break.
(Current regex = /@[a-zA-Z]+\w/gi)I’d then like to be able to style that text with a different colour…which I figure I can either do with ‘style’ or converting the regex output to control a Text Animator.
Hope the above makes sense. Appreciate the input. Thanks in advance.
-
8 Replies
-
Hi Paul,
you’ll have to do it with a text-animator, style can only be set for the entire text-layer at a time.
Add a text-animator that for example sets the fill to red.
add an expression selector, change it to “based on words” and give the amount this expression:
words = text.sourceText.value.split(/[\s\3]+/);
i = textIndex-1;
words[i].match(/^@.*/gi) ? value : [0,0,0];
-
Hey Filip,
Nice! What does the \3 do?
-
When you type a shift-enter in after effects text layers, for a soft line break, that is the character AE uses.
But regex doesn’t see it as a white space or linebreak character so we need to add it explicitly.
\3 seems to work as shorthand for \u0003 = Unicode character “end of text”
-
Nice. Thank you @Filip.
Will investigate further. Seems I was massively overcomplicating it.
Cheers again
-
I get “textIndex is not defined”.
I noticed this in a tutorial I was following along with and figured it was some additional code reference they wasn’t relevant to my install.What have I missed?
-
oooooooofffff, and I’m learning again…never noticed the ability to apply an expressions elector for an Animator.
Thanks again.
-
Hi Paul,
I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but I hope this helps (as an addition/alternative to Filip‘s approach)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgiaNEQit3g
Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
Excellent addition and resource for others coming along Julian. Thanks for chiming in.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up