lightning effect

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Advanced Lightning has Start and End points (lthough it’s called something else but it’s pretty obvious once you see the parameters).

You can animated these to perform your lightning write-on effect. At issue is what happens when the text is written-on. Does the text still look like lightning or is it normal-looking?

If it’s going to look like lightning then it’s going to be a huge problem as Advanced Lightning only allows two points. Having said that, there is a parameter to wrap the lightning around an alpha channel but that’s going to be difficult to achiece with text. And it’s going to be one application of advanced lightning for each text character.

Another option is to use Scribble and apply glows and such to make it look like lightning. The good thing about this is that once you get the look, its shape and glow, it’s a lot easier to complete your work

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Tyler Paul]

Anvel Tutorials had posted some great free project files that had some good lightning effects. They don’t seem to be available anymore but luckily I already had them.

https://www.brownsugarstudios.com/files/ae/AlphebetSoup%20A-Z%20and%20more.aep

This has a text effect called Electric which used some really cool techniques for making electrified text

https://www.brownsugarstudios.com/files/ae/LightningAEPs.zip

This is just a variety of projects using advanced lightning.

None of them is exactly what you want but it could give you some ideas. Both should be 7.0 projects.