Locating and styling a specific word in a textfield.

[Andrei Popa]

Apply a color animator to your textA with the desired color for the word. Go to “Animator>Advanced” and change “Units” to “Index” and “Based on” to “Characters”

Then, on range selector add this expressions.

This to start:
thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(thisComp.layer("textB")("Text")("Source Text"))

And this to End:

redWord = thisComp.layer("textB")("Text")("Source Text");
thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord)+redWord.length

Andrei
My Envato portfolio.

[Craig Kristensen]

Wow Andrei ! That works exactly as intended!
Will I be able to add an if/else statement to this as well?

If textB is n’t in the textA, then is simply colours the first x amount of characters instead.
I think an if/else could fix this?

cheers,
Craig

[Andrei Popa]

redWord = thisComp.layer("textB")("Text")("Source Text");
if ( thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord) > -1){
thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord)
}else{
0
}

and
redWord = thisComp.layer("textB")("Text")("Source Text");
if ( thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord) > -1){
thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord)+redWord.length
}else{
0
}


But still does not work well if you have enters in your text. Was trying for a solution because split(“\n”) did not seem to work. Will post here if i manage to find one.

Andrei
My Envato portfolio.

[Craig Kristensen]

It seems to work perfectly… I’ll put it through some testing and see how it handles it.
Thank you so much Andrei!
This is SUCH a big help!

[Andrei Popa]

Update. On my system, this did not work if there were “enter” characters before the highlited word. Every “enter” would offset the highlight by 1. Seems like after effects uses “\r” character for new lines. So this is the final form of the expressions.
For start:
redWord = thisComp.layer("textB")("Text")("Source Text");
newLines = thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").split("\r").length -1;
if ( thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord) > -1){
thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord)-newLines;
}else{
0
}

And for end:
redWord = thisComp.layer("textB")("Text")("Source Text");
newLines = thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").split("\r").length -1;
if ( thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord) > -1){
thisLayer("Text")("Source Text").indexOf(redWord)+redWord.length-newLines
}else{
0
}


Andrei
My Envato portfolio.

[Craig Kristensen]

Ah, I see what you mean.
THe latest version works perfectly and fixes the “enter” issue.

Thank you again Andrei! You have been super helpful!
Cheers,
Craig

[Craig Kristensen]

This is a long shot. But can you change the style (regular, bold, italic) also, using this method?

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

In case anyone face situation where ‘Shift+Enter’ break causes problems – add into equation ‘\x03’ for start and end newLines calculation.

Craig – its not possible to adjust ‘font’ directly. But to this Text Animator, you could add stroke width (as long as stroke is applied to text), skew, etc – and that would allow you to make visual differences for selected range of text.

newLines = curText.split("\r").length -1 + curText.split("\x03").length -1;

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Sorry, assuming you define ‘curText’ as below!

curText = thisLayer("Text")("Source Text");
newLines = curText.split("\\r").length-1 + curText.split("\x03").length -1;

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.