Make Kareoke ball aumatically color the word it land on?

[Kevin Camp]

i’d try it with a text animator for fill color, then link the end property to the keyframes for the bouncing ball.

since there are several ways to animate the ball, it’s a little hard to write an expression that would work in any situation, so i’ve attached a preset file called bouncingball.ffx that adds the circle effect and a fill text animator to a text layer.

7491_singalong.ffx.zip

install the preset by downloading and moving it to you after effects/presets folder. then restart after effects.

in a comp, add a text layer with a line from the song then apply the preset (either from the effects & preset panel or animation>apply animation preset).

simply animate the x component of center property of the circle effect to stop at each word in the line, the expressions will highlight the word with each keyframe and will interpolate the vertical ‘bounce’ in between.

to change the height of the bounce, type ‘ee’ (two fast letter e’s) to reveal the expressions on the layer. modify the first line for yMax, entering the new value in pixels (the default is 100).

you can also disable the expression on the range selector ‘start’ property if you want the words to remain in the highlight color after the ball passes.

note that the expression assumes the start position of the ball, is off the first word rather than on it, but that can be changed if needed.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Chakkravarthy Raghavan]

Works great.. but how to fill the each word with color after each bounce?

[Kevin Camp]

the color should change on each bounce keyframe (the default color was yellow, so if your text is yellow it might not show up). to change the color twirl down the layer’s text property>animator 1 and set the fill color as needed.

if for some reason the fill color property is not there, from the add menu next to the animator 1 property select fill color. it should add a fill color property to that animator.

or, if you want the text to stay yellow after the ball continues to the next word, simply disable the expression that is on the range selector 1>start property to keep it at zero.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Nehuen Mingote]

Kevin, your preset is amazing!

I’ve been playing with it for a couple of minutes and I keep getting an issue (glitch?): Every now and then, after creating a keyframe (for the ball to drop and the word to be painted) the text-line randomly jumps to the upper-left corner of the video for a frame or two and returns to the position I’d originally determined.

Would you happen to know what might be causing it?
I am using Adobe After Effects CS6.

Thanks a lot!

[Greg Antisdel]

Hey Kevin,

What an awesome preset!! This thing will save a TON of work.

Thanks so much for putting this together.

I have a question though, I am having the same issue as Nehuen Mingote. When I move the “Circle” the text line jumps to the top right corner of the composition. I’ve tried to run down why this might be happening but I can’t figure it out. I did notice that if I move the playhead and add a keyframe for the “Circle” position, the text will jump back to the bottom (the intended position) until I begin to move the circle and then the text will again jump to the top left of the comp.

Did you ever happen to determine what might be causing this to happen?

Many thanks,

Greg

[Kevin Camp]

I have noticed this issue with newer versions of After Effects when using CC Composite with text layers. Most of the time, the only way I have found to fix the issue is to do an Edit>Purge All.

However, with this preset, I didn’t even need to use CC Composite… set the Circle effect’s Blending Mode property to from ‘None’ to ‘Normal’ and delete CC Composite and it should fix the issue.

Also here’s the new, simplified, preset:

10532_singalong.ffx.zip

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW