Need help with intro sequence

[Kevin Camp]

i think you’d be better off with a particle system, using the words as a custom particle. cc particle world can probably do what you are looking for, and maybe an expression on the text layer to separate the words.

the first step would be to create the custom words particle. use the text tool and create a new text layer and start typing the words (or you can copy/paste text from a document) and set the font properties as needed. note that all the font properties will be the same for each word, if you want each word to have a different properties (font, color, size, etc) then you’ll need a different setup with a precomp with the each word as a separate text layer. when i’ve done this in the past, i’ve found it easiest to create each word or phrase on a new line, but you could use any separator you wanted (like a comma, or tab).

once you have your text entered and formatted, twirl down the text layer’s properties and select the source text property. choose animation>add expression and paste this expression into the expression field:

separator=”\r”;
txt=text.sourceText;
txtArray=txt.split(separator);
InOrder=txtArray[timeToFrames(time)%txtArray.length];
Random=txtArray[Math.floor(random(0,txtArray.length))];
InOrder

the first line denotes the ‘separator’, this is the character that you used to separate your words/phrases. “\r” is the a hard return, which will separate each word or phrase by lines, where each line is considered a single piece. you could change that to “\t” to make each word defined by a tab, or “,” to make them defined by a comma, or ” “ to make them defined by a space… just change that variable to what you used to separate your source text in to words.

the expression creates 2 ways of sorting the source text. either InOrder or Random. the default is InOrder, if you wanted it to be random, change the last line to Random.

now that your custom particle is set up, create a new solid and add cc particle world. in the particle properties, set particle type to ‘textured square’ (you can use ‘textured’ anything to define a custom particle, but i think textured square is probably what you’ll want). in the next property down, set the texture layer to the text layer you created above and set the texture time to birth. also set the color map to custom to use the color of the text layer and max opacity to 100. and you’ll probably want to set the birth size and death size to be larger (try 1 for starters and we’ll manipulate the producer position to get closer).

to make the particle system better fill the screen, go to the producer settings and set the position z to -1 and increase the radius x and y to fill the screen. also, set the longevity to the length of the comp and you can set the grid to off.

after that it’s a matter of adjusting birth rate, and physics settings to get the system to do what you want, particularly the animation type, velocity and gravity settings.

another setting you may want change is up in the ‘options’ for the effect. click ‘options’ and click ‘opacity map’. this is a graph of the opacity of the particle over it’s life. there are several presets to choose from and you can draw your own. if you want the words to pop on and remain up the entire time, select ‘constant’ form the presets, you can experiment some to get the results you need.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Nathan Eggleston]

thank you so very much this is one of the most helpful tutorials i’ve found to date. the only thing i got lost on was the twirl… LOL i kept looking for something frilly or twirly, the parent nautilus threw me off. 😉

thank you sincerely this was such a life saver!