Scrambling from 1 word to another

[Karen Kent]

I did that & already browsed the presets & didn’t see what I need. I’m on CS3, BTW. Thanks!

[David Bogie]

Then do it by brute force–which is how we used to do everything in the Olden Days.
Use the preset on two separate layers, one for each of your text objects.
Then just time reverse on of the layers.
You will need to use some kind of transition between the clips and that could lead you to exploring the finer aspects of setting the text animator controls which are about as confusing as expressions.

bogiesan

[Karen Kent]

I have been trying that, but I can’t seem to change the 1st “word” it uses to the word I want. It does just what I want, except for that.

[Karen Kent]

OK. Thanks.

[Bartek Skorupa]

I’m not sure if I understand the problem correctly, so at first let me just say how I see it.

You have the text and some animation applied to it. Let’s say you used one of the presets.
The preset does something to the letters, let’s say it moves them all around.

You want this animation to happen to some point in time and then kind of reverse, so that the text appear clearly once again, but it is a different text now. Right?

(Sorry, but English is not my native language, so sometimes it’s tough for me to clearly express my thoughts)

The solution I see is as follows:

1. Put a text layer and apply the animation preset.
2. Expand the text properties and find every animator, expand their properties and find “Range selector” for each animator. You have keyframes there.
3. Place a keyframe in between the two existing keyframes for each animator (There may be only one animator, but sometimes there are more).
4. Copy the first keyframe and paste it where the last keyframe is. Now the animation will go to some point in time and then “go back”.
5. Set a keyframe to the property: “Source text” at the beginning of your animation, and another one somewhere in the middle. Write the other text in the same layer.

The text will change, and the animation will “go back”. Tweak the position of the keyframe in the “Source text” property so that the change of the text is least visible.

Voila.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[David Bogie]

[Bartek Skorupa] “5. Set a keyframe to the property: “Source text” at the beginning of your animation, and another one somewhere in the middle. Write the other text in the same layer. “

Nice work, Bartek, thanks for the contribution to the thread. Setting keyframes for Source Text is something I did not think of. In fact, I don’t think I knew you could do that. Gotta try it!

bogiesan

[Karen Kent]

The keyframes, however, are toggle hold keyframes (&, apparently, can’t be changed)…not exactly what I’m looking for, but I’ll make it work. Thanks everyone!

[Filip Vandueren]

Yes, changes in text-source are always hold-keyframes,
that’s because there’ is no way after effects could know how to interpolate from

hello -> goodbye

as it would know how to interpolate from 0 -> 100

You might have something in your head about how after effects could magically let extra letters appear and let the existing ones change to new letters, but you have to plan these things.

Perhaps your effect can be best achieved with having a separate layer for every letter, it all depends on what you want to do. But even though a lot of text-effects look very flashy, there are a lot of limitations there.

Here’s somethign I did a few years ago, it took a few days of coding, but in the end I ended up with a solution where I could just set keyframes for text, and the letters would fly around by themselves. It took a lot of planning though…

The after effects files are there too for downloading should you be interested:

https://www.vandueren.be/forumstuff/anagram/

[Karen Kent]

Thanks Filip – that’s pointing me in the right direction!

[Bartek Skorupa]

Dave LaRonde: “…you win the prize for reading the After Effects manual in detail…”

Well… If it’s something valuable, I will have to give it back, as I have never even opened the manual. I don’t know if I even have one. 🙂

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland