Scrolling text field

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It’s not really beyond my skill level but I’m a little stumped on how to create a text field most effectively. Basically I’m trying to create a background for YouTube news show where the text, at different depths, scroll diagonally slowly in a somewhat random layout.

I know I’ll be dealing with the 3-D camera because I do want some parallax difference in the speed of the text at different depths. That’s not so hard to deal with.

What stumps me is the following: I want to place each instance of text in a somewhat random fashion but I want a clear line of sight from the camera to each instance — no overlapping text. I’ve tried random placement with some collision detection but I couldn’t find an expression that worked effectively in 3d, since they use bounding boxes and not line of sight.

Alternately, I was thinking about manually placing the elements of text in a large canvas, then scrolling the camera across the static words. This seems like the dummy answer but it’ll probably also be easier to get the camera parallax and placement I want.

Any insight?

I think it could also be done more effectively with Particle Playground or another particle system, but I haven’t messed with that yet. I might use trapcode particular as it has some pseudo 3d controls.

[Roland R. Kahlenberg]

[Angelo Lorenzo] “I want to place each instance of text in a somewhat random fashion but I want a clear line of sight from the camera to each instance — no overlapping text. “

It’s going to be an enviable task not to have overlaps and yet have parallax. Of course, a lot depends on the number of layers involved, the sizes of the text, amount of text, amount of parallax and camera movement.

Walter recently provided a link to aescripts.com to a script, Multiplane that will allow you set things up pretty quickly but once the camera moves, you’re left to the earlier issues I mentioned.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Singapore and Malaysia
Adobe ACE/ACI (version 7) & Imagineer Systems Inc Approved Mocha Trainer

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Solved my own problem:

I’m going to create lanes of particle emitters and place them manually (will probably randomize z) to avoid overlap that shoot an instance of the text in a straight line and a consistent speed. Easy.