Text in direction to the center comp

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Do you mean like this?

I don’t think there any (easy) way to do that with an expression. I would animate a path and use text on path for this.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

If what Kalleheikki shown is correct guess, and if it’s as below, then it should be an easy approach.

What you need to do to achieve this:
1. On the text layer, draw an open path, which starts under the text / is inside the center of the comp and continues into a circle’s borders.
2. Reveal text properties and select mask inside the Path Options.
3. Link First Margin with circle’s X position and readjust its starting point. You might want to multiply the position value by 2 or 3 to speed up the path slide.

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

[Gus Favoreto]

Hey guys, thank you for your posts.
But actually what I am aim is this exepmle here, I did with null to rotate the text and positioning manually to be near to the circle.

Thank you guys!
Gus

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Gus, if thats the case, then here is how I would do it:

1. Place text layer where you want it to be and move its anchorpoint to the center of circle shape.
2. Add expression below to the rotation of text:
xPos = thisComp.layer("circle").transform.position[0];
linear(xPos, 0, thisComp.width, 0, 360)

This will make rotation 360 degrees based on X position.

3. Create null layer and place it in the center of your text. Add expression to rotation of null:
-thisComp.layer("text").transform.rotation

This will invert rotation from interpolation and keep text layer in its original rotation.

4. Parent text to null, and null to circle.

Now whenever circle moves, text will follow. I am sure there is a better way to do it by setting anchorpoint to follow, but this is the simplest imo.

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

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Alright, so the description of the effect would be something like “the text is attached to the circle at a fixed distance and smoothly following the motion of the circle, while tending towards the center of the comp.”

What complicates the matter slightly is that the text starts out not being towards the middle in the beginning, so this may need to be handled by using a null for the “center” that the text tends towards, as you can then animate the center (null) from the left edge to the comp center in the beginning.

I would start with Dan’s auto-orient expression here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1178515

Calculating the orientation from the circle to the “center” null would give you the rotation angle for the text in relation to the circle. So you could have a null in the center of the circle and the text at a given distance attached to the null and rotate the null based on the auto-orientation expression. And then rotate the text itself by the same amount but in negative direction to keep it horizontal.

Smoothing the result will require a loop to average the values over a given time span.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Gus Favoreto]

Thank you guys!

Soon I finalize the project I will post here ho ti goes!

Thanks,
Gus