Text layers to maintain distance from each other

[Filip Vandueren]

The easiest is if you make a parent-chain, always parent the next layer to the one that should be to its left.

Then you can give position this expression:

sr=parent.sourceRectAtTime(time);
[sr.left+sr.width,0]+value;

Start by setting the position to 0,0 and then you can tweak to get the word-spacing right

[Trent Armstrong]

I stand fully by the solution Filip has provided, and I will offer a secondary solution. This project has each layer referencing the position and size of the previous layer through expressions. I don’t consider it better or worse. It is just another way of accomplishing your goal. That’s what I enjoy so much about After Effects! There are—many times—multiple ways to achieve a result.

TextMaintainsDistance.aep.zip 11 KB Zip - Click to view

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[Filip Vandueren]

Here’s a third solution ;-), based on Trent’s, but also obeying the scaling of the previous layer (you mentioned you waneted to animate them, so maybe you want to scale them up and down too and have the other text-layers react):

s = thisComp.layer("TEXT 1").effect("Padding")("Slider");
prev = thisComp.layer(index - 1);
w = prev.sourceRectAtTime().width;
prev.toComp([w + s, 0]);

(This assumes all text-layers are standard Left Aligned Text though)

[Raphaelle Brillant]

Hi Filip Vandueren! I’m trying to do something similar than Iustin Filip-mucenic.
I’m pretty new to expressions so I don’t really know how to create one myself.
Would you happen to know what the expression would be if my text layers are all set in a column instead? Also my first text layer is on the bottom and my first at the top.
Cheers!

[Raphaelle Brillant]

Update: I set up something like this tha works from top to bottom if I add multiple lines of text but can’t seem to make anything work from bottom to top. I’d like the last line of the text layer at the bottom of the comp to always stay at the same place