Trying to create a dynamic lower third template

[Steve Bentley]

Can you use expressions? You could poll the length of the name layer and then apply that value to the position of the red bar, assuming that red bar can have one end hanging off the end of the frame width and be as long as the frame is wide.

[Tom Page]

I’m trying to figure out what expression to use. I’m very new to expressions so it can be a little intimidating. Everything I’ve found online only relates text to a shape’s scale, not its X position unfortunately.

[Steve Bentley]

What you want is to get is the text’s length. If you are using CC2014 or above you can use
myTextShape = thisComp.layer("text").sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
myWidth=myTextShape.width;
myHeight=myTextShape.height You probably don’t need the last line, but you never know.

Then you can position the end of the red bar at text start pos+myWidth-(barlength/2)
This assumes the bar’s anchor point is centered.

If you are using a version of AE before 2014 then it’s much harder. And thats due to the fact that the spacing between characters differs between all fonts and all characters within a font. (except monospaced fonts). The old version of AE doesn’t have the SourceRectatTime class to access.

In pre2014 you can get close by using

myLength= thisComp.layer("text").text.sourceText;

myWidth = myLength.length;

But you wil have to put a multiplier or a slider effect on the next line to account for the differences betweenn characters and even then it won’t be perfect.
adjustedWidth = 100 * (myWidth * .175)+ thisComp.layer("sliderLayer").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");

[Tom Page]

Thank you for this! Thankfully im on CC 2017. I’ll play around when I get home tonight and see what I can make happen. Appreciate your help 🙂

[Steve Bentley]

If you want a crash course in Expressions just search for any post in this forum from Dan Ebberts, he is the master at this stuff.