-
Typing Glyphs / Special Characters in AE7 ??
Greetings… first post here. Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere… I read through the FAQ and tried the advanced forum search (which does not seem to be working btw) but didnt see this topic covered anywhere.
I’m using AE 7.0 on a Windows XP machine and trying to create text using accent characters… I can’t seem to get them to display, no matter what I do… My usual method of typing, oh say, alt + 0162 for a cents symbol or alt + 0251 for a u with a circumflex accent yields nothing… I have tried pasting text from other applications, photoshop, illustrator, etc… but AE seems to ignore text on the clipboard when you’re in the text tool.
PhotoShop’s text tool types special characters as expected… Illustrator has a special “glyphs” palette devoted to this… Surely AE addresses this in some way. I tried searching the docs too… found nothing related to this.
Of course I realize I can fake it using precomps, set my titles externally in photoshop, etc… there’s plenty of workarounds, all with their limitations, but there’s got to be a way to access all a font’s characters in AE… Anybody?
-
12 Replies
-
Thanks for the reply… however I understand all that. I’m such a type dork that I keep an ASCII character reference chart next to my computer, lol, so I’m quite famililar with how one finds and accesses the characters.
The problem is: AE does nothing when I type in alt + **** in a text layer (**** = ASCII code)… It similarly ignores me trying to paste in text from the clipboard. What am I missing here?
-
I’ve had this trouble also, but I was able to cut and paste between Illustrator and AE. Not to be too obvious about it… but make sure you are cutting you text hilighted/selected with the text tool in Illustrator. That way its pasting the character mapping to the AE text tool, not the character.
-
I assume you are talking about the Accessories/System Tools/Character Map utility ?… Exactly the same result — none. AE ignores text on the clipboard, paste is greyed out in the menu, Ctrl-V has no result…
Perhaps I’m not explaining the problem well enough? I feel like you are still missing my point.
In a nutshell, I can find no way to get a “special character” into an AE text layer through typing, pasting, or otherwise, but I feel there has to be a way… Anybody? Thanks…
-
-
Restart AE and try again. There are several quirks/ bugs with AE’s clipboard handling, but usually it works and only conks out sporadically.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
-
If you still have trouble, you could create the text you want in another app and save it as a layer, then import it into AE? You could type the word in illiustrator, then send each letter to a separate layer, then import the file as a composition. Long work around though.
Kev
-
OR you could get a big-boy computer and just type Option+E.
Flame on.
-
I usually insert the “symbol” into a word document, and then simply copy it and then paste it into a text layer in AE.
—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com—————————————-
Click the link below to subscribe to the Creative Cow After Effects Podcast, and get free AE video tutorials:https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=111087911
-
Thanks Aharon, I’m using After Effects for the first time ever and you have just saved the day.
Cheers
Mac Pro Quad 3GHz, 4GB RAM, 2x7TB XServe RAID
-
I know this post is a few years old, but would like to add this for anyone else having this problem. You also need to make sure that you enter the symbols in their proper font. If you find a “webdings” symbol that you want to put in the middle of another font, make sure that you highlight that section of font and select “webdings” as the font in after effects.
I myself have tried this and it works, until I select another layer. This seems like a program glitch to me – I haven’t found a way around it. For what I am doing, it is imperative that the symbol be in the same text layer as the other text. Any other ideas?
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up