[John Cuevas]

You need to check out Text Animators(38-45).

But for your purpose, create your text in a single paragraph. Twirl open the text and under the animate fly-out choose “Enable Per Character 3d”, then go to the animate fly out and choose “Position”. Now on the new Animator 1 click the Add flyout and add a “scale” animator.

For position change the Z-position to 2000(change it to what you want) and change the scale to 0. Now twirl open the advanced and change from Based on from “characters” to “words” and change the mode from “Add” to “Subtract”. When working with words I like to change the units from “Percentage” to “Index”(Index is the total units you are using…in your sentence it would be 4)

Now open up the Range Selector and set a keyframe for End and change it 0, move the Current Time Indicator to whatever duration you want and change “End” back to whatever you need to complete the animation.

If you use go to your effects & presets browser and click pulldown, you can use the “browse presets” to look at all the text presets that adobe has created.

Here’s a quick example project you can check out, if anything I said was unclear, and if it was, just ask and I’ll try to explain it better: 4790_textanimatorexample.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Are the numbers moving around a bit from number to number? That’s due to the proportional spacing that is created in almost all effects. One thing you can try is unchecking the proportional spacing check box.

To really correct the bouncing numbers result, you need to use a mono-spaced font.

Here’s a link to popular monospaced fonts.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Go and do your search, then when it shows the “Community Content” results, under the search box change it it to “Only Adobe content”, then search again.

The toggle is below the search box.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Since CS5 the Rotobrush is really the quickest way to roto someone with AE. Check out this tutorial from AdobeTV to get started.

Creative Cow Tutorial

Then his a google search for Rotobrush tutorials.

I’ve watched the first one and it’s pretty good, but you may want to check out the help afterwards, rotobrush isn’t totally intuitive. After you check that some of that stuff out, if you have any questions come back.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

The default lens flares in AE don’t have alpha channels. One way around this is to apply it to a black solid, then change the transfer mode to “Add”

Another method is to download and install the free plugin from Red GiantUnmult, make sure you choose the 64 bit version if you are using a CS5 or newer version of AE.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

If you go to window > Effects & Presets it will bring up your presets and FX or Cntl + 5.

Or if you are looking for the folder on your harddrive on a PC they can be found for Presets: C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe After Effects CS6Support FilesPresets

Effects: C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe After Effects CS6Support FilesPlug-ins

Sorry can’t help you for a Mac

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Create a little project with a boomerang effect. Now, open up your graph editor, look to the bottom of the graph, select the 2nd icon and change it from “Edit Speed Graph” to “Edit Value Graph” You should see the “boomeranging” now.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

What’s happening is the boomerang effect caused most likely by the spatial interpolation of the keyframes being set to auto-bezier. Open up the layer with the position keyframes and click position to highlight all the keyframes. Now right-click a keyframe and choose Keyframe Interpolation. Change the Spatial Interpolation to Linear.

Also if you go to Edit > Preferences > General you can change the default spatial interpolation to be linear.

Here are couple of resources you might want to check out. FAQ: Why does my layer (camera) move back and forth between keyframes of equal value?

Creative Cow AE Keyframe Boomerang Effect, Part 1 & 2

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Found a COW Tutorial too: https://library.creativecow.net/articles/drozda_jerzy/VolumeLight/video-tutorial

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Here are a few tutorials: This one includes a script at the end. All you have to do it is have a comp with a layer and a camera, run the script and it will create volumetric light look. I find that the fractal noise layer is to defined if you run that script. So after you run the script, press “T” to reveal the opacity and you should see this expression: (thisComp.layer(“Light 1”).active) ? 100 : 0; If you change the 100 to say 50, as you will cap the max opacity of the layer to 50. And the is controlled by increasing and decreasing the intensity of the light.

Also adding a simple expression the evolution of the fractal will make it seem that the “dust” in the light is moving. So alt-click the evolution stopwatch and something like(remove the quotes)— “time * 90” will give you nice slow moving particles.

https://www.petertorpey.com/tutorials/volume_light/

https://maltaannon.com/after-effects/volumetric-lights/

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.