Easy! Np 👊

Would the Minimax effect work for your setup instead of using the space-replacement char?

No probs – happy it works 🙂

Sure, what’s next?

Sorry Ben! Looking back at your screenshot I realized that I misunderstood your initial request. My code would only work for single words wrapped in asterisks, not multiple words in a row.

Try this (based on characters):

const L = thisComp.layer("Master_Text");
const txt = L.text.sourceText.value.replace(/n|r|u0003/g, "");
const wrapChars = "**";…

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Ahh, I see you got some spaces in between the parentheses of the regex. Getting rid of them should fix it!

Shouldn’t be – can you send over a screenshot of your setup/project file?

Just noticed that the formatting messed up the regex. You’ll need to add a backtick ` after the opening parenthesis and before the ending parenthesis (marked by X):

const regex = new RegExp(X^${escapedWrapChars}([^${escapedWrapChars}]*)${escapedWrapChars}$X);

Hi Ben,

try the following on your expression selector, but based on words (which is more efficient than looping over each char):

const wrapChars = "**"; // Insert your desired wrap character(s)
const L = thisComp.layer("Master_Text");
const controlText = L.text.sourceText.value;
const currentWord = controlText.split(/s+/)[textIndex - 1];
const…

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Hi Michael,

you can check if a layer is a shape layer like this:

isShapeLayer = thisLayer.content instanceof Group;
isShapeLayer; // Returns 1/true or 0/false

Regarding the path detection: do you explicitly need to check for Bezier Paths, or would it be enough to check for any existing content (groups, primitives, paths)?

The latter could look like…

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Hi Filip, any updates on the final v2 of subSourceRect? 🙂 I’ve noticed that fractions don’t work reliably for all framerates depending on the granularity of the setup (your single-layer textboxes for example seem to only work for framerates < 40), and all my efforts to find a robust solution weren’t successful. If you found a way to make the…

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Hi John, try this:

1. Create a Null with 2 sliders called Total Width & Spacing, and apply the following expression to the Total Width slider:

const spacing = effect("Spacing")("Slider").value;
let totalWidth = 0;
let rectTime = time;
if (thisLayer.marker.numKeys) {
	rectTime = thisLayer.marker.key(1).time;
}
for (let i = 1; i <= thisComp.numLayers; i++)…

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If you only need a fixed layout like a grid, a one-layer solution would definitely render much faster

Sure, is a second (invisible) text layer for the calculations ok?

The radius is a great addition btw, I totally forgot about that!
You could even go fancy and apply separate radii to dx & dy directly in the center variable.

Hi Oleg,

add 2 sliders to your layer called Anim and Delay and try the following code on an expression selector either based on characters or words:

const ti = textIndex - 1;
const { basedOn } = thisProperty.propertyGroup(1);
const anim = effect("Anim")("Slider");
const delay = effect("Delay")("Slider").value;
const lines =…

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Amazing, thank you Filip 🙏

The only limitation I found so far is when using single-char strings, since tracking requires at least 2 characters to be effective. But I can’t think of a scenario where detecting the alignment of a single char would be necessary 😀

Hi! You’re almost there, but instead of adding the layer index i to result, you should add 1 each time you find a layer named “Depth”. Also, remove the break statement to ensure the loop continues to check all layers even if your condition is met.

Yeah for sure – it works great! 🙂 You truly thought outside the box there haha

Could you shed some light on the mechanics of this approach? Curious what’s going on under the hood.

Hi Filip,

do you have any suggestions on how to detect the paragraph alignment of a box text?

After running some tests this is the closest I got:

const t = sourceRectAtTime(time, false); 
const b = sourceRectAtTime(time, true);
const tc = t.left + t.width / 2;
const bc = b.left + b.width / 2;
const thr = t.width * 0.01;
let al;
if (Math.abs(tc - bc) <=…

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Hi Justin,

you could either attach the logo’s position to the left edge of the box or to the right edge of your text with some margin. The exact code depends on your setup.

Here are some examples:

// Right edge of the text
// Logo parented to your text layer
const { left, width, top, height } = parent.sourceRectAtTime(); 
const margin = 50;
[left + width…

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Hi Gary,

try using posterizeTime(0); on top of your code to ensure it only gets calculated once rather than for every frame.

Another way to help speed up playback would be converting your footage into ProRes as AE struggles with .mp4 files

Sure, here’s a breakdown:

1. The first line takes your text value and splits it into an array of words based on the empty space ” ” between them.
2. The second line converts the slider value from a 0 – 100 range into the word index based on the length of our word array. Since arrays are 0-based, we subtract 1 from it so we start counting from the first…

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Hi Ludovic,

you can do it like this:

const t = value.split(" ");
const i = Math.floor(effect("Word")("Slider").value * (t.length - 1) / 100);
t[i];

Hey folks,

I’ve been messin’ around with toCompVec() inside an expression selector to hide words that don’t face the camera and had some decent success with it. I’ve attached some examples of what I managed to achieve.

The way I made this work is by virtually re-calculating the text animator setup inside the opacity expression selector to give each…

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Hey folks!

Just wanted to share an expression that converts the Linear Wipe’s Transition Completion percentages to layer space for continuously rasterized layers like shapes & text.

Transition Completion:

const { left: l, width: w, top: t, height: h } = sourceRectAtTime();

const rectToPercent = (x, y) => [toComp([x, y])[0] / width * 100, toComp([x,…

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Update: just found out that enabling motion blur or using the posterize time effect with a framerate other than the comps’ (could be 30.1 in a 30fps comp), fully eradicates glitched frames!

Of course, there’s a little performance drop – a bit more for posterizeTime than MB which surprised me, but a working fix regardless. Case solved!

Bummer, but hey it works! Thanks anyway Filip 🙂

Update: I just noticed that scrubbing through the timeline a bit before previewing prevents any glitches from happening! How’d I miss this… but there are still some bugged-out frames when using text animators.

Thanks for the suggestion, Filip!

I tested the text layer method and it didn’t change much initially.

Only when I ditched the line isolating range selector for an expression selector, it stabilized a bit. (wonder why)

I noticed that now, glitching seems to mostly occur when hitting play at 0.

Switching from full res to half res and vice versa, or…

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Hey champs!

I’ve been working on this expression selector thingy that auto-scales every text line to the same width and got it to function decently. However, AE is acting up and refuses to render it consistently.

Below I’ve attached a video (& project file) showing the problem and a weird little hack I found by accident that fixes the glitching…

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Filip, your code works brilliantly! Thanks for sharing 🤙

I tried to generalize my code for all cases and ended up comparing a single characters rect positions in negative time with the positions of positive time source text value… but your technique is so much more straight forward…

Would you mind explaining your thought process behind it?

Hey folks,

what are your workflows for detecting a text layer’s paragraph alignment, since you can’t directly access it via expressions?

I found a solution to my case yesterday, which might be a little specific, but I thought I’d share it anyway.

My setup consists of a text layer where one line is text, and the next line is a pipe character…

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This indeed did the trick and makes total sense! Thanks Filip 🙂

Hey Nick, this is a known issue with the newest 23.2 update, which you can fix by activating the Source Code Pro family on Adobe fonts.

Hi Aurora, you’re right – the first code needs tweaking. Check out this great reference that dives a bit deeper into getting actual text heights:

https://motiondeveloper.com/blog/dealing-with-descenders

Regarding split(‘r’).length, split first breaks up the text into an array using the carriage return as a separator, then length returns the length…

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Had to clean it up a little, but here you go:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vdlmhN9yyc2klLr5o90XxCFXVtJZ0IT5?usp=sharing

And for a quick overview, here’s my source text:

const y1 = effect("Vertical Copies")("Slider");
const y2  = value.split('r').length;

if (y2 == 1) { //textmode detection
	txt =…

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Hey again, Filip! I ran into this little issue with the code, and I was wondering if perhaps you’d be able to give me a hand on it.

Literally all I’m trying to do is split the selection into 2 equal parts now, each doing the same, so the pseudo matte I’m working with follows the stacked text’s position.

Quick explanation: My text consists of 2…

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Hi, you could either take fontSize*.75 + leading, or the sourceRect height of your text layer divided by the number of lines. So:

const { fontSize, leading } = thisComp.layer("Text").text.sourceText.style;
const lineHeight = fontSize*.75 + leading;

Or

const numLines = thisComp.layer("Text").text.sourceText.split('r').length;
const lineHeight =…

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Getting fantastic results, Filip. Thanks a bunch.

One outstanding thing I noticed with your code is that the delay works either starting inwards, or outwards of the comp’s center depending on whether the delay time is negative or positive.

I also remember that previously, when the first keyframe of an animation was the absolute position, I had to…

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Filip, thank you so much! This is spot on, I got exactly what I wanted out of it! 🙂

One tiny thing I had to modify, though, was how the delay behaves. Initially, the delay started at the very top and progressed down each row, while I needed the top and bottom half to reflect each other.

This tweak did it:

const pos = effect("Position")("3D…

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No worries Dan, thanks for your effort🙂

Hi Dan! Thanks for getting back. I am aware of this concept, but I’m guessing it’s not as simple in my case, as I want to preserve everything in my code, but only add a slight delay to each word when I animate the animator’s position. (Or if that doesn’t work, a slider)

I hope the video I posted above shines a light on what I’m after.

Here’s another…

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For visual reference, here’s what I’m trying to add a slight word delay to:

Anyone?