[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

If you make three copies of the layer, one without the effect and two with, you can blend the first two in difference mode and precomp the result. On that comp you get full black where there is no difference between the two layers. You can use threshold to pull out all the areas that have been effected and use the result as a track matte for the third layer with the effect on it.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Simple but effective: Gaussian blur, then curves adjustment on the alpha channel, pulling both highlight and shadow ends to the middle, essentially creating a threshold effect on the transparency. The more blur, the smoother the shapes.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

To get a new random value every 8 seconds, you can change the random seed every 8 seconds with Math.floor(time/8).

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Colorama effect?

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

On the concept level, my first inclination would be to do this:

1) Separate the source text to individual words array by splitting at space character
2) Loop through each letter in each word and give each word a “isUpperCase” (variable) boolean value of true only if there are zero lower case alphabets there
3) Add a color expression to the text
4) With an expression selector, set the value of those characters that are in the “isUpperCase” words to 100%

The question is how do you do #4? Perhaps by creating at step 2 a string that has the exact number of zeros and ones corresponding to each letter of text and spaces and then at step 4 set the selector value to 100 if the characterAt is “1” or to 0 if the characterAt is “0”. So for the sentence “My sentence WITH some upperCASE.” You would get the matching string of “00000000000011110000000000000000”. Note that the word “upperCASE” would have the values “0” since it is a mix.

Better methods are bound to exist.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Hi Scott, sounds good — hope that works out!

I thought of another possibility, in case it doesn’t: How about tying the y position of a layer to the y position of the layer above it plus an offset that is dependent on the height of the content times the x offset of the layer above. Basically you would use the x position of the layer above (when it moves in from the side) as the “0-100 slider” for the additional y offset. If you keep the amount of motion on the x axis the same for all layers, you can normalize to that range. Then you would just have to ease animate each layer in from the side and the vertical motion would be calculated by expression. I believe it would ripple down through all the layers. (Although the sequence of layers may affect it, based on my recent experience, so it might be it needs to be the layer below, not above).

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

You probably just need to adjust the anchor point position and the alignment of the text.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Ah, I see. That definitely looks tricky.

You might consider a motion path approach — since every piece of text follows the same route, it could probably be done that way.

Then the issue would become how to determine where along the motion path each layer is, which would be something to do with the total number of lines of text and number of lines of text up to and including the current layer. And you will need someway to control the spacing between the texts as well.

So it would be a valueAtTime() expression, the position being that of a null that moves along the motion path, and each piece of text would be somewhere along the motion path depending on number of lines plus spaces preceding it. The path would be the shape of an “L” turned 180 degrees, so it came from the side and then moved down like you have.

Not really simple either, but might be more manageable.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

For a more automated approach, you could do this with Particular and an expression to automate the creation of the text for the particles. Nevertheless, it will be a bit of work to set up the expression to select only certain characters from a font. Won’t be faster to do it that way for a single instance, but if you need a whole bunch of these that need to look different, it would be sensible.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Change the beginning section to this

content = thisLayer.sourceRectAtTime();
left = content.width/2;
top = content.height/2;
right = thisComp.width-content.width/2;
bottom = thisComp.height-content.height/2;

Note: this expects that the anchor point is in the center of the layer.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer