[Max Pinton]

Sure. You could put the expression text.sourceText.substr(0,10) on Source Text, changing 10 to whatever you want the limit to be.

[Max Pinton]

I’m sure there’s a way to get a text animator to do this, but the simplest way I could figure out was to use a track matte and then move the text down to reveal a line at a time. You’ll want to reverse your text by putting an expression on its Source Text (or reversing the lines in a text editor):

text.sourceText.split(‘\r’).reverse().join(‘\r’);

And then you could put an expression on the text’s Y position (right-click Position, Separate Dimensions) to move it down a line per, let’s say, second:

transform.yPosition += Math.floor(time) * 36; // replace 36 with your leading

Hope that helps.

[Max Pinton]

If you want to avoid keyframing, a simple solution is to make a shape layer of a lumpy white line, lower the opacity, Fast Blur it a little and put a Wave Warp or two on it, like this:

I have a larger warp (height 10, width 120) going at 0.6 speed and a smaller warp (height 2, width 30) going at 1.0 speed so they’re a bit out of phase.

If you want to prevent the bottom of the smoke from moving, you can precompose the shape layer and in the precomp move the bottom of the smoke to the bottom of the comp and then set the Wave Warp pinning to “Bottom Edge.”

[Max Pinton]

I realize I’m years late to this thread, but since it still comes up when searching for “contiguous key,” I thought I’d mention that the Paint Bucket effect seems like a good solution. You’d fill the background with a different key color, precomp the layer, then use Keylight to key out the paint bucket color to get a contiguous key.

Just tinkering around with a gif I was able to key out a white background without losing some white elements of the subject. There are a few spots that need some additional work. I was thinking I could use a second Paint Bucket effect with a keyframed Fill Point to knock those out.

[Max Pinton]

Of course, right after posting my question I found the solution on a second search of the forums. The Wave Warp effect does the trick and the “wave type” makes for some interesting variations. Here’s my quick-and-dirty version, which came out more ominously but shows the effect.

https://maxgraphic.com/wavy-sun.gif