Join Eran Stern for an in-depth discussion in this video Preparing instances of text, part of Mograph Techniques: Shape Animation in After Effects.
In this chapter, I'll show you how to create an handmade text reveal. We'll do it across two movies. In the first one, we'll prepare the instances of the text in different sizes to match the design theme, and also prepare the shape mask that will reveal them later on. First I want to show you the final piece. The average size of the group changes from 20 to 50 members. The average size of the group changes from 20 to 50 members. So this nice animation actually consists of several layers, as you can see here in the final composition.
Now if you open this composition and after effects will ask you about some missing fonts now that I'm using here a font which I've downloaded from the dafont.com website. This font name Shancalluna or something alone those lines. Is not included in the footage files due to it's license terms. But you can download it from this website for personal use. It is free of charge.
If you don't have access to this font, you can use any other font and it's still going to work. So let's quit out of Safari, close the final state of this composition and let's open up our begin comps folder and underneath we have a text reveal animation which I've prepared. This is a pre-cooked composition which hosts a couple of elements. First we have the which is part of the narration from the final movie.
Then we have these circles which are animating into place. And those are a couple of circles. You can open this shape and investigate a little further if you like. But there's nothing fancy over here. We already covered most of these stuffs in previous chapters and then we have two text files. One for the digit two and then one for the digit five and now lets prepare couple of instances in order for the reveal to work.
I want to be able to choose a different font weight or maybe a different font size. So for that, I want to show the character window. You can get access to it by going to the window menu and choose it from here. Now, since we have numbered markers on the composition, We can actually press on the Digit tool in the main keyboard and this will jump the play head just on top of the two blue layer, which I've already named here.
Now, I want two more copies of this, and I want to change their dimensions, maybe change their size. So first let's duplicate two more copies. By going to the edit menu and choose lubricate or by pressing command d on the Mac, control d on the PC. Just in order for me to be organizing because I'm very compulsive, I'm going to name my layers. So, at first instance will be to red and the third one.
Or the second instance that I've duplicated will be too green. I'm also going to save us a little bit of time by doing the same for the five digit, but we will deal with it later. So just duplicate two instances and quickly let's rename those. To red and to green. Okay, I'm going to press command on the Mac or control on the PC and with my down arrow I can move and select different layers in the timeline.
This will allow me to move quickly and navigate more easier in my composition without moving the mouse so much. Now when the red or the digit tool red is selected, I'm going to use the eyedropper and just sample the red colors over here. Now you have to be very careful you might even want to regress command or control and then just zoom in, just in order for you to sample a exact color. If you can't see it, you can always select the color scheme, and sample the colors from over here in the little picture icon view.
Now, let's just turn off, momentarily, the eye for the green layer. And change the size of the text from 287 to something else. Let's go with 276 and since text have encore points at the bottom of the character, the scale is looking like this. If you want you can play with it and actually place it just in the mirror, but I think this is kind of looking nice. So I'm going to go with this design. Then I'm going to select the green one and reduce it once again, let's say, to 260.
And of course, we also need to sample the green color. So this is the first step. We have to repeat the same steps for the five. So once again, select the five red. Make sure to colorize it using the eyedropper, then let's use the same values, so 276, and then go with the green one, colorize it, and change the size of it to 260.
I'll note that we do have an overlap between those two digits and we'll use it in the second movie when we're going to create the reveal. Now what I want to do is create the basic mask that will help us to reveal From each one of those colors. From blue to red to green, and then of course from the two to five etcetera. So I'm just going to make sure that nothing is selected by going to the edit menu and choose deselect all.
You can also press F2 if you want to do it from the keyboard. And then I'm going to grab my pen tool and just draw a shape that will cover more or less, the area of the two, something like this. I don't want to fill it with anything. I actually want a stroke for it. So press and hold the Alt key on PC, or the Option key on the Mac, and cycle through the different fill modes until you completely dismiss the field, then you can re-select the points and maybe try to work with them, just a touch.
It doesn't have to be super precise. But we do need that it will cover everything, so let's start with maybe 40 pixels and we can return to the arrow, select the anchor point, and just make sure that we have a nice coverage of all the shapes that we just drew. It might need a bit of tweaking. Might want to go and maybe raise it just a touch, just to be sure that we are covering everything.
And if you want to get rid of this annoying shape over here, which doesn't really matter, but I'm just going to show you how to do it. You can select the shape then open up the stroke and scroll down and under the line join over here change it from meter join to round join or even bevel join, whatever works for you. I'm going to go with the round join. Then I am going to once again select these little anchor points and just make sure that I have a decent cover throughout the whole shape.
I might need to make it a little bit more thicker so something like this. That's it. I am going to close this shape. And I'm going to name it two mask. I'm also going to place it just above my first two digit and then go to the area where I can see only the five. Let's just turn of the I for this one. And repeat the same steps now creating the letter five. Now make sure this is very important, before starting to draw the new shape, that you deselect everything.
Otherwise you will add more masks or, you will add more shapes to the existing selection. So now that I know that nothing is being selected, I can start to draw a u shape that will, hide the digit five, so maybe something like this. I'm going to rename this one, Five Mask. And then I know already that we need somewhere around 54 pixels. And this looks good enough.
Might want to just raise it a touch here. I just want to make sure that we don't see underneath the other colors just as you see it over here. Then, just grab this five mask and place it above the first five digit. If we're here, let's also do a little bit of a housecleaning, as always. Just by selecting the mask, and trim them by the correct duration.
So I'm going to start with number two mask, and then hold down ALT for PC, option on the mac, and then use the open bracket to trim the end point, go to the end through the same as the opposite bracket, so the closing bracket. And I'm going to do the same for the five mask. In the next movie, we're going to animate those masks and duplicate several copies in order for everything to be combined together.
- Creating a basic circle animation reveal
- Cascading animation with masks and modes
- Dividing shapes and painting them in over time
- Revealing text
- Building a repetitive shape animation
- Morphing between shapes