After Effects: How To Use Generate Stroke Effect

After Effects CC 2022: How To Use Generate Stroke Effect

This tutorial will show you how to use the Generate Stroke Effect on Text to create a simple text animation with no fill and a colored stroke in Adobe After Effects CC 2022.

Keyboard Shortcut:
Reveal All Keyframes: U
Text Tool: Cmd/Ctrl + T

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How To Apply Generate Stroke to Text in Adobe After Effects:
1. Create a new composition
2. Add Text Layer (Cmd/Ctrl + T)
3. Right-click on Text Layer in the layers panel
4. Go to Create…Generate Masks from Text (this will create a duplicate and preserve original)
5. Go to Effects & Presets Panel (Window…Effects & Presets)
6. Search for ‘Stroke’
7. Locate Generate…Stroke and click on Stroke and drag on to Text in Comp Window
8. Go to Effect Controls (top-left corner)
9. Check box for ‘All Masks’
10. Check box for ‘Stroke Sequentially’
11. Go to ‘Paint Style’ and change to ‘On Transparent’
12. Click Color Swatch to change Stroke Color
13. Brush Size to 2
14. Brush Hardness: 100%
15. Brush Opacity: 100%

How To Animate Stroke on Text:
1. Drag playhead to beginning of timeline
2. Click on the stopwatch next to ‘Start’ and keep it at 0%
3. Drag Playhead to 10s on Timeline
4. Change ’Start’ to 100%
5. Change ‘End’ to 0% (do not add keyframes)
6. Tap the Spacebar to Preview
7. Move the keyframes closer together to speed up animation
8. Move the keyframes further apart to slow down the animation

Note: Experiment adding keyframes with the Start & End Properties to create unique animations.

To Reverse: Copy/Paste ‘Start’ keyframes but reverse the order on the timeline

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[magdalenakerestegian]

Thanks for this. How do you change the location where the stroke begins? Your animation begins at the top right of each letter, how do you get it to begin at the top left of each letter?

[vanillasyd]

the text stroke thing doesn't work for me.. when I change it to "on transparent", the text disappears.

[animatewithdermot]

Works great in old Premiere CS5 BTW. Many thanks for this.

[ripcadalackron]

Is there a way to do this so that it shows the whole letter? Not just the outline? I've use Handwriting Text Reveal, but the brush strokes are too big, especially with a drop shadow. I can almost get it by turning by brush size to 100, but it doesn't fill in very clean, any suggestions?

[CancheGalindo]

Awesome, thanks! But, what if I don't want the outline of the letters? I want the stroke to reveal the filling.

[kesmeby]

My question is, how is this an8-bit only effect? Is this limiting my final render speed just because Adobe can't be bothered to update it?

[miguelarce]

But it's only for text layer? can it be a composition?

[abedalkareemnoureddine]

Thanks! can we generate similar effect on camtasia ??

[Ali-pish]

Very useful tutorial for this
Thank you Master

[BGDMusic]

it's a shame this doesn't work with other visuals, i'm trying to do this with an audio waveform but it doesn't work, despite the settings you recommended