Animate font weights in After Effects with a slider

How to easily animate text weights in AE

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This is a quick After Effects tutorial for you. I wanted to play around with the new After Effects text expression access and I thought it might be interesting to be able to finally animate font weight with it—rather than having to animate sourceText keyframes. It's like having a value brand variable-width font!

Hopefully this expression access is opened up more in the future. It'd be nice to be able to combine styles in the same text layer. But for now I don't see a way to do that, unless I'm missing something. This seems to be here mainly to help build mogrts for Premiere, which is sad as it's been something a lot of us have wanted in AE for a long time.

Anyway, if you use this technique on anything, hit us up on twitter @workbench_tv!

#AfterEffects #MotionGraphics #mograph

[Workbenchtv]

Before anyone asks, somehow I did actually make that noise whipping my head back. I didn't add any SFX in post and I don't think it was my chair.

[pedrobonatto]

Para quem precisa em PT-BR segue o código: (Lembre de verificar os estilos que você possui na sua fonte):

weights = [
'Thin',
'Light',
'Medium',
'Bold',
'Black'
];
family = 'Gotham';
select = deslizante")("Controle deslizante"), 0, weights.length - 1));
createStyle().setFont(family + '-' + weights[select]);

[tmmrc]

Just discovered your channel from Ben Marriott, great stuff, you just gained a new sub!

[michaelnothiger]

It works just with OTF Fonts and you need to change your expressionsstyle in the project settings to javascript

[SanQuinter]

YES!
I was trying with the font Sequel Sans but the names of the weights came with a space in between (example: Sequel Sans Light Disp) So instead ‘Light Disp’ it typed ‘LightDisp’ without the space between words, and VOILA. It's working. THANK YOU SO MUCH

[charlesm]

weights = [
'Thin',
'Light',
'Regular',
'Medium',
'Bold',
'Heavy',
'Black'
];
family = thisProperty.style.font;
family = family.split('-');
select = Math.floor(clamp(effect("Select'), 0, weights.length - 1)));;
+ '-' + weights[select]);

[AtaurRaziq]

I assume the weights don't smoothly change from one to the other, they just snap right? so it's not as easy to animate it thicker in a slick fashion, it just steps, correct?

[ghxd]

I didn't understand this. I'm using Nunito Sans as a font, do I have to type the font's name in the expression somewhere? And where do I apply the expression? Alt-clicking Source and pickwhiping to Slider Control? Because I can't make it work :(

[evan]

Thanks for sharing this! I do have a question. I know very little about expressions, but Im confused how this one works since it looks like you're using "family" for 2 different variables. I would have thought that'd result in an error. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

[sfurie]

I'm getting the error message, "After Effects warning: Expression disabled. Error at line 30 in property 'Source Text'
Error: effect named 'Expression Controls' is missing or does not exist. It may have been renamed, moved, deleted, or the name may have been mistyped."

I tried to edit the code to match the effects & presets path. Changing "Select" to "Slider Control" etc. but maybe I'm still doing something wrong?

weights = [
'Light',
'Regular',
'SemiBold',
'Bold',
'UltraBold'
];
family = 'GillSans';
family = family.split('-');
select = Controls")("Slider Control")("Slider"), 0, weights.length - + '-' + weight[select]);

[xuancuongo]

I keyed the slider from 1 to 4 but. It doesn't smooth like the TEXT in the video. What should I do?

[motionwithoskar]

I get a weird error on "family = thisProperty.style.font;" Line.
I changed "Style" to the font I am using, and fixed all the weights to the fonts specified weights but it says
"Error expected ; "
But I have a ; at the end of it ? I am so confused haha.

Love the tutorials and work you guys at workbench do, please never stop <3

[timcity]

Is there a way to do this with typefaces? I would love to see if there is a way to sweep between different typefaces.

[Zenzuke]

Why support variable fonts when you can just set up every single font you have this way. Yay. (Awesome tutorial nonetheless)

[lumenaura]

Hi there! This is awesome, but for some reason nothing is happening on my end. The project files provided don't do anything either... am I missing something?

[brunomendes]

Hi, Workbench. Really appreciate this tutorial!
Would you know how can i link this effect into the typewriter effect, with each letter changing weight at a time? I saw something like this in the video "Bill Gates: How COVID-19 Is Disrupting The Way We Fight Malaria" and i wanted to try and replicate

[evann]

I had an error message about select, and after when it worked it was only between 1 and 10 on the slider, so I modified it like that :

weights = [
'Thin',
'ExtraLight',
'Light',
'Regular',
'Medium',
'Bold',
'ExtraBold',
'Black',
'Heavy'
];
family = thisProperty.style.font;
family = family.split('-');
sliderValue = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
normalizedValue = Math.floor((sliderValue / 100) * (weights.length - 1));
select = clamp(normalizedValue, 0, weights.length - 1);
+ '-' + weights[select]);

[LICHTCATCHINGTOBY]

Really short but still awesome tutorial! Really happy that i found your channel.

[bimhjortronsteen]

Ok, I feel so stupid for asking this (as it is probably obvious to everyone else), do I add a slider effect inside the text layer and use pick whip? When I try with and without a slider effect it doesn't work so maybe I have just missed the point!

[tranqilo]

hi
i dont understand how i should make this work for other fonts
i bought the file and changed the font weights name
buy nothing happens