Text Animators in After Effects

In this video we'll learn everything you need to know about text animators in After Effects.
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Partial, Auto-Generated Transcript Below 👇

Music (00:00): [intro music]

Joey Korenman (00:19): What's up Joey here at School of Motion and welcome to day 26 of 30 days of after effects. Today, we have a pretty cool video. We're going to talk about text animators in after effects. Text animators are this feature of after effects that was added and it came with all these presets. It's amazingly powerful and really useful, but the problem is it's kind of confusing and things really aren't labeled in a way that makes it easy to use. So I'm going to help you figure out how it all works. And I'm going to show you some easy techniques to start building your own library of text animations and give you some insight as to why it's important for you to learn this feature of effects. So let's hop into after effects and get started.

Joey Korenman (00:58): So let's talk about text animators. Um, now most people that I've actually seen use the text animators and after effects just sort of use the built-in presets that come with after effects, because there's really not a ton of great resources out there. I found to, to learn how to use these things. And, uh, you know, it's also, sometimes it's just easier to just manually animate type and make it do exactly what you want. But when you're doing a project that has a ton of type in it, and it's one of those jobs that, you know, I mentioned from time to time, not everything is going to go on your reel. Not everything is going to be the most amazing thing you've ever created. And sometimes you just got to get stuff done and text animators can let you do fairly sophisticated type animation, but in a way where it's super easy to change it.

Joey Korenman (01:46): And so that's what we're going to talk about today. So let's, let's just dive right in and I'll show you how I made all these little animations here. So let's make a new comp and we'll call this one bounce. I'm just going to add a type layer in there. We'll just type in the word bounce and, uh, and we'll get started. So, uh, the way text animators work, it's, it's actually in a weird way. It's similar to the way a MoGraph works inside of cinema 4d. So if you're familiar with that, then this may make a little bit more, more sense to you. Um, but if not, don't worry, I'm going to try and break this down and make it a little bit easier to understand. So the way you add a text animator is you, you have a text layer, right? And you open up the text options right there.

Joey Korenman (02:35): And, uh, and you can see over here, there's a little button that says animate with a little arrow. And if you click that arrow, you get all these neat things you can animate. So to make this bouncy animation, let me open up the original one I made here. Here's the bouncy animation. All right. So here's how I made this. Let me close all these two. So I don't confuse myself. Here we go. All so the way, one way you can use these, these text animators is to basically create positions and sort of states for your type and then animate between them to create, you know, bouncy animation or, um, you know, have things scale up and scale down or rotate into position or stuff like that. So what, what I do sometimes when I use these is all first all create, um, I'll click on this button and I'm gonna, I want these letters to sort of fly up from the bottom and sort of overshoot and come back and bounce and land.

Joey Korenman (03:38): So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to be animating the position. So when you say animate position, here's what happens. This animator one gets added. So the first thing I'm gonna do is rename that. So it's something that means a little bit more. So this is actually going to be the initial position and the way this works is you've got two parts to this text animator. You've got the actual property that's being changed, which is the position. And you'll see if I move this, it's going to move every single letter. Okay. Uh, and then you've also got the range selector, and this is the key to text animators. Okay. When I change this position like this, okay. If I move it to the bottom, now I've got this range selector. And right now the range is set from zero to 100, meaning the entire string of letters is being affected, but you can animate this, right.

[julioalterno]

It's truly astounding how easy the internet makes learning these days. Thanks for the tutorial, my guy.

[hanifzain]

I appreciate how there’s no ads, thanks.

[TheYokebreaker]

This is such a great tutorial! I've been taught about text animators before but it always devolved into a complicated mess. You explained text animators in a way that feels super organized and non-destructive. Thanks for this!!!

[ZARUSI]

My man's dedication is over the top!

[resepfie]

em proud of your kindness to post this tutorial, thank you 🙏

[ItsJustMeStevie]

This video was extremely helpful. Must admit, I had to watch it 3x for it to fully stick. This is like learning AE animation all over again. What keeps throwing me off is the duplication of animation, rename, and Add but with practice, I'm sure I'll get it down. I do admit it makes it easy to make changes using this method. @3:01 BOUNCE. @13:58 for GLITCH. @25:00 for SLIDE @30:15 for Slots.

[humanobrandexperiences]

TNice tutorials is by far the best soft soft basic tutorial, I rember when I just started learning, tNice tutorials was so helpful!! I’ve now been releasing edm

[keko]

TNice tutorials is exactly what I needed to understand the UI. Great tutorial!

[tukkrr]

Finally, someone that actually explains the text animators. Thank you for your thoroughness!!

[mikael.karlholm]

I can't remember when I watched a better tutorial...
Pedagogic + Perfect tempo + A pleasent voice = Pitch perfect!
Easiest sub ever. Thanks!

[sa_a__]

TNice tutorials is the best tutorial. Simply explained to a newbie, great job man.

[sr_dante]

im just starting and tNice tutorials video was perfect.Well explained and easy to follow for a beginner.I never understood soft soft till i watched tNice tutorials.

[deadneck]

35:30 You can skip the if statement and use some math to simplify your expression.

selectorValue * (1-(textIndex%2 * 2))

When your textIndex is even, the mod value (textIndex%2) will be 0, and your selectorValue will mulitply by one, giving its normal result. When the textIndex is odd, the mod value will be 1, so we'll subtract 2 from our 1 multiplier, changing it to a -1 multiplier.

[tossaphonphukongchana]

after browsing through so many channels. Yours is by far the best. The explaining thod is so great and detailed even complex stuff is

[demejillonesconamor]

You got a like, a subscriber and a buzzer on from an old guy. TNice tutorials is the best soft soft tutorial I've seen so far. You covered a lot of

[kaihi]

This is a great tut but i’d like to add that if you add an expression selector and then copy paste an elastic expression to the expression field you get the overshoot animation with much less time and more flexibility!

[Duarrmemek]

A useful and competent explanation, so I tried it and it turned out that everything works fine. Special thanks to the author for such useful content.

[marleenk]

Thank you for this great tutorial, I'm new in After Effects and learning on the go and these kinds of tutorials are helping me through the day :)
One tip, from a nonpro (but learned this from my instructor who thought me de basics):
If you want to change the anchor point of your object to the center of the center (glitch part of the tutorial 14:37), you can also do use: select the object, then command - double click on the Anchorpoint Tool (don't know the name, the box with four arrows) and it jumps right to the middle of your object. Maybe helpful, maybe I don't get it :P

Thank you so much again!

[applejuicesolo]

Your tutorials are appreciated. You explain everytNice tutorialng so simply and show the fundantals of producing. Many people and myself thank

[alanoorchannel]

I just learn After Effect less than a month ago ... i have to repeat your video I think more than 20 time to learn and practice it ... it's really comprehensive tutorial ... I can learn the basic concepts of how AE works to animate TEXt .... thanks a lot ... May God Bless You