I recently ran into the comprehensive tutorial to make animated texts using the vegas effects and few other tricks by Avnish Parker. For this week?s assignment for the After Effects class at the SVA, I wanted to explore the way to combine this trick with animating texts using the range selector, which I learned in my recent class. This entry is to share key steps I took to create the animations below, but for more detailed tutorial, please see the video by Avnish Parker at the end of this entry.
Left: Vegas effects typographies Ver. TYO, Right: Vegas effects typographies Ver. NYC
Adding multiple Vegas Effects
Step 1. Create text outline by making the blend mode transparent
Find the Vegas Effect and apply it to a composition with some text.
Set the blend mode to transparent to create the outline of the text. Customize the look by changeing colors, width, or other properties (adding too much width could lose the sharpness). By making the segment and the end opacity values to 1, the outline becomes a continuous line rather than chopped.
Step 2. Animate the line with length values
Keyframe the length (from 0 to 1) and rotation (some rotation values to 0) to animate the line along the text outline. Turn on the random phase, so each letter shows different movements.
Step 3. Add depths by duplicating the layer and changing the random seed value
Duplicate the layer and change its color of the vegas effect. By adding different random seed value to differentiate the motion from the original layer. Shifting its timeline or changing values to emphasize randomness.
Step 4. Duplicate again and thicken the Vegas effect?s width and apply Minimax effect to create the layer to fill the text
To create a fill, duplicate the layer again and animate the width from small to much large value that fill up the majority of text. Add minimax effect, set its operation to minimum, and increase radius value to bring the bleed out element inward. In addition, add the choker effect and increase its choke matte to remove the element?s softness.
Much thicker width covers the text, but it also bleeds out too much.
Step 5. Use the original text composition to mask out parts that bleed out completely
Although minimax effect might have helped containing elements within the text form, the original text composition can be used to mask the elements sharply. To do so, add the alpha matte in the track matte column of the composition with effects, which should be under the original text composition.
This is the outcome of the animated text when it?s masked with the text composition.
Animate text with Range Selectors
Step 1. Add some properties to animate a text
With the range selector, we can specify a particular portion of the text to change or animate ? if the text is made up with five letters, we can specify to animate only the first two letters, for example. To do so, we need to add some properties to animate, such as opacity, scale or anything as many as we need.
Step 2. Select the range where we want to apply
Then open the range selector to specify the portion of the text. If we want to apply only to the first two letters, there is an units option that let us select by index in the advanced options, instead of the default percentage. This way, the first two letters can be specified by setting the start value to 0 and the end value to 2.
Step 3. Keyframe individual properties
Add keys to properties If we want to animate properties for only those specified letters. For example, scale of the only first two letters animate in the screenshot below.
Step 4. Keyframe the range selector to apply the same change gradually to different texts
The range selector can be animated as well so some property values may be applied to different letters gradually in a sequence or random order. In the screenshot below, the end range selector animates from the index 0 to 5, so the scale value gradually applies to each letter.
Combine the Vegas Effects and the animation from the Range Selector
This is when the animated text is combined with the vegas effect created earlier.
The original tutorial video by Avnish Parker
Liquid Text Animation in After Effects ? After Effects Tutorial ? Easy Method by Avnish Parker
