Recently I needed to create a look where rows of text animated vertically down, fading on in turn as they moved . This could have been achieved in a number of ways using multiple layers and keyframes, but that would have not only added complexity to the composition, it would have made updates and versioning more time consuming. With an understanding of how After Effects’  Type tool works, and a little consideration, I nailed it with one layer and no masks or precomps.

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After Effects Type tool is amazingly powerful, and when you understand the basics it’s straightforward to create a wide range of  type animation styles. Before you start duplicating layers and adding loads of keyframes or even using expressions, consider how you might be able to achieve the look with a single text layer.

If you find yourself confused by the type tool, check out this tutorial where I demystify Animator Groups, Animator Properties and the Range Selector – the key areas of the tool you need to know in order to master it.

Remember there are also a bunch of type categories in After Effects Animation Presets (Animation > Browse Presets). As with all presets remember to use them as a starting point and add your own flair!

In this example (insert your own movie star name) the original preset had the letters jumping up one after the other. I added a 2 new Animator Groups for Position and set the Range Selectors so one word slid in from the right and one from the left. The z-position was animated using the After Effects’ Position transform property. Presets are also good to deconstruct once you have your head around the basic functionality of the tool.

So if  you’d forgotten or been avoiding the After Effects Type tool, get into it, it’s one of the many powerful tools in the motion designer’s After Effects arsenal.

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The K1 logo and the video wall are reflected in the floor but this is a fake, since ProAnimator 4 doesn’t support reflections. To create this look in ProAnimator requires duplicating and flipping the object you want to “reflect”. First I set up the look using one ProAnimator, then duplicated the ProAnimator layer leaving the wall and logo in one and the reflections in the other. Having the reflections as a separate layer allowed me to drop the Opacity of just the reflections.

The logo uses the footage comp as a reflection map. Notice how the bevels are also reflecting the map, which looks cool but a problem is that the right hand side of the logo is also displaying the reflection, that’s because the reflection map is applied to the object and there is no way to control where the reflection will appear. This wouldn’t happen in a real scene as because the bevels on the right side of the letters are facing away from the screen. This won’t be an issue when ProAnimator eventually supports true reflections.

None of this would have been an issue had I used Cinema 4D and the only reason I didn’t use C4D for this project was time. This was a 2 day job and had a feeling I would spend too long experimenting in C4D to make the deadline.

Three After Effects lights illuminate the scene and the After Effects camera (controlled with a null object) does a simple dolly in to the wall. The sky (a large stock image) moves believably with the camera thanks to Trapcode Horizon.

The music is only a rough placeholder and obviously doesn’t start early enough.

Check out the intro to the promo below and grab the modified project file to see how it was put together. Nothing earth shattering but video walls are still a great way to make bad footage good again.

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This starry background was created using a combination of Fractal Noise and Trapcode Particular and is based on a preset included with Particular.

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