Cool Text plug-in> Effect groups

The heart and soul of the Cool Text plug-in is its Effect groups. The Effect controls let you create most of your cool effects. You can have the same Effect applied multiple times or yuo can stack and layer different Effects.

 

 

Effect> Type of Effect pop-up

There are seven Type of Effect options: Scale, Scale X, Scale Y, Rotate, Color, Opacity and Blur. Each Effect type is greatly influenced by the Position and Amount parameters.

 

 

 

At left, Opacity Effect is applied. In middle, the 'l and 'a' are unblurred as a Blur Effect travels across the words.
At right, the main Color is blue, and two Color Effects are applied with a gold color and green color.

 

 

Effect> Position, Width

Together, these controls select the characters that will be affected. Each character has a number assigned to it depending on where it’s at in the string of text. The first character is 1, the second 2, and so on. The Position lets you set the Effect for a specific character and the Width determines how many other characters will be affected at the same time.

Position and Width set a range. If a character falls into this range, it will have the Effect applied to it. By animating either Position or Width, you affect characters over time. Once a character is affected, it will continue to animate until it reaches the Amount value, even if it falls out of the range. This is because the Time parameter, not Position, sets how long it takes to reach the Amount. If we wanted all the characters to scale up at the same time (using the Digital Anarchy example above), we would set Position to 8 and Width to 15. The Effect range would then encompass all the letters so they all will start and stop scaling at the same time.

Scale characters one by one: If you want a string of characters to gradually scale up one by one, animate Position from 1 until the end character of the text. In our example below, the end value is 15. Set Width to 1. With Width set to 1, only one character will be affected at a time. As the Position moves across the text, the characters that have already been passed over continue to animate. This is so even though the text isn’t directly being affected by the Effect range, which is only 1 character wide.

 

 

Effect> Amount

Sets the maximum amount of whatever Effect is being applied. The character that is specified by the Position slider will receive this value for the Effect.

Amount has different limits depending on which Type of Effect is select. For Opacity, the range is 0 to 100. For Scale, it’s 0 to 25000. For Rotation, it’s –25000 to 25000. For Blur, it’s 0 to 25,000. For Color it’s ignored since Color takes its value from the Effect Color color chip.

 

 

Effect> Color swatch

Sets the color for the Color Effect.

 

 

Effect> Time

Sets the length of time it takes for a character to go from it’s normal state to whatever Amount is set for the Effect. For example, if the Scale Effect is applied with an Amount of 200, Time sets the number of frames it’ll take to go from having no Scale applied (just the regular font size) to having the full 200% Scale applied. If you set it 30 frames, assuming a 30 frame/sec comp, it’ll take one second to go from normal to scaled up 200%.

As you move the Position point from one character to another, each character will start to animate. The Time parameter doesn’t kick in until each character is affected. If a group of characters gets affected at the same time, they’ll all animate in unison. If they’re affected at different times, the animation will be staggered… they’ll start and FINISH the animation at different times. This also means that if you animate the Time parameter, as different characters are affected, they can have different Times. The first character may take 30 frames to animate, but the second one may take 10 frames, so it may finish before the first one.

 

 

Effect> Time To Return To Original Value

If you want the characters to go back to their original state, set a value for Time To Return To Original. For instance, use Time To Return to fade the characters in and out of the Opacity Effect.

 

 

Effect> Rotation Axis pop-up

Determines what axis the characters will rotate around for the Rotate Effect. If you are familiar with any basic 3D system, these axes should be familiar.

 

 

Left to right, rotation Axis is X, Y and Z. Type of Effect is Rotate.

 

 

Effect> Baseline For Effect

Moves the center point that the Effect is rotating or scaling around. This affects Scale and Rotate Effects around the X or Z axes, and can produce some very interesting animation.

If you're familiar with the Anchor Point in AE, this control is very similar. If you want a layer to rotate around the upper left corner, you can move the Anchor Point from its normal position in the center of the layer to the upper left corner. When you change the Layer Rotation, lo and behold, the layer rotates around that corner. Baseline works the same way. If you want all the characters to rotate around their center point (for instance, with Rotate Z axis) instead of around the normal baseline of the letters, you would adjust this upwards slightly.

 

 

Effect> Don’t Return to Original Position checkbox

Once a character has animated from its normal state to the full Effect Amount, you need to figure out what to do with it. This control tells the text characters to stay at the Effect value. If the text is scaled to 200%, for instance, then it will stay at that size and never scale back down.

 

 

Effect> Affect All checkbox

When turned on, all characters that have the Effect applied to them will be rendered.

 

 

Effect> Affected Letters Only checkbox

When turned on, only characters that have the Effect applied to them will be rendered. The character will appear as soon as the Position parameter calls its number and the animation starts. Once the animation finishes it will disappear again. If the Don't Return to Original Position checkbox is selected, the character will stay in its affected state and permanently remain visible. If that is not selected, then the character will animate back to i's original state and disappear once it gets there.

 

Left to right, Affected Letters on and off.

 

 

Tips about using Effect groups

Using Multiple Effects: Effects can be used multiple times and stacked on each other. You can create interesting animations by combining the Effect groups, eespecially if you use the same Effect. For example, combine a Blur with a Color Effect or stack two Color Effects together. Or use one Opacity Effect to set all your characters to a low opacity or invisible, and then use other Opacity Effects to make them visible. Another example is using multiple Blur effects to create 'in focus' areas or areas with more blur.

Effect groups are sequential: The Effects are applied sequentially, which means Effect 1 is always applied first, Effect 2 is applied second, and so on. For instance, to scale layers down and then scale them back up, you would scale them down with Scale Effect 1, and scale them up with Scale Effect 2. This sequence is less important if you are combining Effects like a Rotation and a Blur that are going to happen at the same time. However, there can be a small visual difference depending on the order of the Effects.

How to subtract Effects: Effects can be added together, but they can also be subtracted. This allows you to create a variety of complex effects, where text has one effect applied, then a second effect that removes the first effect from some of the characters. Make sense?

Going outside the amount: You can enter in –25000 to 25000 for any of the Effects, but the Effect only recognizes numbers in the range mentioned for each Effect. Anything outside of that range is clipped to the minimum value or max value depending on which end of the range it falls out of. For example, if Opacity = 100, it’s fully opaque. You can’t get any more fully opaque, no matter how hard you try. If you’re 25,000% opaque, you’re not any more difficult to see through than if you’re at 100% opaque, so any value over 100 is clipped to 100.

Using Expressions: If you are combining Effects that start at the same time, then you can tie the Effects together using Expressions. Since you want all the Effects to happen in sync, you can link Effects 2 through 5 to Effect 1. Adjustments made to Effect 1 would then propagate to the other Effects, making your changes easier. Expressions are particularly useful for the Position control.

 

Example of subtracting an Effect. At top, we applied a heavy Blur to the entire word. At bottom, we applied a second Blur set to a negative value to the ‘rch’. The negative Blur puts focus on the characters its applied to. If no Blur had been applied already, then a negative value would have no effect.