Common text controls: Font & Character
These controls show up in the Main Setup, Characters or Character Attributes groups. This is where you set up the basics of how the individual characters look and behave. On this page, we discuss controls for Font and Character styling.
What are common controls? Many of the Text plug-ins share parameters that behave the same. To avoid having to repeat these definitions, we cover them once here. If a parameter has special attributes in a plug-in, it will be further explained on that plug-in's manual page.
Random Characters checkbox
If you choose not to enter any text manually, you have the plug-in generate random text.
Random Characters fills your grid with characters that are randomly selected from the range that you define with Lower Character Limit and Upper Character Limit. This range is the ASCII representation of characters in your font. Turned off by default. You can also specify which characters will be displayed by adjusting the Alternative Character settings.
IMPORTANT! This checkbox is essential for Text Matrix, Text Grid and Screen Text. If you don’t enter any text into the dialog, and don’t turn on Random Characters, no text will appear onscreen. You need to check the Random Characters checkbox in order to generate text characters.
In Text Grid, at left, Random Characters checkbox is off. At right, checkbox is on.
Text Position
Sets where the text will appear on the screen. You can move this Position point anywhere, including off the layer in case you want to animate the text coming in from off screen, stage left. Text Position sets the starting point of the text regardless of whether a path has been assigned to it or not. The text on a path will start from this point NOT from where the first point in the path is. Text will follow the path shape from the Text Position point, so where you drew the first point in the path is irrelevant.
In Cool Text, text characters follow the shape of a path starting at the Text Position point, not the first point on the path.
Font Size
Font Size Randomness
Sets how big the text characters are. The larger the point size, the bigger the character.
Font Size will impact other parameters like the spacing of the streams. The larger the font size, the more space that is put between streams, characters, rows, columns.
The Randomness controls the variation in the point size of each character. You can use this control for creative animation like making your text wiggle. For instance, set the Font Size to 48 pixels. Then keyframe Font Size Randomness at 15-30%. Let the randomness get higher, lower, then high again and your text will change size and appear to wiggle.
In Text Grid, left to right, Font Size Randomness at 30 and 80. Font Size is 16.
FS (Font Size) Rate Of Change
FS ROC Randomness
Sets how frequently you want the Font Size of your characters to change. This lets the Font Size vary over time. This control works in conjunction with the Font Size Groups pop-up.
The value of Change is in frames. By default, Rate of Change is set to change every frame (1.0). However, there are plenty of instances where you might not want the characters to change so rapidly. If FS Rate of Change is 4, then at every 4 frames, the font size will change for all characters. Set it to 30, and the characters will change every second, assuming a 30fps movie. This is very useful if you don’t want characters changing so quickly that you’re viewers can’t make out what they are. It's particularly important if you are using a symbol or dingbat font for which you want the reader to see every character.
FS Rate of Change is not fractional. There are no negative values since it’s impossible to change the characters less often than once a frame.
The Randomness varies how frequently each character changes its size.Not only will each character have a different font size, but that font size will change during the course of the animation This frequency will fall in a range around the Rate of Change value, plus or minus a percentage of the Randomness value.
Font Size ROC in Text Spiral
Font Size Groups pop-up
When the Font Size changes (via FS Rate of Change), this pop-up determines how much of the text characters are changed.
There are three Font Size Group options:
Rate of Change or Rate of Change of Characters
ROC Randomness
Sets how frequently you want the text characters to change. This lets the text itself vary over time. High values mean the characters will change rapidly. These parameters are overridden if custom text has been loaded or typed into the Options box.
Font Rate of Change
Font ROC Randomness
Sets how frequently you want the font (or typeface) of your characters to change. This lets the font vary over time. These parameters are in Cool Text, Text Spiral and Font Changer, the plug-ins that have an Options Box which contains multiple font choices.
The value of Change is in frames. By default, Rate of Change is set to 0, which means the font will not change. If Font Rate of Change is 4, then at every 4 frames, the font will change for all characters. Set it to 30, and the font will change every second, assuming a 30fps movie. Font Rate of Change is not fractional. There are no negative values since it’s impossible to change the characters less often than once a frame.
Randomness varies how frequently each character changes its font. This frequency will fall in a range around the Rate of Change value, plus or minus a percentage of the Randomness value.
Randomize Font checkbox
Adds a randomn selection for the font that is used. Turned off by default.
NOTE: When this checkbox is active, the choice in Font Selector is ignored.
Font Selector
Chooses the Font# in the Options Box and applies it to your text. Since there are five Font# options in the Options Box, there are five slots in the Font Selector slider.
If a Font# is set to None or that font can't be loaded due to a system conflict, then the plug-in's text display will disappear since, theoretcally, no font is being used.
At left, Font Selector at 3. At right, Font3 in Options Box is selected.
Hinting checkbox
Turn on Hinting to enable smoother motion in some cases, especially when characters are being rotated. Turned off by default.
Traditionally, 'hinting' is the process by which small variations in character shapes are encoded into a typeface to create visually pleasing relationships between characters. For instance, a ‘y’ fits better next to an ‘i’ if both characters have been hinted for this relationship. In the print world, hinting is helpful for accurate printing but that’s not a motion graphics concern.
Composite on Original checkbox
When active, this checkbox combines the Text Anarchy effect with the layer it is applied to. If that layer is a Solid, not an image, then you will not see a visual difference. Turned off by default.