Text Grid plug-in
Text Grid is a plug-in designed to fill a background with text characters or symbols. These characters are spread over a grid that can remain static or change randomly. The characters can flow across the grid and you have complete control over the way they behave and characteristics like Direction and Speed. You can define the number of rows and columns in the grid, its spacing, and introduce randomness so the presentatiion is not so grid-like.
Options Box
This is where you tell Text Grid what font to use and what specific text to display. Tye text into the input field or click the Load button to import a text doc. Alternately, you can generate words randomly by leaving the input field blank and checking the Random Characters checkbox.
Once in the plug-in, you can set the rows and columns of the grid that displays the text. If you manually enter or load in text, Text Grid will ignore the Columns setting and create however many columns is needed to display your text. Rows are acknowledged and the number of rows set will be the number of rows on the screen.
See Common controls, Options Box
Random Characters checkbox
If you choose not to enter text manually in the Options Box, you can have Text Grid generate random text. If you don’t enter any text into the Options dialog, and don’t turn on Random Characters, no text will appear onscreen.
Character Attributes> Font Size, Font Size Randomness
Character Attributes> Rate of Change of Characters, ROC Randomness
Hinting checkbox
Composite On Original checkbox
See Common controls, Font & Character
Character Attributes> Color
Character Attributes> Random Color
Character Attributes> Frequency of Random Color
See Common controls, Color & Rotation
Grid Setup group
This group determines what the grid looks like based on the number of rows and columns and their positioning. Grid Setup is a good place to start since it forms the basis of the Text Grid effect.
Grid Setup> Grid Position
Sets the upper, left hand corner of the grid. All rows and columns go out from here. If you animate the Space Between Columns, or the number of Rows, they will all animate from this point. It’s similar to an anchor point in After Effects. The Grid Position can be animated, and can be positioned off the layer. This can allow you to pull off some nice effects using the boring old position point. For example, you could animate the GP down, while lowering the number of rows, and make it appear as if rows are being subtracted from the top and bottom of the Grid.
Grid Setup> Rows, Columns
Defines the number of Rows and Columns in the Grid. Characters are then filled into the various slots. However simple, virtually every other parameter is affected by the way the Grid is set up, and these are the two primary controls for doing that. The look of your animation is going to rely heavily on how many Rows and Columns you have and the spacing between them.
Grid Setup> Space Between Rows, Space Between Columns
Grid Setup> SBR Randomness, SBC Randomness
Sets up the spacing between your rows and columns. These would be kind of similar to setting the Leading and Kerning in a normal text program. The Randomness slider varies the space between the individual Rows and Columns by some random amount. This creates a much less rigid grid. It will still be obvious that there is a grid, but it eliminates the ‘pattern’ of the grid (e.g. 5 spaces, then a column, 5 spaces then a column, etc).
The thing to keep in mind with Space Between Rows and Columns is that since Text Grid IS a grid, all the characters ‘slots’ are equal distance from one another. This creates a few problems with fonts that aren’t mono-spaced. Many fonts are designed to vary the space between characters, depending on what the character is. Look at the ‘i’ and the ‘g’ above. Due to the way the normal font is set up, there appears to be more space between the two characters than between other characters. However, if you look at the mono-spaced font, this is clearly not so, and it’s an issue with the font. There’s no real solution for this problem in Text Grid, other than to use a font where the spacing isn’t such an issue. It’s definitely something to be aware of, though.
Grid Setup> Moving Rows and Columns checkbox
If Moving Rows and Columns is selected, the characters will stay in their positions in the grid, and the entire grid itself will move, in one big block of text. New characters will not be added as the rows and columns move, nor will new rows or columns be created as the existing ones move.
This checkbox only matters when Flow Speed is set to something other than 0. Usually, Flow will cause the characters to move across the grid, from column to column, row to row, but the grid will stay stationary. For example, like a stock ticker, where the characters move across the screen, and are replaced by other characters as they move.
Jitter group
This group moves the individual text characters from their normal spots on the grid. The characters stay more or less confined to their place in the grid but shift a specified amount every so often. Jitter creates jumping, dynamic text. Too much Jitter can make your words unreadable but the right amount of Jitter will give a sense of energy or stress.
Go to the Flow & Jitter page
Flow group
This group pushes text characters in a direction through the grid, from row to row or column to column. The text flows across the grid, creating various patterns or revealing words. Flow can be useful in creating displays like stock tickers and scoreboards.
Go to the Flow & Jitter page
Preset Characters> Character Limits pop-up
Preset Characters> Lower/Upper Character Limits
Preset Characters> Only checkboxes
See Common controls, Preset Characters
Magnify 1, Magnify 2 groups
These groups create a 'magnification glass’ effect. As characters flow under the centerpoint, they get larger, and they get smaller as they move away. This distorts the text that lies under the Magnify point. With Taper set up correctly, Magnify can be a seamless effect with characters going from normal size to big, then back to normal size.
Go to the Magnify page