Text Matrix plug-in> Stream Spacing and Attributes group

This group controls the look of streams, which are lines of text characters with their own attributes. Streams travel in slots or 'grooves' of the matrix. The Spacing and Attributes group includes controls for the spacing between text characters, spacing between the text streams, and whether the streams fade in or out. Let's take a look at them.

 

 

 

Space Between Characters
SBC Randomness

Controls the spacing between text characters in each stream. Space Between Characters is the same as tracking or leading, depending on the way the streams are oriented. If you want the text characters to be closer or further together, adjust this parameter to get the right character spacing.

NOTE: Space Between Characters also controls how the matrix is set up when you select the Snap To Grid checkbox.

The Randomness parameter has a dramatic effect on the animation since it lets the text characters break out of their grooves.

 

 

Space Between Streams
SBS Randomness

Controls the spacing between text streams. Space Between Streams moves the streams closer or further away from each other. This works regardless of the orientation of the streams, or whether or not they are on paths. Use this to spread the streams across the screen or pull them on top of each other.

By default, Space Between Streams controls where the grooves between streams are. By setting the SBS Randomness to something above 0, each stream will be close to the groove, but doesn’t need to be exactly in it. This is very useful for increasing the complexity of your animation and making things look less like preset animation. Streams can overlap, some will be close and some far, giving a much greater sense of natural motion, exactly the opposite of Snap To Grid. These can also be set to negative values, allowing you to get the streams or characters to bunch up together. This is very useful in the case of Direction Randomness.

The Randomness parameter has a dramatic effect on the animation since it lets the streams break out of their grooves.

 

At left, Space Between Streams is normal, and the streams look like they are scattered along an edge.
At right, the streams are pushed together with a negative Space Between Streams setting and all have the same origination point.

 

 

Fade In, Fade Out

Causes the streams to taper off in opacity as they are coming or going. More technically, the opacity of the text characters tapers on/off.

The Fade In value sets how long it takes a character to become fully opaque from the time it appears on the screen. Likewise, the Fade Out value sets the number of frames before a character will start fading out. Since there isn’t a definite lifespan, this length of time is calculated from when the character was created. For example, if it appeared on screen on frame 10 and the Fade Out value is 90, then on frame 100, the character would begin to fade out.

 

 

Opacity
Opacity Randomness

Determines the overall opacity of the streams. At 100%, the streams is fully opaque. At 0% the streams are fully transparent and therefore invisible.