Text Grid plug-in> Jitter & Flow groups

The Jitter 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.

The Flow 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.

 

 

 

Jitter group> Row Jitter, Column Jitter

Together, these controls set the amount that text characters shift. The higher these values, the farther away from the original position the characters will move.

At moderate values, Jitter can create really nice effects. We recommend against setting Row Jitter and Column Jitter to high values, especially for video, because they can produce nasty flickering effects.

 

At left, a grid without Jitter. At right, a grid that has been heavily jittered.

 

 

Jitter group> Jitter Frequency
Jitter group> JF Randomness

Controls how often the text characters change positions. If Jitter Frequency is set to 4, then each character will change positions every 4 frames. This helps remove any flicker and if you want the characters readable, this makes the text more legible for viewers.

JF Randomness helps vary this change rate and prevents EVERY character from changing that amount, for instance, 4 frames. At 25% Randomness, some characters will change every 3 frames, some 4, and some 5. The higher you set Randomness, the wider the range of Jitter Frequency.

Together, these controls help to prevent the flickering that comes from using the Jitter group.

 

 

How the Flow group works

Here is how the Flow group works: Text characters move or 'flow' across the grid from row to row, or column to column.

 

 

Flow group> Flow Speed

Controls how fast the characters move across the screen. Flow Speed is relative to the font size, which is set in Character Attributes> Font Size. This is because font size controls the spacing of the grid. Also, a bigger font size means more pixels for the characters to cross before they get to the next column or row. Therefore, the higher the Font Size value, the slower that Flow Speed will move the characters.

The characters can only jump from one position to the next grid space. Characters can’t smoothly travel but instead have to sit still until they jump. For example, if a character is moving at a Flow Speed of 1 pixel per frame and the next column is 16 pixels over, the character has to wait 16 frames before jumping over. This keeps the character bound to the rows and columns of the grid.

 

 

Flow group> Flow Direction

Controls the direction that the characters will flow in. Flow Direction can be set to any degree of direction. Because characters can only move from position to position in the grid, diagonal motion will look particularly jumpy so it works best if set to increments of 45 degrees.

The way Flow Direction behaves and looks can be affected by adjusting the Space Between Rows/Columns Randomness or the Jitter amounts. The less that text characters appear to be arranged in a grid, the smoother the flow will be in any given direction, including diagonals.

 

 

Flow group> Change During Flow checkbox

By default, when Flow Speed is set to a value other than 0, the text characters will not change. This is because if the characters start changing as they are moving, it becomes impossible to detect a pattern and the effect looks like each character is changing randomly.

Select Change During Flow if you want Flow to pay attention to the Rate of Change parameters. Usually if Rate of Change is set to 5 or higher, a pattern is detectable and will not adversely affect the results of the characters moving. It helps if Rate of Change (ROC) Randomenss is used to prevent every character from changing at the same time.