Text Grid plug-in> Magnify group

The two Magnify controls create a 'magnification glass’ effect (surprise, surprise). 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.

For Magnify to work, you need to set Width and Height to something OTHER than a value of 0. This is their default value, which essentially turns off the effect. Make sure that both Width and Height have positive values. Magnify is possibly the most powerful part of Text Grid plug-in since it creates interesting distortion effects, especially when the two Magnify groups are used together.

 

 

 

Magnify Position

Specifies the center of the effect. Position this over the text characters that you want magnified.

 

 

Magnify Strength

Sets how much Magnify will enlarge the characters. This can be set quite high, up to a value of 1,000%, which results in characters being about 10 times their original size.

An interesting aspect of Strength is that if you set it to 0, the rows/columns affected will disappear. You can use this to remove rows in the middle of the grid, or use both Strength points to slowly remove lines from the top and bottom or sides of the grid.

 

 

Magnify Width, Magnify Height

Determines the number of columns and rows in each direction that will be affected by the Magnify effect. This value spreads in both directions from the Maginify Position point. A Width or Height of 2 will result in four columns/rows being affected, two in each direction from the Position point.

 

 

Magnify Taper

Tapers off the Magnify effect. If the value is below 100%, the characters will fall off and get smaller as they get further away from the center. If the value is above 100%, the characters will get larger. If you want the characters to fall off from the center and blend in with the outlying characters, set Taper to 50%.

 

 

Using Magnify 1 and 2 together

If you mix Magnify 1 and 2 together, you can create an interesting effect of shrinking and growing text characters. The Taper control can cause the characters to almost disappear. If you set Taper to 0, the edges are almost reduced to nothing.

Using the Magnify 2 group, you can cause some of these characters to grow back, or further distort the distortion created by the first magnify point. The Magnify Points can be animated to make all sorts of undulating, flowing, organic motion among the text characters. You can link the Position points to tracking data or other parameters using Expressions or Motion Math, and have the points move or their width expand based on what other layers are doing. This is a very cool and relatively easy effect to do.

The Magnify effect has some interesting offshoots. If you are only using one line of text, you can use the Magnify effect to run across the line of text, enlarging each character. With Taper set up correctly, this creates characters jumping up in size and calming back down to their normal size. Just animate the Position point along the line of text to accomplish this effect. Getting text to behave this way is something that is difficult to pull off in After Effects otherwise.

 

At left, a normal Taper of 0. At right, Magnify Strength set low at 20, Taper set high at 400, which creates an inverted taper.