Learn how to create a path for text animation in Adobe After Effects 7.
Tags:adobe,adobe after effects 7,text animation,total training,tutorial
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The next thing we are going to do is get our Pen Tool because we are going to create a path and then have our text animate along our path. Before we start creating our path, make sure that RotoBezier is turned off and click right about here. So we are going to click and drag to the right, about there. We are going to move to the center, top of the Seven, we are going to click and drag right about there.
We are going to move to the center right of the Seven. We are going to click and drag, going down till we make our curve. We are going to the bottom center of the Seven. We are going to click and drag, complete that curve, the center left of the Seven, click and drag, right about there and then we are going to move all the way over here, say right here and then just click and drag to finish our path. You might have to do this a couple of times but the more you practice with your path, the easier it gets.
Let's go back to the Move Tool and we are going to stretch this back, just a little bit to here, and to here, and I want you to do Command+- once, we can see more of our screen. I am actually going to stretch this up to about there. I want you to toggle open the Storm Tracker layer and under Text, toggle that open, stretches up a little bit more. I want you to go to Path Options. Under Path Options, where it says None, toggle that open and go to Mask 1. Now the type will be writing along the path. So let's set some keyframes for this.
Let's go to the beginning of the Timeline, and hit the Home key and I want you to go to your first margin. You will see if you drag on your first margin, it will write along the path. So we are going to drag this until it leaves the screen. If you want to set some numbers in there to make this a little bit easier, just click on the numbers and we are going to set in -1040. So it's completely out of the screen.
Let's set a keyframe there and I want you to go to the end of the Timeline and basically what we are going to do is, we are going to have the text animate in and then disappear. But we are going to stop the text around here and again if you want to just type in the number, it's about 170, and if we drag along, this is what we end up with. Type comes in and stops about there.
Now I am going to turn off my Mask Preview, so that we don't have to look at that anymore. We can see our type and we are going to animate a little bit more on our text properties. So let's toggle collapse the Path Options, let's go to Animate and select the Scale property.
Let's go to the beginning of the Timeline and we are going to reduce the Scale to 0, so it starts at nothing. We will set a keyframe there. Then let's move to 1 second and set the scale to 500. You will see how large this gets. 500. Now let's go to the end of the Timeline and set that back down to 0. If I scrub on this, we can see the type comes in and then goes away.
Now I am going to adjust this a little bit because I want the type to continue a little bit further. So let's go to the end, I am going to type the letter U, so I can see my keyframes and on my first margin, I am just going to drag that a little bit further, say about there. Let's see what this looks like. Yeah that's a lot better. So let's put in 625 for animation and you might have to put in a different number, depending on how your path was built, we will probably all have to have our numbers just a little bit different. But that looks exactly how I want it to look.
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