download BeatEdit for After Effects at
https://aescripts.com/beatedit-for-after-effects
download TextExploder at
https://aescripts.com/textexploder/
The Beat Wiggle feature of BeatEdit for After Effects is a great tool to animate texts – in partkicular if you combine it with our TextExploder to animate each letter individually.
In this tutorial you create a complex text animation the easy way and also learn about a super useful and flexible expression to add to your aresenal.
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to this After Effects tutorial where I want to show you how to create this animation very quickly with our extensions BeatEdit and TextExploder.
We s tart by selecting the text layers and exploding them with TextExploder. Now each letter has its own layer and can be animated independently.
Next, we load our audio file into BeatEdit, where we can select the beats to which the letters should react. We add some randomness for more variation in the beat pattern.
Then in the Beat Wiggle component of BeatEdit we choose the preset with which we want to move our letters. Let’s preview this.
I like this preset, so I select the layers I want to animate and apply to generate keyframes up to the point where the text should be fully visible.
Then I move the work area over and apply again to also create keyframes where the text should animate out again.
So this animation looks pretty nice, except that here where it pauses, the text should be readable, and instead, the text is now readable at the very beginning.
To fix this, we add layer markers on all text layers – one at the very beginning and one here in the middle, where the text should be readable.
So at the first marker, the position and rotation of the layers is exactly what we want it to be at the second marker.
So what we do is to apply an expression to the position and rotation of all those layers which says; “Shift my values such that at the second marker we have exactly the value we originally had at the first marker”.
This expression works with any property and with “copy expression only” we can paste it to all texts layers quickly.
So with the expression, at the beginning of the comp we have a random position, then we animate into the target position and also animate out of it again.
And that’s it! This is how quickly you can animate texts in sync with the beat using BeatEdit and TextExpoder.
