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ian_farnam
Participant
Apr 7, 2026 8:32 PM UTC
Open for Voting

The kerning of a font with an animated variable is determined by the currently selected instance in the drop-down menu.

The kerning of a font with an animated variable is determined by the currently selected instance in the drop-down menu not the instance of the animated variable.

 

I am a font designer trying to animate variable font changes in After Effects. When you add an animator for a variable font axis, the kerning data for that font does not change with the animator. Say for example, if you have an upright style selected from the style drop-down, if you, with the animated variable change the value to slanted, the program will still use the kerning values from the upright instance.

    2 replies

    Inspiring
    Nov 9, 2026 7:22 PM UTC

    +1

    I’m encountering the same issue with a variable font intended for motion use. During axis animation, After Effects retains the kerning of the selected base instance rather than interpolating the kerning for the animated axis values.

    Setting Variable Font Spacing to Per-Character doesn’t resolve this.

    The font’s variable kerning works correctly outside of AE.

    This is blocking the intended animation workflow for a client project. Is there any potential fir a fix or a recommended workaround for the time being?

    Translate
    Nov 9, 2026 9:47 PM UTC

    Right now there isn’t a workaround other than going frame by frame and changing the selected base instance as a keyframed source text. Text animators in AE work at the character level but apply from the base instance for the layer kerning. You can try animating tracking but that may not give you exactly what you want. 

     

    We have a ticket written up but this isn’t a simple bug fix unfortunately. 

    Translate