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A
ad-03a28762812
Participant
May 24, 2018
Answered

Automatic color change for specific words

  • May 24, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 7969 views

Hello

I have a .jsx project with an automatic text change from a .csv but the texte is supposed to have words with different colors.

I succeded to change the text color automaticly but I want to change some specific words.

For example if the text layer contains : "where is my umbrella" I want "where is my" in white and "umbrella" in red.

Do you think we can do this color changement for some words automaticly ? If we could do it directly in After Effects, it should be possible by scripting, isn't it ?

I thought about two ways of doing it but I'm stuck.

- On the csv file, I put the word I want in red in bold. Then in my after effects script I say something like "if you see bold texte, then it's red". But I couldn't modify a piece of the text layer, only the entire layer.

- On the csv file I write on another column "Umbrella" and I say on my script "If in the text into this column contains the same words than the layer text (which had been changed before), then put this words in red ". But I had the same problem, how to select a specific word into a after effects text layer into my script ? The documentation don't say a word about this.

Do you think it is even possible ? Am I on the good path ? If you have another solution, I'm listening!

Thank you very much.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Tomas Sinkunas

Thank you Tomas,

I tried, but it's not as simple as a I thought. Unfortunately I cannot write the expression directly from the script.

I tried something like this

var  Rouge01 = app.project.item(2).layer(3);

Rouge01.text.animator("Animation 1").selector("Sélecteur de plage 1").start.expression =

                    "var wordToHighlight = ("red");\r var txt = text.sourceText;\r txt.indexOf(wordToHighlight);\r" ;

After effects says to me the property is masked. I don't know how to access to this expression.

If you've got any idea... thank you !


Here's a working example in case you want to see how to construct it with script.

(function() {
    var composition = app.project.activeItem;
    if (!composition || !(composition instanceof CompItem))
        return alert("Please select composition first");
    app.beginUndoGroup('add text');
    var textLayer = composition.layers.addText("This is green and red.");
    addColoriser(textLayer, 'green', [0, 1, 0.37343749403954, 1]);
    addColoriser(textLayer, 'red', [1, 0, 0.13979797065258, 1]);
    app.endUndoGroup();
    function addColoriser(textLayer, wordToHighlight, color) {
        var grpTextAnimators = textLayer.property("ADBE Text Properties").property(4);
        var grpTextAnimator = grpTextAnimators.addProperty("ADBE Text Animator");
        grpTextAnimator.name = wordToHighlight.toUpperCase();
        var textSelector = grpTextAnimator.property(1).addProperty("ADBE Text Selector");
        textSelector.property(7).property("ADBE Text Range Units").setValue(2);
        textSelector.property("ADBE Text Index Start").expression = "var wordToHighlight = '" + wordToHighlight + "';\ntext.sourceText.indexOf(wordToHighlight);";
        textSelector.property("ADBE Text Index End").expression = "var wordToHighlight = '" + wordToHighlight + "';\ntext.sourceText.indexOf(wordToHighlight) + wordToHighlight.length;";
        var fillPropertyGreen = grpTextAnimator.property("ADBE Text Animator Properties").addProperty("ADBE Text Fill Color");
        fillPropertyGreen.setValue(color);
    }
})();

2 replies

B
born2wrestle
Participating Frequently
September 16, 2019

Hi there, is this process capable of changing the color of only 'number' characters?  For instance, TEXT in RED and NUMBER in GREEN?

B
born2wrestle
Participating Frequently
September 16, 2019
Also, is this possible in Illustrator?
Tomas Sinkunas
Tomas Sinkunas
Legend
May 24, 2018

Sad news - there’s no access to individual characters via scripting, unfortunately.

But as a workaround, it should be possible to achieve similar effect with Text Animators. it would resut in searching for some phrase in the sentence/layer and apply some color effet with follof.

I’ll see if I can knock some example tonight.

A
ad-03a28762812Author
Participant
May 24, 2018

OK thank you very much Tomas, cool, I'm waiting for your example.

Tomas Sinkunas
Tomas Sinkunas
Legend
May 25, 2018

Ok, so the idea was to add Text Animator > Fill Color > RGB and set it's Range Selectors Units to Index (instead of Percentage).

Then under Start and End adjust values based on character position:

For Start:

var wordToHighlight = 'green';
var txt = text.sourceText;
txt.indexOf(wordToHighlight);

For End:

var wordToHighlight = 'green';
var txt = text.sourceText;
txt.indexOf(wordToHighlight) + wordToHighlight.length;

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