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N
nemean
Participant
October 24, 2022
Answered

Create Shape from Text with Faux Bold enabled

  • October 24, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 279 views

I have some text that I would like to animate. That text has Faux Bold enabled.

To animate it I need to create a shape layer from of the text. But when I do that, it creates that shape as if it had no Faux Bold. How can I get that back? Or is this a bug/unimplemented feature?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Warren Heaton

Since it doesn't happen with other Character modifiers (Faux Italic, All Caps, Small Caps, Superscript, and Subscript), I consider this a bug.

 

You've probably noticed that it also happens with Layer > Create > Create Masks from Text.

 

Auto-Trace works as expected, but it's looking at the Alpha and not the Character panel settings and of course does not result in Shapes.

 

I'm guessing a bold version of the font is not available?

 

After using Layer > Create> Create Shapes from Text while Faux Bold was enabled, we can enable Stroke set to the same color value as the Fill and increase the Stroke Width in the resulting Shapes until it best matches what Faux Bold was doing.  This a little bit of futz work, but can be done quickly enough using the Timeline Text Field to reveal "Stroke", "Stroke Width", and "Color".

 

 

 

 

2 replies

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
October 24, 2022

Faux bold is a mere rendering trick in the text engine that doesn't modify the actual contour, so this is to be expected. It never worked different for as long as I can remember. In such a case it would be more reliable to create the artwork in Illustrator and convert it there before importing into AE.

 

Mylenium 

 

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Warren HeatonCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
October 24, 2022

Since it doesn't happen with other Character modifiers (Faux Italic, All Caps, Small Caps, Superscript, and Subscript), I consider this a bug.

 

You've probably noticed that it also happens with Layer > Create > Create Masks from Text.

 

Auto-Trace works as expected, but it's looking at the Alpha and not the Character panel settings and of course does not result in Shapes.

 

I'm guessing a bold version of the font is not available?

 

After using Layer > Create> Create Shapes from Text while Faux Bold was enabled, we can enable Stroke set to the same color value as the Fill and increase the Stroke Width in the resulting Shapes until it best matches what Faux Bold was doing.  This a little bit of futz work, but can be done quickly enough using the Timeline Text Field to reveal "Stroke", "Stroke Width", and "Color".

 

 

 

 

    N
    nemeanAuthor
    Participant
    October 24, 2022

    You're right, there is no bold version of my font. Thanks for the "hack" though, it worked.

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