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Participant
August 20, 2026
Question

How to scale animated text on path WITHOUT scaling mask path?

  • August 20, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 14 views

Hello!! I have to make a video template that features a single line of text which repeats using an echo effect and moves along a frame, similar to what the Montreal Victoire did for their goal videos as seen here. Because I’ll have to make about 30 of these videos and the text that needs to travel along the path will be different lengths, I set up a separate comp to use as a parent layer with an expression to scale text in that comp to its width (in this case, 200px), so I would only have to set up the number of echoes/delay between echoes one time. I tried using the expression “comp("Dynamic Text (player names)").layer("Player Name").transform.scale;” in my main composition to adjust the text moving along the path to match this scale, but this changes the scale of the path the text is travelling along as well. Is there an expression I can use to scale the text, but not the mask/mask path it’s travelling along? Alternatively, is there a way for me to have text move along a path in this way but not have the path be linked to the text so both can be edited freely?

    1 reply

    Community Manager
    August 21, 2026

    Hi @maddie_swse,

    Thanks for posting. I can see why this would be frustrating when you're building a reusable template for multiple player names.


    What you're running into is that scaling the layer via Transform > Scale also scales the mask path the text is following. Instead, try using a Text Animator > Scale, which scales the characters without affecting the path itself.


    You can then drive the Text Animator's Scale value with your expression rather than scaling the entire layer.

    For more information, see: Animating text in After Effects.


    You could also keep the dynamic text in a separate precomp if you need additional flexibility with names of varying lengths.

    If you'd like, share a screenshot of your layer setup and current expression, and we'd be happy to take a closer look.


    Regards,
    Kevin