Text Expression Selector Bug with non-Latin Right-to-Left scripts (Arabic / Hebrew)

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

It appears Expression Selectors have a bug with non-Latin scripts (Right to Left) like Arabic and Hebrew.

They don't render correctly on every frame, sometimes they're delayed, other times they're incorrect.

However, purging cache on each frame will render correctly. Also, sometimes it will seem to work fine, but then if you change or re-create the keyframes then the bug resurfaces.

In this example, the above text is animating correctly with a regular Range Selector, but the lower example is animating incorrectly with a simple Expression Selector driven by a slider.

Attached Project File for Reference.

(expression for reference)

val = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
if(Math.round(textIndex) == Math.round(val)) {
  [100, 100, 100];
}else{
  [0, 0, 0];
}

Tested on:

- AE 25.3.0 Build 71

- Windows 11

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks, Justin!

Kevin

[Smushkan]

Just came across a Reddit thread with someone having this issue, and while I was testing I discovered a very strange workaround.

I was able to replicate this bug in both 2024 and 2025.

However I found if you duplicate the text layer, and set the text direction on the duplicate to left-to-right, the first layer starts rendering correctly.

Toggling layer visibility on the duplicate breaks it again, and if the duplicate is set to be a guide layer, it breaks when rendering. However, if you move the duplicate outside the visible bounds of the comp,  the first layer renders correctly on export.

Example project with the weird 'fix' attached - hopefully that gives some clues as to what's going on!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_lmNhUjgX3j0UbDoHnLEqf1llsoV3WbB/view?usp=sharing

Reddit thread for reference:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AfterEffects/comments/1mkltqv/text_animation_via_expressions_doesnt_work/

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Dang, not sure how you would have thought to try that, but glad it works.