Animating large text list

[Julian Belyea]

Hey All!

I have a large text list - 3000+ names in an excel file. I'm trying to find a way to avoid creating 3000+ individual text layers. 

My final animation is going to be on multiple screens, so I will have to break up the list somewhat.

Is there anyway to create a template animation and import my excel file with some expressions?

Any help/advice would be appreciated

[Rick Gerard]

Setup your type in Illustrator, properly formatted and arranged in the hero position on an artboard that is the size of the comp you will render for each screen unless your projection system can handle a video wide enough to cover all artboards. Put each screen's text on a separate layer, Import as a composition, solo the text for one screen and set up your animation, then copy the animation to all layers, duplicate the comp in the Project panel and delete or turn off the additional screens. 

AE will not display 3000 layers. You'll need to combine a bunch of names on a single layer. Laying out the text in AI is going to be the easiest way to do this. You might even be able to rearrange the names on the spreadsheet, export as a PDF, and take a shortcut to the layout that way. 

Any other solution involving parsing a CSV file with 3000 names is going to take some serious scripting skills. If this is not an ongoing project with a list of 3000 names showing up every few weeks, I would just use Illustrator to set the type.

[Mylenium]

Illustrator or InDesign can easily import your whole Excel file using their "Place" commands and then all you need to do is pretty up the formatting, save an AI or PDF file and import that into AE. Takes five minutes if everything goes right ands isolating individual entries using extra line breaks, paragraphs or spreding them out across artboards/ pages is easy enough just as well.

Mylenium