Issue with title animation

[Darth Taffy]

I am editing a short film, and for the opening title I wanted to something akin to the first Alien movie, where the letters each fade in individually, out of order.

I managed to get it close enough to how I want it (I wish the timing of the letters' entrance were more spaced out, but that I can accept, as I am on a deadline). The main problem I'm up against is that each letter fades from 0% opacity to 100% opcaity (which is what I want), but at the last second, they snap to full opacity, as if they are skipping the last two or three degrees of transition.

Anyone have any idea what I've done wrong? I've included screenshots of the beginning and end of the animation on my timeline, and also included the render itself so you guys can see what's happening visually.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Darth,

Do you have a project file you can share? Let me know. I hope the community can assist you.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Darth Taffy]

Sure thing! Here she is.

[Rick Gerard]

You don't need opacity keyframes, Easy Ease, and adjust the Value Graph to control when the characters appear. The last step is to adjust the random seed to control when the letters appear. Something like this:

[Darth Taffy]

Thanks so much for simplifying my animation timeline. I've never used the graph editor, and I love that it gives me more control over the timing and quality of the animation.

I'm still getting that "pop" at the end of each letter's appearance. They snap to full opacity at the last microsecond as though they are skipping a couple degrees of the transition from transparent to opaque.

I asked Google Gemini what it thought and it said that my version of After Effects must have a weird bug because the advanced drop-down of my animator property ought to have a smoothness value, and doesn't (again, according to Gemini). Obviously I am reluctant to take a robot's word for it, lol.

If I can't get rid of the snap in the next two days, I will simply have to learn to live with it, but I am sort of an obsessive, detail-crazed lunatic.