Text editing limitations in Motion Graphics Template

[Yoel12345]

So recently, I spent some time beating my head against a wall until I learned to build a properly-functioning lower third animation that I can just plug-and-play into future Premiere projects. The idea was to design it so I would just have to type out the desired text, adjust 1-3 sliders, adjust duration if necessary, and move on to the next task. I exposed any parameters I could see myself wanting to adjust just in case.

Well now that I've gone on to use it as intended, it turns out that there is one glaring limitation throwing a wrench in my workflow that I don't see a solution to. The editable text in an AE-created .mogrt does not appear to be anywhere near as editable as a text box in a Premiere-created .mogrt. In using a few stock Premiere templates, I've been able to adjust font settings on a per-character basis, which is important for making the title in a book citation italicized, or adding a second line with a smaller font when necessary.

In my After Effects template, I did expose the ability to reposition text, but the text styling itself only appears to be editable on the whole, rather than by character. I can't even "Replace with After Effects Composition" to customize the text, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid having to do in the first place, and instead will need to save every single banner with special needs as its own separate .aep to make it work. This is a significant burden to workflow given the educational nature of the material I work on. Frankly, all the "Character" and "Paragraph" tab options should be exposable in the Essential Graphics panel, the same way they are for Premiere-made .mogrts.

The reason I'm using AE instead of just making the template in Premiere is because it uses dynamically linked expressions to maintain correct position and proportions of various elements at different max widths (tied to sliders). The Premiere templates I've used seem to break easily with even minimal tweaking, which is a massive waste of time to fix. So is trying to add an extra Premiere text layer over my template and mask off the edges (scroll handles) by hand according to the animation, given that the max width is adjustable and the animation of course uses bezier.

Any insight or advide on this issue would be greatly appreciated!

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Lots can be done. Just because someone owns a camera and can write in a word document doesn't mean everything becomes possible. Having a different sized type for a second line, a drop cap style and mixing fonts are all possible BUT they do take a lot of coding and time to set up. Your options are to outsource, dig in to learn the procedures and code or to downsize your expectations/output. 

I suggest you explain exactly what it is you are after and perhaps someone may be able to assist you with any specific question/solution. So, one specific task/question is best for a single post because this sort of solution - Responsive MoGraph can be rather lengthy. HTH


 

[Yoel12345]

Okay, thinking about it further, I think adding a second text field would solve the second-line problem easily enough.

But more commonly, I'll still need to be able to adjust font style characteristics from within Premiere on a per-character basis, as shown in the attached example. Italicized book titles, alternate fonts for foreign script characters, and bolded letters for emphasis will be the most common instances. Multiple such strings will sometimes be present in the same line, such as in comparing two different foreign words and their translated meanings.

I snapped a mid-animation frame in order to demonstrate the masking effect I have built. The whole banner fades in/out and scrolls in/out during the intro/outro sections, with the maximum width (and opacity) defined by an exposed slider as shown in Essential Graphics panel screenshot.

Since I've spent plenty of time figuring out how to wire this all up with expressions already, I might as well keep chugging along. The time spent will pay for itself fairly quickly, since these banners pop up quite frequently. I'm not sure how to be more specific/targeted without any idea of what potential options you might have in mind. 

[OussK]

I don't think it's possible to change the font on per-character basis from MOGRT, you may add 2 text placeholders instead each in a different font

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Current constructs delimit Text Style Expressions to one Text Style per Text Layer. Hence, you will have to combine as many Text Styles/Text Layers as is required and then use sourceRectAtTime and perhaps other Expression methods to link the Text Layers positionally.  

[Yoel12345 · Accepted solution]

It sounds like even if I were to take the time to build a system with the existing methods, it wouldn't be elegant or versatile enough to supplant just typing out custom banners in AE as-needed. Perhaps I'll stick to that for now, and submit a feature request. Thanks for your help!

[Yoel12345]

Leaving this here for anyone else struggling. Dacia the Quality Engineer left a post with a very interesting and usable approach to the issue, at least for my needs. She basically wrote JS expressions to create a custom markdown syntax that can be inputted to the source text field to change style options on-the-fly from Premiere. I just need to develop more such options from her model to complete the set of style options I will be using. I imagine doing the same will work for most people who are capable of tweaking scripts and willing to bother.

She posted an explanation and a link to her example project as a comment to a feature request. 

[Roland Kahlenberg]

That is the most convoluted approach to creating a faux bold text effect I have ever seen. And it's misleading to claim it changes Text Style - it doesn't. It uses the Stroke Width Text Animator Property to increase the stroke width of selected text characters. That's it. You cannot allow for italics nor mix actual text styles onto a single Text Layer. 

Whoever credited this post with the correct should re-correct it.  

[Yoel12345]

I have unmarked it as you suggested, since in the long run I couldn't get it to do what I needed, even in a clunky manner. I was able to simulate italics by skewing, etc., but I couldn't switch fonts mid-string for Latin and non-Latin characters, which I need. So I've been creating unique projects for every banner with multiple text style requirements, which is exactly what I was hoping to avoid.

[jackthegiantslayer]

Yeah, these are some truly clunky workarounds. I really do not understand why the company that created the historic standard for all postscript font usage cannot implement these same standards in their Mogrt template system. It really boggles the mind.

[robert31095993vynr]

what ever happend to simple 😞

[ArctisStudio]

I wasn't able to find a single feature request about this issue. I made one now. Please vote for it here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-ideas/change-fonts-and-character-properties-in-after-ef...

[Yoel12345]

This is specifically about per-character/mid-string style changes