VCP Saber, but without the plug-in?

Report · Mar 19, 2024

Hi,

The issue I am having is not a problem with expressions, but I wanted to see if one could help solve it.

I use the VCP plugin, Saber, on a mogrt that I share with video editors. Saber allows me to have a tapered draw-on text effect, based on a selected text layer, without having to bake anything down (Ie convert text to shape layers).

This is perfect for the mogrt workflow, as I can create a dynamic animation that draws-on, and the editor can change the text and it updates.

Recently on a project, there was an issue where the MOGRT using Saber appeared to make everything off-centre in Premiere (Although in rendered from AME correctly). I shared a post about this too.

This caused some frustration and concern about the MOGRT workflow, and I wanted to get to the bottom of why Saber was doing that. But also wanted to see if there was an alternative way to achieve the draw-on effect, but still give the artist the same control over the text in the template.

If you have any ideas, I appreciate it.

Report · Mar 19, 2024

There's nothing magical about Saber and all its stylings can be re-created using standard Glow, Roughen Edges, Turbulent Displace and so on. It would just be a lot of work to create a project and tweak the look and then have it function in a way that it could be edited from an MOGRT. Other than that there's proabbly no good way to co about this. Video CoPilot clearly don't care anymore to keep their plug-ins up to date and waiting for any fixes could be just as hopeless as waiting for Adobe to fix thir side of things. I guess it's one of those situations where you really don't have much of a choice. Either live with the bug and adapt your rendering workflow or move on to other tools.

Mylenium

Report · Mar 19, 2024

It isn't the styling I am after, just the editable text outline properties. Is there really nothing that can emulate that in AE?

Report · Mar 19, 2024

You can request the font outlines in one of the APIs, but not per se access them without converting to paths for scripts, expressions or non-path-aware effects. no way around that, unfortunately, though someoen could/ should probably have written a plug-in for that long ago.

Mylenium