Native text box

[johnmcmullin]

I really think that ae needs a native text box that works with the text animators. So that it animates up with each word or character and also so that we can put the box around specific words in a sentence.

The hacks around creating text boxes this are overly complicated and time consuming. I've been asked to create templates with this feature and the only solution I have found that works perfectly involves splitting a single text layer into one layer for each word as it fades up. So instead of potentially one layer of text, I end up with 40 and the mogrt becomes extremely slow and heavy in Premiere.

It seems like this basic feature is sorely missing in a graphics program. 

[JohnColombo]

Hi @johnmcmullin,

Thanks for making this feature request! In your workflow, would you see this kind of functionality better implemented as an effect applied to a Text layer, maybe a Shape modifier, or something else? We'd love to hear more details on what would fit best into your workflow.

After Effects 2023 (and later) does ship with a 2D Text Box preset. The preset creates a Shape layer with effect controls that can link it to any Text layer with many options like padding, rounded corners, when to animate, etc. If you have a chance to give the preset a try, please let us know how it's working for you or how it might be improved. It would be helpful in that we could apply those learnings to a more full-featured text box in the future.

Cheers,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[johnmcmullin]

Thanks for replying John,

I was somehow imagining this effect to be something you could add inside a text animator and so choose start and end positions for the box to appear, so highlighting specific words of the text. And the box could scale, fade and animate with individual letters if needs be. But I realise that I was somehow imagining the functionality of shape layers as well so maybe I didn't think it through so well. Maybe it could come with a the ability to stroke or round corners, add a gradient if needs be.

Thanks for pointing out the text box preset. I hadn't realised it was there. I'm sure it's quite useful, and I'll probably use it in the future rather than always using expressions. It really doesn't work with the text animators though. I was specifically looking for words with boxes to fade up one by one. I managed to hack it by animating source text with an expression (which does change source rectangle size) and then adding CC wide time to create the fades. Seemed to be a bit of a render hit though. 

[Dan Ebberts]

It seems like it would be most useful as part of the text engine, where you could control the background color on a per-character/per-word basis with control over padding and rounding at boundaries--a full-featured text highlighting implementation. Combine that with per-character/per-word style control and you'd really have something...

[johnmcmullin]

Thanks Dan for clarifying how it might be done. So I'm guessing Adobe would put a box option with controls into the character dialogue. And those parameters would become animatable.