Help with Text Animation Design

[LJWOR]

Hey there,

I'd like to create the same text animation used in this All Birds Snapchat ad piece:

Dropbox - ALL BIRDS 6.mov - Simplify your life

I've come to a dead-end trying to create this in After Effects.

I'd really appreciate anyone that could help me?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Cheers

[SamLanes · Accepted solution]

You can see that there is basically a rectangle that moves across the text. I have managed to recreate this in a basic way with two text layers in slightly different positions, which are matte tracked to two separate (but identical) shape layers.

The key here is that the two matte layers must be identical, so if you make any change to one, you need to duplicate it and place it over the inverted alpha matte for the effect to work.

It is quite hard to explain, but I have attached the project file here: Dropbox - Allbird effect.aep - Simplify your life 

You will need to play around with the positions and the font to make it work in the style you require.

[LJWOR]

Thanks, Sam for taking the time to put this together, I really appreciate your help, you're a legend!

[VFXbear]

There is also an easy way to do this using the Displacement Map effect.

Have a look at this project : Dropbox - Displacement Text.aep

In there, you'll see the MAIN comp, with a text layer you can change, and a DISPLACEMENT MAP layer.
This map layer will determine the look of your text being distorted, based on the luminance of the map.
You can have the hard edge look you're looking for, or as you'll see in the comp (turn on the orange OR the green layer in the Displacement Comp), if you put a feather on the moving layer in the displacement map comp, you can have some interesting wave effect going over your text.

The good thing is that the timing of your displaced text will always be consistent. Just add the displacement effect to whatever text you create, point it to the displacement map, set the displacement amount (horizontal/vertical) and done!
You can even have different layers moving at different times, just add another map, move it in time on your timeline, and play around with it ...

Eh voilà !  😉

[LJWOR]

Thanks so much! You guys have been so helpful and generous with your time. Have a great day and cheers for this, I appreciate it!