Non breaking space does not work with text animator.

[ljasniberg]

I'm animating opacity on text word by word, but sometimes I need to animate several words in at once.

While the documentation says "If a set of characters is set to be non-breaking, the characters animate together as if they were a single word." this simply isn't true for me. Even with "No Break" set - they are still animated in as they were several words.

So far the easiest solution for me is to add another character with the same width as a space, and then use masks to hide them. But that seems really ugly for something that should work.

I would love some help here!

[Rick Gerard]

Sounds like you don't have the text animators set up properly. There is nothing keeping you from using multiple text animators on a single layer. Here's a project file that shows the technique: Dropbox - Multiple Text Animators.aep

The top animator is by word, the second is by line, the third is by character. Then it's just a matter of setting the right values.

Personally, I would just use multiple text layers because it would be easier but what you want to do is possible on a single layer.

Make sure you have Source Text selected before you add an additional animator.

note: A .txt extension may be added to the .aep file. Just delete it to open the project file.

[ljasniberg · Accepted solution]

I think I understand how to set them up, but the problem was that I wanted to animate a longer piece of text in several words at once. Something like this:

"I_think_I_understand how_to set_them_up, but_the_problem..."

Where the words that are connected with a _ would animate in together. The "No Break" in the menu did not do what the manual said it would in this case - it works for word wrap, but not for word animation.

However, after googling I think I might have found a solution by copy/pasting in the Unicode character "punctuation space" - this is exactly the same width as a normal space, but does join words together as I animate them.

[angie_taylor]

In the Advanced menu of the Range Selector >  Units and Based On menu - you can choose to animate Characters Excluding Spaces - I think this might get you what you want?

From AE Help - "This controls units for Start, End, and Offset. You can use either the percentage or index units and base the selection on the characters, characters excluding spaces, words, or lines. If you select Characters, After Effects counts spaces and effectively pauses the animation between words as it animates the spaces between words."

[Mylenium]

Angie is in part right, but the simple truth is that you can't play it dumb and simple and have just the ever same stock animators and hope they would somehow add up and do things magically. More to the point you need to set up multiple selectors referencing the same animators and play with the overlap modes for their falloff. That's realyl what it comes down to - you need to spend time and effort exploring and learning those things. It's really easy enough to have whatever stuff you want to be animated on a letter-by-letter basis have filtered through word-based selectors or whatever preceeding the others.

Mylenium

[Roland Kahlenberg]

You wrote -

While the documentation says "If a set of characters is set to be non-breaking, the characters animate together as if they were a single word." this simply isn't true for me. Even with "No Break" set - they are still animated in as they were several words.

What you quoted from the documentation was written with respect to A SINGLE WORD; "If a set of characters is set to be non-breaking, the characters animate together as if they were a single word."

However, your appreciation of what you quoted was misconstrued; " ... Even with "No Break" set - they are still animated in as they were several words."

In essence, what is true for ONE WORD should not necessarily be true for more than one word, or words. Hence, the documentation is absolutely correct.

Additionally, I find your description of what you want to be lacking in detail. Regardless, the replies you have received can still apply because there isn't one way to do things with the Text Tool. My alternative suggestion is for you to break up this line of text, "I_think_I_understand how_to set_them_up, but_the_problem..." into three Text Layers; one Text Layer for each of the breakpoints you have decided on. Then animate Based On 'Lines'. Another option is to animated Based On 'Characters' or even 'Words' but if you're not familiar with the Text Tool or keyframing, these may be trickier to achieve.