Textbox shape animations

[beh456]

Hey, I could really use your help.

I'm making a simulation for a website that has a lot of text animations at it's core.

The texts on the website have unique polygon structures, and not necessarily a plain old rectangle.

As I've learned, there currently no feature in AE to apply text animations on non rectangular shaped text.

Using masks is not good, since I need the text to be wrapped, and using another adobe tool is not good either since the result is imported as an image (No text animations).

Is there a way I can achieve this via scripts? Meaning, is there a way to use scripts in order to achieve text animations on a general polygon shaped text box?

Is there another way to achieve what I need?

One example of what I want to create is when clicking one polygon textbox it will bring it out, making it's text larger while moving other textboxes to the sides in order to make room for it.

I attached a photo of example for a text structure I want to create the animation for.

[Mylenium]

Not easily. You could of course create a ton of expressions and rig text with stacked text animators, but it's going to be a helluvalot work, even more so if some typographic exactitude is required. Again, it's doable, but there are no shortcuts here. It's going to be laborious.

Mylenium

[angie_taylor]

You can do this easily actually. In Illustrator, create the shape you want and then use the Area type tool to fill the shape with your text.

Got to File Save As and choose to save it as a PSD. Make sure to select the option to export layers and preserve text editing abilities.

Import the PSD into AE as a comp.

Open the comp, select the text layer and then go to Layer > Create > Convert to Editable text

Add any animators to this to animate.

[Mylenium]

theangietaylor  wrote

You can do this easily actually.

I honestly think you completely misunderstand the task. He's trying to have the gaps automatically filled and re-wrap the text for which your suggestion kinda defeats the purpose, as setting up the animators on the already conformed text would be even more convoluted than formatting the text natively inside AE.

Mylenium

[angie_taylor]

Hmm, as I understood it he just wants to animate text within a non-standard shape. My suggestions allows him to do this?

[angie_taylor]

You can add the animators to the text and it all works fine. The only thing you can do is animate the shape of the container. Too this you'd have to use a workaround like the one Roland suggested, creating the shape from multiple shapes.

I'd love to have an area type tool in AE, it's sadly missing.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

You've provided TWO images - which is the one you want to replicate? AND, a polygon could be a lot of different things even to the same person. If you want something like the first image you posted, then break it up into three Text Layers with each Text Layer created for each of the three, quite, obvious rectangles where the text string wits within.

[angie_taylor]

Here's an example of the kind of thing you can do with my technique using text animators. The limitation would be you can't animate the text frame, nor can you animate the font size smoothly. You can animate it using the Source text property but only via held keyframes, it won't interpolate. The password for viewing this is textframe