Write-On (handwriting) Text expression

[malcolmricci]

Hey guys,

I know that you could emulate a hand-writing effect in after effects using the 'stroke' effect and masking paths, but is there any way that this could be done automatically via some kind of text animation preset or expression?

The reason I'm asking is that I would like to set up the expression on a text layer and then have the possibility of changing the text itself inside of that layer via data input by the customer, with After Effects adjusting the effect/masks paths/ whatever is needed to have the same effect applied on the new text data input.

I've done some research but can't seem to find anything, not even sure if this is possible in the first place, but thought there might be some kind of work around with alpha mattes and after effects realising where the font pixels are maybe?

Not sure if this makes sense, but any feedback would be highly appreciated.

Thanks 🙂

[Mylenium]

Long and short: No. Expressions have no way of knowing the actual outlines of a font nor is there a way to easily generate consistent contiguous center lines for every letter. There used to be a script that can create centered mask paths from text converted to masks, but even that has its limitations. As soon as there are self-intersections and holes in letters, it fails. That and of course naturally even those mask paths would require additional tweaking or joining together. Annoying as it may be, but creating write-on animations will always entail manual work. There's just no way to automate this fully and dumb it down to a level where customers can type in any arbitrary text and it magically works. It doesn't even end there, as naturally the timing will depend on the text length and resulting path length and you'd have to account for that, too.

Mylenium