Text Reveal in After Effects

Download Project Files here.

Intro

Text reveals are a big part of contemporary motion graphics. They’re used for everything from logos to banners to taglines. One might even say they’re the bread and butter of motion graphics work.

There’s all sorts of ways to create text reveals, but at heart, they all really just require some basic animation know-how and some familiarity with After Effects. That’s all there is to it!

Overview

In this tutorial, we’ll be starting with some basic Position keyframing. From there, we’ll move on to working with a simple Scale animation with some Rotation tool in there to give it weight. After that, it’s animating a Track Matte for another kind of text reveal, before going onto learning a cool and effective trick with using Shape Layers to hide text reveal transitions.

Text Line 1

1. Upon opening the file, double-click on the layer called Text Line 1.
2. Click on the layer named ION.
3. Hit P on the keyboard to bring up Position keyframes.
4. Let’s move the Playhead to 0;00;00;05.
5. Hit the stopwatch to start keyframes.
6. Change the Position values to 2170,372.
7. Move the Playhead again to 0;00;00;15.
8. Change the Position values to 1165,372.
9. And then we’ll move the Playhead to 0;00;00;25
10. Then change the Position to 1215,372.
11. Shift-click all the keyframes set so far.
12. Right click on any selected keyframe.
13. Navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
14. Now for the second word. Move the Playhead to 0;00;00;25.
15. Click the layer called GRAPHICS.
16. Hit P to bring up Position.
17. Now while holding down the Shift key, hit S to open up Scale.
18. Hit the stopwatch on Position to set a keyframe.
19. Do the same with the stopwatch on Scale to set a keyframe.
20. Change the Scale values to 333,333.
21. And now change the Position keyframes to 1000, 1500.
22. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;00.
23. Change the Scale to 100,100.
24. And change the Position to 1000,595.
25. Shift-click to select all keyframes on this layer.
26. Right click on any selected keyframe.
27. Go to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
28. Click on Main Comp at the top of the composition window to go back to the main composition.
29. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;00.
30. Click the layer City Footage Precomp, the purple layer.
31. Hit R to open up the Rotation values. This will let us add some impact to our animation.
32. Hit the stopwatch to start keyframes.
33. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;02.
34. Change Rotation to 0 x +18.
35. Now let’s move the Playhead to 0;00;01;03.
36. Change Rotation to 0 x -7.
37. And now move the Playhead to 0;00;01;05.
38. Rotation values here are 0 x 5.
39. Finally, let’s move the Playhead to 0;00;01;08.
40. Last Rotation value here is 0 x 0.
41. Shift-click all the keyframes.
42. Like before, right-click on any selected keyframe.
43. Navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
44. Move the Playhead to the start, 0;00;00;00.
45. Hit the Spacebar to preview the animation. Looking cool! We have all sorts of movement happening and leading into each other, which keeps the composition looking dynamic.

Text Lines 2

1. Double-click on the layer called Text Lines 2.
2. Find the layer called DESKTOP.
3. Now find the Track Matte dropdown list. It should look like this.
4. If the list isn’t visible, hit Toggle Switches / Modes at the bottom of the layer stack.
5. Click on the Track Matte dropdown list and navigate to Alpha Matte “Alpha Matte DESKTOP”.
6. Now click the layer actually named Alpha Matte DESKTOP.
7. Hit P to bring up Position.
8. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;00.
9. Hit the keyframe to start Position keyframes. Where the layer is right now is fine, but let’s move it in the second keyframe.
10. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;15.
11. Change the Position keyframes to 940, 540.
12. Select both keyframes.
13. Right-click on either selected keyframe.
14. Go to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
15. Click the layer Line DESKTOP.
16. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;00.
17. Hit P for Position.
18. Now hit the stopwatch to start keyframes.
19. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;13
20. Change the Position values to 1650,741.
21. Now hit S to bring up Scale.
22. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;15.
23. Hit the stopwatch to start keyframes.
24. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;18.
25. Change Scale to 0,0.
26. Move the Playhead back to 0;00;01;26.
27. Set the Scale values to 0,0.
28. Now move the Playhead to 0;00;01;29.
29. Change Scale to 100,100.
30. Shift-click all the keyframes.
31. Navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.

Conclusion

That’s it!

Text reveals are ubiquitous in modern social media. Ads use them, shows use them, title sequences use them, everyone uses them. With the tools learned in this tutorial, try spinning them off into different kinds of text reveals. Use the line transition to reveal logos, use the Scale and Rotation technique to have several lines of text hammer onto the screen. There’s no limit to the ideas designers can create when it comes to text reveals.

Happy animating!

Credits

Video by Magda Ehlers from Pexels