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Last updated 12/21/2009
Chapter 11: Text
Creating and editing text layers
About text layers
You can add text to a composition using text layers. Text layers are useful for many purposes, including animated titles,
lower thirds, credit rolls, and dynamic typography.
For a video tutorial on animating text, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0226.
You can animate the properties of entire text layers or the properties of individual characters, such as color, size, and
position. You animate text using text animator properties and selectors. 3D text layers can optionally contain 3D
sublayers, one for each character. (See
"Animate text with text
animators" on page 356 and
"Per-character 3D text
properties" on page 363.)
Text layers are synthetic layers, meaning that a text layer does not use a footage item as its source—though you can
convert text information from some footage items into text layers. Text layers are also vector layers. As with shape
layers and other vector layers, text layers are always continuously rasterized, so when you scale the layer or resize the
text, it retains crisp, resolution-independent edges. You cannot open a text layer in its own Layer panel, but you can
work with text layers in the Composition panel.
After Effects uses two kinds of text: point text and paragraph text. Point text is useful for entering a single word or a
line of characters; paragraph text is useful for entering and formatting the text as one or more paragraphs.
Vertical and horizontal point text (left), and paragraph text in a bounding box (right)
You can copy text from other applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, or any text
editor, and paste it into a text layer in After Effects. Because After Effects also supports Unicode characters, you can
copy and paste these characters between After Effects and any other application that also supports Unicode (which
includes all Adobe applications).
Text formatting is included in the Source Text property. Use the Source Text property to animate formatting and to
change the characters themselves (for example, change the letter b to the letter c).
Sequential frames in which Source Text has been animated
More Help topics
"Examples and resources for text
animation" on page 364
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