Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual page 291

Animate text with text animators
Animating text with animators and selectors consists of three basic steps:
• Add an animator to specify which properties to animate.
• Use a selector to specify which characters are affected by the animator.
• Adjust the animator properties.
Note: To always affect all characters in the layer, delete the default selector. In this case, animating a text layer is not
significantly different from animating any other layer.
Usually, you don't need to set keyframes or expressions for the animator properties. It's common to only set
keyframes or expressions for the selector and specify only the ending values for the animator properties.
For example, to animate opacity gradually from the first character to the last, you can add an animator for Opacity,
set the Opacity value (in the Animator property group) to 0, and then set keyframes for the default selector's End
property to 0% at 0 seconds and 100% at a later time.
You may find it easier to think in terms of numbers of characters than percentages for a range selector's Start and
End properties. To show these properties in numbers of characters (including spaces), choose Index for Units in the
Advanced property group of a range selector.
You can create elaborate animations using several animators and several selectors, each of which adds its influence
to the text animation.
Animating the opacity of a text layer using the Opacity animator and the End property
Select a text layer in the Timeline panel, or select the specific characters that you want to animate in the Compo-
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sition panel.
Do one of the following:
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• Choose Animation > Animate Text and then choose a property from the menu.
Note: The Enable Per-Character 3D menu item does not add an animator. It adds 3D properties to the layer and to the
individual characters, for which you can then add animators.
• Choose a property from the Animate menu, located in the Switches/Mode column of the Timeline panel.
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