aenhancers

Greetings to everyone --

I hope someone can help with this: been struggling to find a way to create a right-aligned version of the common Typewriter effect and hitting a wall when it comes to aligning it to the right side.

Specifically, I'm using a Word-Processor look, basically identical to the one included in AE CS3 Text Presets under the "Multi-Line" category.

As a left-aligned effect this is a good starting point (though there may be a better expression for the cursor flashing, in this guy's tutorial:
http://rhys-works.com/tutorials/expressions-intro/); but what I'm after is to align the effect to the right side, which is quite different since "typing" right aligned text causes characters to appear from the right and flow left, away from the (flashing) cursor position, which remains stationary.

I have the feeling that it could be done with the basic preset here, by adding an animator for Anchor Point, stepping the anchor point in opposite position to the 'typing-on' effect; but somehow it needs to do it in a mechanical character-by-character motion, and obviously a multi-line implementation is even more complicated. I don't know if there are methods to reference the size of the text object (width is most important, obviously), or the position somehow, of the current selector point in space... these would be ideal.

Maybe it's impossible?

Thanks for any contributions

..I'd just be really interested if someone could take a look at that preset and see if they think this is even possible

You might be able to adapt the "Insert Text" preset under Mechanical.

Hmm yeah I looked at "Insert Text" and it's a beginning towards what I'm after -- it is flowed left but could be flowed right fairly easily --

but it is still rather unsophisticated, in that it will not support more than one line, and it is simply offsetting position in counter-motion to a "type-on" effect, both of which have the selectors set to percentage, which means the "insertion" point doesn't quite stay in one place. The effect only looks right if it's fast, and if you were to put a flashing cursor at the insertion point this shifting would be really obvious.

However among the "Multi-Line" presets there are some other possible starting points, such as "Outgoing-Incoming" or "Stack Right Left", which are using expression selectors to control the lines and clearly implementing some text-related expression terms which I can't seem to find documented anywhere.

The AE CS3 Expression reference doesn't seem to include them. Is there a glossary of *ALL* methods and variable names somewhere?

I was quite disappointed that AE CS3 simply removed the Animation Preset Gallery. Is it just me? I can't find it anywhere. Now there is no way to preview effects presets in CS3.

textIndex and selectorValue are in the standard help file, not the CS3 scripting PDF. Just type textIndex into the search field in the standard help file. (F1 on Windows).

You can preview presets using Bridge. Choose Browse Presets from the Effects & Presets wing menu. You have to click each one to see it preview in Bridge's preview panel.

lunelson,
I can't quite work out exactly what you're trying to do. Do you simply want a version of the Word Processor preset that works correctly with text (such as Hebrew) that flows from right to left?

Paul

Hi Paul,

I'll try again: it's not about text that reads from right to left, it's about the effect of typing "word-processor" style in a paragraph that is aligned to the right side rather than the left. The letters are revealed in their normal reading order (left-to-right, WRT the text line); but as the are revealed they push the previous letters to the left.

Anyway I posted a similar question on Creative Cow and the responder had the clever idea of simply modifying the sourceText by starting with a substring of 0 and adding 1 to it at specified intervals. This causes the sourceText to build up letter by letter so that the 'typing on' looks right whether you align the paragraph left or right. I think this is a better starting point since it is also more logically similar to what I want to have happen, than say, revealing letters by sequencing their opacity, which is the Adobe preset approach and which doesn't work properly in any alignment but left.

Thanks for the suggestions...any further comments also appreciated.

LMN