Learn how to create dynamic write-on text animations in Adobe After Effects using masks and the Stroke effect. Understand essential keyboard shortcuts and tools to navigate and manipulate animation layers efficiently.
Key Insights
- Use the 'U' key to reveal all keyframes in a composition, and double-tap 'U' to show any modified properties on a selected layer, even if they don’t have keyframes.
- The write-on effect simulates handwriting or drawing by applying the Stroke effect to open masks (paths) on text layers, which visually animates along the drawn line.
- Noble Desktop provides a foundational overview of how masks function in After Effects, explaining that open masks are used for effects, while closed masks serve to hide or reveal portions of a layer.
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The write-on text effect is going to apply to the accuse me text specifically. Okay, now one note, I know that there's animation somewhere here. Okay, but let's say I don't know where.
Now, I also know that in the before me you text, I animated and added keyframes, but I also just changed some properties. So remember, if you have nothing selected, tapping you on your keyboard will show you all keyframes, okay? If you have a layer selected, tapping you will only show you the keyframes on that layer. So it's a very helpful keyboard shortcut for finding things that have been animated.
However, there's another useful one, you twice. You, you will show you not only the keyframes, but they'll show you any properties been changed. So I changed based on for the text layer.
I changed position. Even though there's no keyframes there, you, you revealed that as well when I use the keyboard shortcut. So there's a lot of, very often you may have to like, start with someone else's After Effects project or maybe get a template.
So there's a lot of keyboard shortcuts for figuring out what happened, what was done in it. Okay, like so, like so. Okay, so if you look on page, it's 116, by the way, section 4C title animation, the write-on text effect.
Okay, so the write-on effect is named the write-on effect because it gives the impression of something being written on the screen. It is very commonly used with script-based fonts or drawing graphics. You'll see it like on whiteboard animations a lot of times effectively, but technically it would work on anything.
Okay, it'd work on anything. Sometimes people use the same effect to make lines appear like they're drawing on screen for various designs. I remember I've done it like with swirl animations to make them appear.
Okay, it's all it is. Now, in order for the write-on effect to work, you need a line, a mask actually, a path on the layer. If you click on any of the letters except M and E, you will see that there is a little path running through each of those layers.
I already drew them to save time. So I added the file like that. That's why we have a starter file.
Okay, so each layer that you want to use the effect for needs a path on it. Okay, again, a path is a mask. Okay, this is the exact same mask that was created yesterday when we were like hiding parts of that text layer.
The difference, this mask is not closed. It is a line. A mask that is closed like a rectangle or a circle or something like that will hide a layer.
A mask that is open, a path that is open cannot hide anything. So why do they exist? Because certain effects need to attach to them. There's a lot of effects that are based on applying something to a mask on a layer.
Okay, including the one we're going to use for this, effectively. So what we're going to do is there's going to be a mask on every layer. You're going to draw the ones on M and E because I drew the other ones.
Then we're going to add an effect to each layer called stroke, by the way, that can be used to animate and reveal a layer. And it's going to do it by following the path you made. Okay, if you notice one of the points at the beginning or end of the line looks different than the others, that is the starting point.
Okay, wherever the first point was made. Okay, now one other note. So mask and path are the same thing here.
They are both vector lines, again, the points and line segments that are on a layer. Okay, if your mask is a closed shape, it hides or shows, it masks. If it's just an open shape, a line, open path, what it's called really, then it's pretty much only useful for having effects applied to it, attached to it.
Okay, so keep in mind, it's kind of cool. And there are, there's a lot of effects that apply to masks. Okay, sometimes they're called layer masks, like the term from Photoshop.
But in here, all masks are on layers. So it's kind of redundant work. Okay, so everything else has been done.
And if you click M on the keyboard, when a layer is highlighted, it will show you its masks. Okay, the mask points can be animated using a property called mask path. So you could actually make the points animate, which is kind of cool, by the way.
There's like three other properties as well. Most of them only work when the mask is closed. Okay, so I'm going to go to the M and the E. Okay, so I'm going to zoom in on this.
I'm going to press Z on my keyboard. And I'm going to click or click and drag a box around the M so I can focus on it. Okay, if you want to hide the background layer, that's fine.
Maybe it's easier to draw like that. It's up to you. For the example, it's irrelevant.
Now, okay, so basically, this uses the pin tool. So first, if you have a layer selected, the pin and the shapes make a mask. If you do not have a layer selected, the pin and the shapes make a new shape layer.
The symbol next to your pin tells you what it's going to do. The black circle in the white box is a mask. The star icon is a new shape layer.
