To this point in the book, we have treated text with a degree of reverence. Text has been b oth readable and legible and has pretty much been treated more as a communication e lement than a design element. In this chapter, we take text and make it shake, wiggle, jiggle, and otherwise bounce around the screen. In many respects, the treatment of text in this chapter reverses the order. Text starts as a design element and then comes to rest as a communication element. Though we have covered the basics of working with text, this chapter digs even deeper into what you can do, including putting text on a path. Once you have those basic skills in place, we are going to “kick out the jams” and show you how to use text animators to add a rather high degree of control over the text put into motion. This will also include the use of range selectors, shapes, and one of the more fascinating tools in the arsenal: a Wiggly Selector that randomizes the properties that apply to the text. This chapter consists of a number of rather interesting text effects that you can apply to your Flash projects. Each example in this chapter presents a specific effect or combination of effects you can use in your Flash efforts. They are in no way to be regarded as the defin- itive ways of accomplishing the effects we demonstrate. Instead, use the examples pre- sented in this chapter as a creative spark. Reviewing the After Effects and Flash text tools Though Flash and After Effects have remarkably similar text capabilities, there are some major differences between them. The After Effects Text panel (see Figure 7-1) is quite similar to the ones found in Photoshop or Illustrator, and it offers you a greater degree over the control of the appearance of the text than you have in Flash. One interesting aspect of the text controls in After Effects is that you can apply a variety of fonts and settings to the text in a text block. The thing is, you run the very real risk of making a mess of the block. If this happens to you, select the text block and choose Reset Character in the Character panel’s Options pull-down. The Flash text tools, shown in Figure 7-2, become visible in the Property inspector when you select the Text tool. The difference between the panel in Flash and its After Effects counterpart is how text is treated in Flash. Being a web tool, Flash can use static text, the text you see on the stage, or dynamic text, which is text added to a text box using ActionScript. This text can be added from an external source such as an XML document or added in the ActionScript code. Text can also be interactive in that you can assign a link to text that opens a web page when the text is clicked on the Flash stage. FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 230 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 230 Figure 7-1. The After Effects Character and Paragraph panels. If you don’t see them, simply click the Toggle button on the toolbar. Figure 7-2. The Flash text tools PLAYING WITH TEXT 231 7 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 231 Exploding Flash text In this exercise, we are going to show you how to “blow up” some text on the Flash stage. Though Flash does not have the Ef fects & Pr esets panel contained in After Effects, you can still achieve some interesting text effects by simply, as we are fond of saying, “letting the software do the work.” In Flash, text inevitably hits the stage as a single block of text. This makes it rather difficult to scatter letters across the screen. A lesser-known feature of Flash is its ability to convert a complex object into a series of individual objects and then move each of those objects into its own layer. The amazing thing about this is there are really only two steps involved in the process: Break the object apart by pressing Ctrl+B (PC) or Cmd+B (Mac). Distribute the selected objects to their own layers by selecting Modify ➤ Timeline ➤ Distribute to Layers. That’s all you need to do. Once the objects are in their own layers, they can be animated off the stage in a manner of your choosing. Here’s one way: 1. Open ExplodingText.fla in the ExplodingText folder found in the Exercise folder of the Chapter 7 code download. You will note the only things on the stage are an image and the word Flash. 2. Select the word on the stage by clicking it. Press the Cmd+B (Mac) or Ctrl+B (PC) keys. The word breaks apart into individual letters. Keep breaking the letters apart until they look like they are filled with pixels. 3. Select each letter on the stage and press the F8 key to convert each one to a sym- bol. When the Convert to Symbol dialog box opens, name each symbol for the let- ter selected and select Movie Clip as its type. D ynamic text in Flash has an option not shown in Figure 7-2. When the Text Type option is set to Dynamic in the Property inspector, an Embed button will appear beside the Anti-Aliasing Options menu. This button will allow you to embed an entire font or selected character from the font into the SWF file. This is a great feature to have avail- able to you in situations where a client’s corporate font has to be used. The downside to this is that embedding fonts also increases the final size of the SWF file. If you must embed a font, only embed the characters used. This way the file size increase is not as dramatic. What is the False Bold and False Italic terminology that appears in both the Flash and After Effects menus? Essentially what this does is to simply add a stroke around the letters to “mimic” bold text or slant them to imitate italic text. If your font contains such terms as Italic, Oblique, Bold, Heavy, or Extra Bold as part of its name, then use these it in place of clicking the False Bold or False Italic button. FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 232 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 232 4. With the letters selected, select Modify ➤ Timeline ➤ Distribute to Layers. The letters will appear on separate layers and, best of all, the layers have the same name as the letter in the layer (see Figure 7-3). Delete the original layer named Flash by selecting it and clicking the Trash Can in the Timeline panel. Figure 7-3. Selecting Distribute to Layers places the individual letters on their own layer. 5. Add keyframes at Frames 5 and 15 for each of the new layers. Add a motion tween, starting at Frame 5, between the keyframes just added. 6. Select each letter, starting with the keyframe at Frame 15, and move them into dif- ferent positions. With each letter selected, choose the Free Transform tool and rotate the letter at its new position. 7. Select Modify ➤ Transform ➤ Scale and Rotate and scale each letter to 400% or 500%. 8. Add a keyframe for each layer at Frame 30. Move the letters completely off of the stage in Frame 30, and add a motion tween between Frames 15 and 30 for the layers. T he Break Apart command converts letters from vectors to individual bitmaps. It is a handy command to know for text because once text is converted to a bitmap, those nasty font substitution issues tend to disappear. That is the good news. The bad news is the text is no longer editable. PLAYING WITH TEXT 233 7 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 233 9. W hen finished, drag the playback head to Frame 1 and press the Return/Enter key to start the animation. As shown in Figure 7-4, the letters will “explode” off of the screen. Figure 7-4. The text seems to have, with apologies to SCTV, “blowed up really good.” Now that you have a basic Flash technique in your arsenal, you may be wondering, “That’s nice, but surely there must be more I can do with it?” The answer: “Yes, there’s a lot you can do with it.” Here are a few ideas: Apply a blend mode to the clips on the stage. As the letters move, depending on the mode chosen, they will take on different colors. Apply a filter to the movie clips. For instance, apply a Bevel filter, and the letters will take on a 3D look. Couple that with a blend mode, and you can have some rather interesting results. Add a keyframe at Frame 20 of each animation on the timeline. Select each movie clip in Frame 30 and, in the Color pull-down in the Property inspector, set the alpha value to about 3%. As the letters move off of the stage, they fade out. Replace each letter in the movie clips with an FLV file using, say, the letters in the word acting as a mask, in After Effects, for the blobs from the previous chapter. The result is letter-shaped blobs in motion that change color as they move across the stage. Be careful with this one. Scaling up an FL V file is not suggested because of the “hit” on bandwidth. If you must scale, scale down. Exploding text in After Effects As you may have guessed by this point in the book, After Effects can do the job of “blow- ing up” text with a bit more “wow” than that obtainable in Flash. For example, you may want to use exploding text as a preloader for a Flash movie or have it “explode” into pieces when the user rolls the mouse over the text block in Flash. FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 234 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 234 There are a number of plug-ins that do quite a job in this area, and they range from the s imple to use to the complex. Rather than dig into all of them, let’s look at one effect— C C Pixel Polly b y Cycore—that is quite easy to use and is a good way of figuring out how to use the more advanced effects like Shatter. CC Pixel Polly essentially breaks the layer it is being applied to into a series of squares or polygons and sends them spinning into infinity and beyond using a set of rather intuitive controls. Let’s blow up some text: 1. Open the Explode.aep file in the ExplodingText folder found in your Chapter 7 Exercise folder. You will notice there is nothing more than a line of text in the Comp that is sitting over a black solid. 2. Open Effects & Presets ➤ Simulation and drag a copy of the CC Pixel Polly effect onto the text layer. 3. Do a RAM preview. The text, shown in Figure 7-5, breaks apart and flies off of the screen. Conclusion? The default settings for this effect aren’t exactly the best. Let’s fix that. Figure 7-5. Interesting effect, but we can do better. 4. The first thing you may have noticed is the effect kicks off right at the start of the Comp. What if you want the text to explode after one second? If you twirl down the effect on the timeline, you will see there are no keyframes or other visible indi- cators that show when the effect starts. It starts as soon as the video starts playing. To fix this, the first thing to do is to open the Ef fect Controls panel and delete the effect. With the effect deleted, you have a “clean” text layer to work with. Drag the playback head to the 1-second mark on the timeline and select the Flash Rocks layer. Select Edit ➤ Split Layer and a second text layer appears. Set the In point of this new layer to the 1-second mark. If you encounter situations where you need precise timing for an effect, Split Layer is the solution. It is also great for those effects, like CC Pixel Polly, where the effect starts immediately and you would like to have a bit of a delay. The Cycore plug-ins are included only with After Effects Professional and require you to install them separately from the application. PLAYING WITH TEXT 235 7 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 235 5. S elect the Flash Rocks 2 l ayer and reapply CC Pixel Polly t o the layer. If you were to do a RAM preview at this point, the text would be rather static and explode at the 1-second mark due to the effect being applied to the Flash Rocks 2 layer. 6. N ow for some fun. How about you have the text explode into tiny pieces? Open the Effect Controls panel and specify these settings: Force: 150. The higher the number, the greater the “damage.” Gravity: 0.61. How the pieces move. Higher numbers result in slower movement. Spinning: 1 ✕ 150.0 degrees. The pieces will spin around once at an angle of 150 degrees. Force Center: 205, 123. Throw a rock through a window, and this is the point where the rock hits the window. Direction Randomness: 35%. Things explode outward, and higher randomness numbers will have some pieces appear to cross paths with each other. Speed Randomness: 10%. The pieces of the explosion will randomly fly out faster—up to 10% faster—creating a chaotic effect. Grid Spacing: 1. This is an imaginary grid that determines the size of the piece. A low number, such as this one, results in a lot of tiles and slower rendering when the file is output. Higher values create bigger chunks. Object: Textured Polygon. The choices in this pull-down describe the look of the pieces. If you do a RAM preview, the text, after a delay of one second, will suddenly explode into a shower of pixels (see Figure 7-6). Figure 7-6. Text shattering into pixels FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 236 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 236 This effect is perfectly suited to situations in Flash where you don’t want something to m ove off of the stage. Having text explode into a shower of pixels is something the viewer i sn’t expecting and will get his or her attention. Feel free to save this exercise. In the next exercise, we are going to show you how to get rid of an annoying talking head. Ending a video with a bang It isn’t only text that can be blown up. You can make your own version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , or become Marvin the Martian from the Looney Tunes cartoons and actually succeed in blowing up the earth or, in the case of this exercise, an annoying talk- ing head. Here’s how: 1. Open the BlowUp.aep file found in the BlowUp folder located in the Chapter 7 Exercise folder. When the file opens, you will notice we have placed a copy of the TalkingHead.mov file on the timeline and applied a Keylight filter to the video to remove the green screen. 2. Select the TalkingHead.mov layer and select Edit ➤ Duplicate. This will duplicate the selected layer and put the duplicate in a separate layer on the timeline. 3. Drag the Duration strip of the video in Layer 1 so that its In point is at 0:00:04:00. 4. Drag a copy of the CC Pixel Polly effect onto the video in Layer 1 and specify these settings in the Effect Controls panel: Force: –360 Gravity : 0.10 Spinning : 3 ✕ 86.0 degrees Force Center: 97.0, 62.5 (right on the tip of his nose) Direction Randomness: 10% Speed Randomness : 6% Grid Spacing : 1 Object : Textured Polygon If you use the sliders for each of the effect’s properties, the text on the screen changes to reflect the property setting. One thing you may have noticed is that setting the Force value to a negative value results in an implosion. The other thing you may have noticed is changing the Grid Spacing value makes the pieces larger. Finally, one drawback to this filter is the pieces all tend to be a uniform size. If you want the pieces to look even more irregular, apply a second version of the effect to the Flash Rocks 2 layer and use a different Grid Spacing value. PLAYING WITH TEXT 237 7 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 237 If you do a RAM preview, you will see the talking head explode out into space, thanks to t he really large F orce v alue, as a shower of pixels (see Figure 7-7). Figure 7-7. That talking head “blowed up real good.” As you may have guessed, using this effect in a Flash movie opens you up to all sorts of possibilities. The bottom line is it really is a great way of ending a video. If you create Flash games, this effect is also handy when objects on the screen need to be destroyed. Names just flapping in the wind Sometimes you just need something a little different from words that appear on the Flash screen and move around without your having to do a lot of coding in ActionScript. In this exercise, you will discover one of our favorite effects. It is Turbulent Displace, and it offers you a simple method of distorting a layer—in this case a Text layer, but it could be any- thing—in a relatively smooth manner that makes text look like it is flapping in the wind. Here’s how: 1. Open a new After Effects project and create a new Comp using these settings: Composition Name: Names Width : 400 Height : 100 Pixel Aspect Ratio : Square Pixels Duration : 0:00:04:00 Background Color : #02205C (dark blue) 2. Select the Text tool, click the stage once, and enter your name. Select a font and size in the Character panel. Set the text color to white (#FFFFFF). 3. Open the Effects & Presets panel and twirl down Distort Effects. Drag a copy of the Turbulent Displace effect onto the text. Just a reminder: the background color for a Comp can be changed by select- ing Composition ➤ Backgr ound Color . FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 238 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 238 Right now the effect doesn’t do much other than warp your name. The key to getting things in motion is to animate using the Evolution Options. Follow these steps to have your name flap in the wind: 1. Select the Text layer on the timeline and twirl down the Effects properties. Open the Effect Controls panel by either clicking the Effect Controls tab in the Project panel or pressing the F3 key. 2. Add a keyframe for each property by clicking the stopwatch and then enter the fol- lowing values for the first frame of the Comp: Displacement: Twist. This is the displacement map that will be used to manipu- late the text. These things act in exactly the same manner as a displacement map in Photoshop. Amount: 50. Higher values create more distortion. Size: 176. The radius of the displacement of the text. Complexity: 1.4. This is the detail value for the distortion. Higher values create smoother transitions between the pixels. Evolution: 0 x +45 degrees. Evolution Options: Cycle Evolution When you finish, the text should have a noticeable bulge as shown in Figure 7-8. Figure 7-8. The text is starting to get a bit “turbulent.” 3. Drag the playback head to the 2-second mark of the timeline and create keyframes by entering each of the following values: Amount: 22 Size : 66 Of fset T urbulence : 200, 26 Complexity : 2.5 Evolution : 0 x +113 degr ees Cycle (in revolutions): 2 Random Seed : 2 L ike the CC Pixel Polly e ffect, the best way of seeing what the various settings do is to open the Effect Controls panel and play with each control. The other thing you should do is to drag the center point of the effect across the text. Pay attention to how the text reacts to the center point, which has the official name of Offset (Turbulence). PLAYING WITH TEXT 239 7 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/06 3:48 PM Page 239 [...]... that effects add weight to a SWF The more effects, the larger the SWF 261 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 262 FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS Mixing Flash and After Effects We are going to end this chapter with a rather important exercise and introduce you to an effect that is simply a lot of fun to use To this point, most of the exercises you have done treat the After Effects. .. effect In this example, the fuse will be lit at the node at the bottom of the P, travel upwards to the node at the top of the P, travel around the curve, and end at the node to the left of the point where the lines intersect 241 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 242 FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS The After Effects Pen tool, as you have seen in Chapter 4, is a wonderful masking tool,... when planning a Flash /After Effects project, that the stuff that moves, in either app, should be indistinguishable as to its source In this exercise, we are going to explore this concept There is going to be motion on the Flash stage, and there is going to be text in motion in After Effects The Flash movie will be prepared in such a way that the user can’t tell which is video and which is a Flash object...7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 240 FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 4 Drag the playback head to the 3-second mark of the timeline and enter the following values: Amount: 63 Size: 162 Offset Turbulence: 305, 46 5 Drag the playback head to the 4-second mark of the timeline and add a keyframe before entering each of the following values: Size: 160 Offset Turbulence:... Color chip in the To property, and, when the Color Picker opens, set the color to #29 769 9 (blue) Close the Color Picker and scrub across the timeline Notice how the Change to Color effect gently changes the color of the solid from the original gray to the blue used in the FishAnimate Comp (see Figure 7-2 3) 255 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 2 56 FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS. .. 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 264 FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS Based On: This pull-down applies the wiggle based on a variety of choices ranging from individual letters to text blocks Wiggles/Second: High values speed things up Low values slow them down Correlation: In many respects, this control applies kerning to the letters in motion A value of 0 applies different values to each... imagination limits what you can do with this effect in Flash Something’s fishy with Illustrator In this exercise, we are going to turn a phrase into a fish, have it wave its tail, and then move that animation over to Flash This will involve a slightly different workflow: Illustrator to After Effects to Flash The key here is not a “Fish” effect but using the tool best suited for the job at hand To have... You can assume from this explanation that the Bezier Warp tool is great for smoothly distorting objects to create such motion effects as turning objects into jiggling jelly or mimicking a flag blowing in the wind Here’s how to turn text into a fish: 250 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 251 P L AY I N G W I T H T E X T 1 Drag a copy of the Bezier Warp effect onto each of the objects in the Comp Press... effect can be applied to anything in an After Effects layer That includes video, photos, and line art 240 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 241 P L AY I N G W I T H T E X T The infamous “exploding P” Having blown up the planet and set your name to flapping in the wind, let’s look at another simple technique that involves an exploding letter In certain respects, this one mimics the titling sequence of Mission... Select Rasterize from the Unsupported Features pull-down menu shown in Figure 7-2 8 Figure 7-2 8 Select Raserize in the Unsupported Features pull-down to create the effects applied to the Comp This choice is the key Selecting Ignore tells After Effects to ignore the bitmap effects you applied to the movie and the result is BadFish.SWF Selecting Rasterize tells After Effects that anything in the SWF file . 7 -6 . Text shattering into pixels FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 2 36 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:48 PM Page 2 36 This effect is perfectly suited to situations in Flash where you. objects in motion. FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 2 46 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 2 46 Figure 7-1 5. The Physics properties have been applied to the effect. Having applied. photos, and line art. FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS 240 7486CH07.qxd 11/8/ 06 3:49 PM Page 240 The infamous “exploding P” H aving blown up the planet and set your name to