Objects as Text...

[DavePotts]

Hi all, I thought I'd ask a question I'm having a bit of difficulty thinking about...

I am putting together a title sequence for an academic program here, and I would like to substitute an image I made in Photoshop for one of the letters. Easy enough. However I have animated the spacing of the letters so that as the word fades in, the letters drift outward. I guess I'd like to know if there's a quicker way of doing this without animating the image by itself and getting it to match the movement of the rest of the word. Does this make much sense? I can post images if need be.

Cheers!
:cheers:

[russ_c]

Sounds like you might be using After Effects to animate your photoshop file...is that right?

If this is true, then I am understanding that you have animated the kearning of the text or something of that nature and you want a picture to take the place of the movement of one letter?

Okay, well, since the animation effects the entire text and you just want to "steal" the animation of the single letter then I would take a hard edge on the text, do a point track and then apply that point tracks motion back onto the picture you want so it follows and/or covers up the letter. The movement sounds simple enough that you could just hand track the motion...

I don't use AE for stuff like this, so did that make sense?

Best of luck,

Russell

[dreggsy]

Could you set your letter which uses the picture.
to texture fill instead of using a solid colour.
in the text options where you set stroke and shadow.
just a thought.

[DavePotts]

Actually, I'm in Combustion. Sorry for the simple question, I should have put this in the beginners forum, but thanks for your help, guys. I think I'll try the texture fill and see how that works, then maybe hand tracking.

Cheers!

[dreggsy]

I have reread your question
Save the photoshop file as a .tga +alpha channel
import it into your comp and scale its size to match the letter you want to replace,
then use combustions tracker to track the first letter of your word,then turn off the the original letter.
making any sense?

[DavePotts]

Absolutely, I'm just trying to make sure the photo object's movement matches the other letters EXACTLY, which I'm not confident I could do efficiently by hand keying. Thanks for your help!

[Freak]

Let me see if I understood you correctly, you have a title sequence where each letter is animated and filled with a texture (footage, image) and you want to replace just one texture of them is that it?

If so you can import the image and and duplicate you text layer and add a mask to the letter that you wanna replace, then track the mask to the letter so it follows the letter movement, after this is done you add a null and track the null to the masked letter, now you set the masked letter as a stencil for your image and parent this image to the null. This way the image will not only replace the fill of the letter but it will also follow the letter movement.

You bet that there are easier ways of doing this and more elegant solutions but for a quick think I this might do the trick.

See ya,