Text animation keyframes ignoring anchor point

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/6/2020, 4:25 PM

Vegas Movie Studio 16.0 Platinum (Build 175)
Windows 10

 

I am trying to animate a text event as a sort of cmd-window with a typewriter effect, using a keyframe on every frame to add a letter to the text. I have it set with an anchor point on the bottom left so that every letter that is added, increases the text box in size to the right, and every line that is added, moves the previous lines upwards.

When I set the keyframes and go through them frame by frame (using the right arrow key), the animation works correctly. However, when I play this section of the video, the text event acts as if the text anchor point is set to "Center". When I go back to check every keyframe after I have previewed it. The text seems to move out of the box instead of respecting the anchor point.

I've uploaded a test project as an example of what I am doing and how it responds.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tJ0AAPCEJLhzPn-f2rQbkaZvh-ndzItq/view?usp=sharing

 

Best regards.

Comments

EricLNZ wrote on 5/6/2020, 11:03 PM

Downloaded thanks and yes it doesn't behave as you expect.

This has cropped up before and here's a thread that might help https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/anchoring-text-when-animating--111981/

EricLNZ wrote on 5/6/2020, 11:19 PM

Update - VMS17 Plat has a Preset that will do this for you. Preset "Title 04". Don't ask me how as it has no visible animation. Replace the text with your own and it worked for me.

Oops - just realised you have VMS 16 and there doesn't appear to be a similar preset in that version.

FayFen wrote on 5/7/2020, 2:31 AM

XP's movie maker has typewriter feature, and this was many many years ago...

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/7/2020, 6:25 AM

Update - VMS17 Plat has a Preset that will do this for you. Preset "Title 04". Don't ask me how as it has no visible animation. Replace the text with your own and it worked for me.

Oops - just realised you have VMS 16 and there doesn't appear to be a similar preset in that version.

Would you be willing to give me a rendered example? If it works as I intend it to, I might just upgrade to VMS17P.

EricLNZ wrote on 5/7/2020, 7:03 AM

Don't forget you can download the 30 day trial to check for yourself.

Edit: Playing with it further - you can vary the speed by altering the clip's playback rate i.e speed up or slow down. To freeze the end drag out with Loop disabled in Switches or Properties. Anyway download the trial and have a play.

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/7/2020, 7:08 AM

Don't forget you can download the 30 day trial to check for yourself.

Not exactly what I wanted. I want the first line to move up once the second line starts appearing, and the second line to appear on the position of the first line.

However, this can be solved by animating the location on the transition from the current line to the next.

Upgrade to 17.0 it is. Thank you very much!

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/7/2020, 7:10 AM

Update - VMS17 Plat has a Preset that will do this for you. Preset "Title 04". Don't ask me how as it has no visible animation. Replace the text with your own and it worked for me.

Oops - just realised you have VMS 16 and there doesn't appear to be a similar preset in that version.

Credits to EricLNZ

This solution in combination with animating the location on the transition from the current line to the next provides the cmd-box animation I was looking for and the reason for this thread.

EricLNZ wrote on 5/7/2020, 7:21 AM

Like this

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/7/2020, 7:31 AM

Like this

That's exacly what I wanted. Did you do that by animating the location?

Also, is there a way to set the location in pixels instead of percentage?

EricLNZ wrote on 5/7/2020, 6:33 PM

I did it quickly animating using Pan/Crop with two keyframes. The first on "Hold" jumping to the second to move everything up by one line. To help with alignment I simply switched on the grid layout which is one of the buttons above preview. Obviously there are several ways of achieving what you want. I'm forever learning something new. With Pan/Crop you can type in values which helps with precise movement.

"Title 04" is one of many to play with. Unfortunately as they have numbers not names you cannot instantly see what they do. I'll try and play around later.

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/8/2020, 6:23 AM

I did it quickly animating using Pan/Crop with two keyframes. The first on "Hold" jumping to the second to move everything up by one line. To help with alignment I simply switched on the grid layout which is one of the buttons above preview. Obviously there are several ways of achieving what you want. I'm forever learning something new. With Pan/Crop you can type in values which helps with precise movement.

"Title 04" is one of many to play with. Unfortunately as they have numbers not names you cannot instantly see what they do. I'll try and play around later.

I played around with them. There are some pretty nice ones, but only Title_04 has the typewriter effect. Also, since they're 'hidden' animations, there's not a lot of options to play around with them.

EricLNZ wrote on 5/8/2020, 6:50 AM

Animating the line movement with Pan/Crop, PIP or the position within the text media event I found there was a limit to the number of lines I could move up. This will depend on the font size. Look forward with interest to how you get on.

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/8/2020, 7:01 AM

Animating the line movement with Pan/Crop, PIP or the position within the text media event I found there was a limit to the number of lines I could move up. This will depend on the font size. Look forward with interest to how you get on.

I worked it out by using two text events without animating the location, and creating a new event everytime a line transition is made.

Textbox 1 contains all the previous lines. I used an anchor on the bottom left, and everytime a line transition is made, I copied the current text event and added the new line on the bottom. This makes all the text shift upwards by one line (Lots of events in one track tho)

Textbox 2 contains the current line with the typewriter effect. Everytime a new line is started, I just copy the effect and change the text to the new line.

The video in which I used this, is being uploaded on Youtube as we speak. I'll send you the link and the timeframe when I'm done. There's still one little glitch in it, since I started out with a different method and forgot to correct it. But other than that it works perfectly.

SabreTV94 wrote on 5/8/2020, 9:36 AM

Animating the line movement with Pan/Crop, PIP or the position within the text media event I found there was a limit to the number of lines I could move up. This will depend on the font size. Look forward with interest to how you get on.

As promised: