Understanding animator properties

Use animator properties to animate text in text layers.

To learn how these properties work, see Examples of text animations.

Most animator properties are identical to other layer properties, such as Position, Scale, and Opacity; however, the following properties are unique to text layers:

Position

Specifies the position of the characters. You can specify values for this property in the Timeline window, or in the Composition window using the selection tool, which changes to a move tool  when positioned over text characters.

All Transform

Specifies that all the Transform properties are added at once to the animator group.

Skew

Specifies the slant of the characters. The Skew Axis specifies the axis along which the character is skewed.

Fill Color (RGB, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Opacity)

Specifies the color values of the characters, based on the type of color animator property you choose.

Stroke Color (RGB, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Opacity)

Specifies the color of the character's stroke (outline).

Stroke Width

Specifies the width of the character's stroke (outline).

Tracking

Specifies the space between each character in a word.

Line Anchor

Specifies the alignment for the tracking in each line of text. A value of 0% specifies left align, 50% specifies center align, and 100% specifies right align.

Line Spacing

Specifies the space between lines of text in a multiline text layer.

Character Offset

Specifies the number of unicode values to offset selected characters. For example, a value of 5 moves the characters in the word forward five steps alphabetically, so the word "offset" becomes "tkkxjy."

Character Value

Specifies the new unicode value for selected characters, replacing each character with one character represented by the new value. For example, a value of 65 replaces all of the characters in a word with the 65th unicode character "A", so the word "value" becomes "AAAAA".

Character Range

Specifies limits on the character. This property appears whenever you add the Character Offset or Character Value property to a layer. Choose Preserve Case & Digits to keep characters in their respective groups. Groups include uppercase Roman, lowercase Roman, digits, symbols, Japanese katakana, and so forth. Choose Full Unicode to allow for unlimited character changes.