Small knowledge, big challenge! This article is participating in the creation activity of “Essential Tips for Programmers”.

rendering

preface

In any video and motion graphics project, you may need to figure out how to make a typewriter text animation using a cursor. You may be surprised to learn that this is not as easy as it looks. For this reason I decided to write this blog so that no one would have to spend hours making a typewritten animation in After Effects.

In this article, I’ll show you a variety of ways to animate typewriter effects with and without a blinking cursor 🙂.

Basic – Typewriter effect presets

Let’s start with the beginner’s basics. This is the easiest and fastest way to create cursorless typewriter effects in AFTER Effects. Follow these steps — it only takes 20 seconds.

  1. Create a new composition
  2. Click the T icon and enter your text
  3. Open the”Effects and Presets“Window
  4. Search for”Typewriter“The default
  5. chooseTypewriterAnd drag it into your text
  6. If you press play, the text will appear as an animation of typing

Check out the demo below for visual reference:

Typewriter effect with mouse cursor

To implement AE type animations with the cursor, we don’t actually use the default typewriter presets, because expressions are much more powerful than regular typewriter presets.

Below is an animated demonstration of typing with a cursor

I created the following methods to learn this after effects typing effect. Choose what works best for you.

  • steps
  • Video tutorial
  • AE Engineering Template (at the end of this section)
  • Free typewriters with cursor presets (end of this section)

steps

  1. Create a new composition
  2. Select T(Horizontal Type Tool CTRL+T)
  3. Enter your text
  4. Open the Effects and Presets window
  5. Search for slider controls
  6. Drag and drop the slider control onto the text layer
  7. Rename the slider control to Speed

  1. Go to the source text
  2. Alt click the stopwatch icon to add the expression
  3. Copy and paste this expression
L = text.sourceText.length; It = time -- thislayer.inpoint; T = It * effect("Speed") ("Slider");
F = Math.round(It % 1);
if (F == 1 | (T0)) { Fl = "|"; }
else { Fl = ""; }
substr(0, T) + Fl
Copy the code
  1. Increase the speed of the slider control (this defines the speed of text input)

12. Press play and you should see your text input with a blinking cursor

Video tutorial

Typewriter effect colorized mouse cursor

Free AE project templates

Download address

Free AE typewriter with cursor preset FFX

Download address