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After Effects 24.3 release finally allows users to access and manipulate individual characters within a text layer using scripting.
Image Credits: Adobe, After Effects
Scrips can be used in most Adobe applications to automate repetitive tasks, perform calculations, or even use some functionality not directly exposed through the user interface. After Effect's scripting and expressions languages are based on JavaScript and can perform such tasks as reordering layers or finding and replacing source text in text layers.
Per-character scripting was first announced in beta in November of last year, introducing new CharacterRange and ParagraphRange objects to TextDocument DOM, which allow users to change the font, size, color, and styling of text layers via scripting on a per-character level.
Finally, the stable version of After Effects 24.3 is out and contains the following updates:
- The properties of individual characters can now be changed independently of the others with the new CharacterRange and ParagraphRange objects
- The new paragraphCount attribute will return the number of paragraphs in the TextDocument
- The new paragraphCharacterIndexesAt method will return the paragraph bounds from a character index – useful if you have a character index and wonder what the character index bounds of the paragraph it's part of
- It's now possible to faithfully round trip a mixed-property Text layer via the TextDocument without losing individual properties
- boxTextPos will now accept negative values
Image Credits: Adobe, After Effects
You can find more details and a link to an example script in the old beta announcement.
After Effects 24.3 also includes a number of important 3D-related fixes, such as the software no longer crashing when exporting tracking data to the 3D model layer or rendering Track Mattes using the Advanced 3D renderer. Now, textures render for models exported in .obj format.
Read the full release notes here and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.