Multilingual text
Since 0.8.3, a text layer lays out the way After Effects sets it, in scripts that are not left-to-right Latin. The controls are in the Text panel.
Right-to-left and mixed direction
Full right-to-left and bidirectional layout — Arabic and Hebrew, and Arabic or Hebrew mixed with Latin in a single line. Set Text Direction to Left to Right, Right to Left or Auto.
Vertical writing
Text Orientation switches a layer between Horizontal and Vertical. Vertical text brings the CJK conventions with it:
- Tate-chu-yoko — short runs of digits or Latin set upright inside a vertical line. Auto Tate-Chu-Yoko does it for digit runs up to a length you choose (1 to 4), and the Tate-Chu-Yoko button applies it to a selected range.
- Standard Vertical Roman Alignment, for Latin text inside vertical lines.
- Kinsoku line-breaking, the rules about which characters may not begin or end a line, so punctuation does not land at the start of a column.
Optical kerning
The Kerning Mode for a layer is Metrics or Optical. Metrics uses the font’s own kerning pairs. Optical spaces each pair from the shapes of the glyphs and ignores the font’s pairs. While you are editing text, the manual kerning value applies between the two characters at the caret, in 1/1000 em, on top of either mode.
Source Text expressions
Source-text expressions can drive what a text layer says. See Expressions.