Kinetic typography software
Text that moves letter by letter
Kinetic typography is text animated as if each word or letter had its own timing. The After Effects way to do it is the text animator: a set of property offsets pushed through a selector. Premation implements that model in full, and adds captions from audio so a whole spoken script can be animated.
Free · AGPL-3.0-only · macOS & Windows
The panel that does it
The editor’s own panel, rebuilt on its chrome. It works: drag, toggle, queue.
How to do it
- 01
Set the type
The Text tool (Ctrl T), then the Character panel: font, size, tracking, leading, case, small caps, baseline and stroke, all keyframeable.
- 02
Add an animator
Properties ▸ Animation ▸ Add Animator on the text layer, then choose the properties to offset: position, opacity, scale, rotation, tracking, per-character 3D.
- 03
Animate the selector, not the text
A Range Selector decides which glyphs the offset applies to. Keyframe its Offset from 0 to 100% and the animation sweeps through the text. Width sets how many glyphs are mid-motion at once.
- 04
Start from a preset if you like
18 text presets in the Presets panel apply an animator and selector in one drop, then expose everything for editing.
Questions
- Can it animate text to a voiceover?
- Yes. Transcribe the audio layer, and each caption cue becomes a text layer at the right time. Beat-synced markers can place entrances on the music as well.
- Does it support text on a path?
- Yes. Any mask path on the text layer can carry the text, and the animator still works per glyph along it.
- Is there a graph editor for the selector?
- The selector's Offset is an ordinary keyframed property, so it has Bézier handles in the graph editor like everything else.