Vector Text

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Vector Text

A classic compositing workflow has been to create text in an application like Adobe® Illustrator™, convert it to outlines, bring the outlines into a compositing application to put them in motion, then send the rendered output back into the editing application. Once converted to outlines, the text is no longer editable as text. Any changes thus require going all the way back to the beginning of the process: create text and convert to outlines in one application, animate in another, then back to the editor.

Instead, Red creates vector text that remains fully editable as text throughout the compositing process, within your favorite editing application. Fewer steps, more flexibility, and all the power you want, exactly where you need it.

Animation

Text animation has always been both easy and powerful in Red. Title containers have provided one-click auto-animation of rolls, crawls, zooms and fades of multiple pages of text, and Red adds the additional option of shuffling pages.

A new auto-animation feature in Red is Type On text, although the typing on of letters one at a time is only the beginning. Type On allows the progressive application of multiple text animation parameters in user-defined combinations: set letters to spin, tumble or rotate, to fade or skew, scale, fade and more.

Text on a Path

Along with the creation of vector text within Red come a variety of ways to exploit the power of vectors, including text on a vector path. Simply create the path in Red, which also supports the import of paths from Adobe Illustrator. Unlike many other applications that offer this feature, Red allows the shape of the path itself to animate over time, as well as its position, and its orientation in 3D space.

Outline Animation

In fact, Red also offers the ability to create text and convert it to outlines as well. Red creates vector text natively, so this step is not necessary for smooth rasterizing. Because Red can animate vectors, however, converting text to outlines offers the option of editing and animating any aspect of the vector path. Control points for text may be animated for morphing-style effects, text fill and multiple strokes may be manipulated over time, and jitter animations applied.

Stoke and Fill

Red offers more options for the creation and animation of the stroke and fill of text than any other desktop application. Each character can have up multiple strokes, each of which can be set separately from the fill of the text. Because stroke and fill are in fact separate elements of text, they can be individually filtered and animated, creating dramatic effects very easily.

Because Red's strokes and fill are true vector objects, they may be included as part of exported Flash animations. This is in marked contrast to other applications whose stroke and fill are bitmapped features, and cannot be passed through during Flash export.

Title Compositing in 3 Dimensions

Boris Red has always offered compositing in three dimensions. For titling, that means that 2D titles can be manipulated in 3D space, mapped to 3D shapes, viewed through animated 3D cameras, and more, includingone button extrusion to 3D objects.

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