Gradient Stroke for After Effects

Gradient Stroke is a custom-built After Effects preset that takes advantage of the impressive features of text animators. Use a native mask path, adjust settings for Cap Type, Tapering, Trim Paths and use pre-configured text animators to create cool effects.

Created using modified text animators, and Wingdings font. 🙂👌

There are 2 ways to use the Gradient Stroke preset:

1. Deselect everything, apply the preset.
2. Create a new text layer, apply the preset.

Gradient Stroke includes 4 Cap Types:

1. Round: uses a circle to create the stroke.
2. Square (Auto-resize): uses an automatically resizing square to fit the path. The Cap Square Overlap parameter can come in handy for really tight curves where you need to fill in a bit more space.
3. Square: uses a square to create the stroke. Can often look a bit wonky, but when used with the Spacing Resolution Mode it makes more sense.
4. Custom (Text): by default if there is no source text it will use the letter 'Z'.

As After Effects presets don't save source text values the Custom (Text) option can be a bit annoying to use. I recommend locking the mask and double-clicking the text layer anchor point. This will enter the text editing state, where you can type whatever you like.

With fonts like Wingdings I found it easier to type a single letter and then use a text animator to offset the character value. Using the Custom (Text) option unlocks the Baseline Adjustment, and Grouping Alignment parameters.

3 Resolution Modes:

1. Percentage %: this method uses a custom expression to fill the path with enough resolution to be completely seamless. Generally 100% will be overkill, but will achieve the smoothest gradients.
2. Number of Points: gives you the control to explicitly set the number of points on the path.
3. Spacing: this method sets the number of points based on the spacing between points. It can often be a little off due the path length, stroke width, etc. I've also found that there are some strange caching problems occasionally.

2 Taper Modes:

1. Taper End: tapers the stroke towards the end of the path.
2. Taper Start: tapers the stroke towards the start of the path.

There are also controls for Trim Paths, setup to behave the same as Trim Paths everywhere else in After Effects. Below there are the margin controls, which act similarly to Trim Paths but move the gradient with the path. The path will never 100% disappear using the margin controls.

Expression Properties that are used throughout the rig, but may also come in handy for other text animator ideas you might have. They include:

1. Path Length: gives an approximate length of the path.
2. Num Characters: gives a count of the number of characters used.
3. Baseline Adjustment: this value adjusts the text baseline. It has different preset values for each cap type, and for the Custom (Text) option this property can be adjusted manually.

Gradient Stroke pairs excellently with Colorama, and CC Toner+.

There are 4 featured text animators included with Gradient Stroke:

• Wiggly: uses a wiggly selector to offset points along the path.
• Wiggly Section: uses both a range selector and wiggly selector to offset points along a section of the path.
• Waveform: uses an expression selector and expression logic from Pendulum to create a waveform along the path. You can edit the expression and change values for wavelengthSetting, timeSpeed, and sineSteepness.
• Compressor: uses a range selector to offset points along the path, but only on the x-axis. Works best on wider spaced points. This results in a cool cascading effect, seen in multiple examples here.

I'd love to see what you create using this tool! I'm on Twitter @AECartographer, and on the /r/AfterEffects Discord. If you have any feedback, shoot me a message!

Note: This is not an Effect plugin, this is a After Effects .ffx preset. It uses Pseudo Effects linked to properties with expressions.

This product should not be redistributed/sold/rebranded as a new product.