Raining Letters into Place

It's time to instantly create a falling letters effect with the text layers you just created. You can certainly build the animation yourself, but why bother when a motion graphics designer (a great one!) has already done the work for you?

To preview the text-animation presets you have at your disposal, choose Help > Text Preset Gallery. Now, in addition to muttering, "So many cool effects, so little time…" as you work in After Effects, you'll also mutter, "So many clever text-animation presets, so little time…."

Proceed as follows:

1.	At time 0;00, select all the layers in the Base Text Comp.
2.	In the Effects & Presets palette, expand the *Animation Presets, Text, and Animate In folders, and then double-click the Raining Characters In preset to apply it to all selected layers. Applying the Raining Characters In text-animation preset

Press U on your keyboard to display only the properties that have keyframes; the Timeline then shows a Range Selector with Offset keyframes. The Range Selectors are evidence that the Raining Characters In preset added a text Animator to every layer. You'll also notice that the animation starts 1 second into the Timeline, which you could change to customize the animation (but do that on your own time, after you've first completed this project, Grasshopper).

Keyframes created by the Raining Characters In preset

Press UU to display all properties that were modified by the preset, not just those with keyframes. You'll notice the preset did quite a lot of work for you.

All properties affected by the Raining Characters In preset

Click the Ram Preview button in the Time Controls palette to preview the animation. Just as the preset's name suggests, the letters in all nine text layers fall in from the top side of the composition like random drops of rain from time 1;00 to 3;15. In addition, this preset animates the source text of the letters so that as they fall, different letters display until the letters land and display the characters you originally typed. Unlike in previous chapters, when you animated the source text by adding Character Offset and Source Text keyframes, this preset uses Offset keyframes that work in tandem with the current Character Offset value.

The animation at time 2;28