Text is a part of a video that effortlessly makes it engaging for the viewers. But creating text animation—and that too in Alight Motion—is very complicated. You might have also felt that using the Text Transform effect is like creating a brand new problem. I don’t know how much Alight Motion you already know, but by the end of this video, I will completely change your point of view regarding text, showing you just how easy it actually is. Welcome to the second episode of the Editing Mastery series on mobile. By the end of this editing series, I will turn you from a noob into a master in editing, and that too absolutely for free. If you are hearing about Alight Motion for the first time, make sure to watch its first episode. Now, under the text section, you will find six effects, out of which only two are useful to us. Understanding them will transform your text from looking like this to looking like that. To create these text animations, you need two things: first, the better version of Alight Motion, which you can find on my Telegram channel along with many other useful assets. The second thing you need is a brain, which you don’t even have! Just kidding, guys. Come over to Alight Motion. Then, as soon as you open your project, you need to click on the ambulance… oh sorry, I mean click on the plus sign. Now, click on “Text,” which will prepare the area for you to write your text. For now, I will write a word with two or three letters.
Now, this text is a bit small, so click on this button on top to increase its size a bit. As you can see, the words are overlapping on top of each other. To fix this, move this green circle towards the right side, which will bring your words into a single line. You can change its font using this option, and you will get so many fonts here that it’s beyond counting. So don’t worry about it, I will apply this “Raleway” font for now, even though I don’t know how it will look. Now, to make the text animation properly, your text should be centered. You can use this button to move it to the center, right side, or left side. Once this is done, go to “Color & Fill” to give it a color; I will choose yellow. Now, if you want, you can go to “Border & Shadow” to add a shadow or border, but I won’t do that. Instead, I will open the “Effects” tab, and by clicking “Add Effect,” you enter the effects menu. Without wasting any time, click on the search bar at the top and look for the effect named “Deep Blue.” If this effect doesn’t show up for you, download the better version of Alight Motion from my Telegram channel. Now, apply it and increase its radius. This adds a glow to the outside of your text. Click “Add Effect” again, where you will see the text section below. When you open it, you will find those same six text effects we talked about earlier. Wait, there’s one more called “Count Up & Down.” Let’s apply it first, as this animation will also be very useful to us. After applying it with standard settings, go back and edit the text to change it into numbers; for example, I will write zero. Go back into its effects and add a keyframe.
If you have absolutely no idea about keyframes, watch that previous video first. Now, move the playhead a little forward and add a keyframe, increasing the value a bit—let’s say I set it to 10. This will make it count from 0 to 10. I could set it to 100 or 1000; this count-up animation will be very useful to us. Now, delete this and open the “Text Transform” effect, which I don’t know why people find so difficult. Come on, let’s break it down. You will get five options here. First is “Range,” which determines the duration of your text animation, where it will start, and where it will end. For example, if you have used CapCut or any other editing software, as soon as you apply any effect, you get a duration option to set how long the effect lasts. The exact same thing applies to this Range option, except here it is done using keyframes. You have “Start” and “End” options here. I will go to Start and add a keyframe. Now, I’ll move the playhead to where I want the animation to finish, and change its value to 100—meaning the absolute maximum. So, is your animation ready? No bro, it doesn’t work like that. Right now you have only set the duration; no actual changes have happened yet. Now, let’s get to the real battleground, which is “Transform.” Ignore everything else and scroll down to “Alpha,” and pull it all the way down into the negative values. Alpha means its opacity will start low and increase, meaning as soon as you play it, the letters of your text will fade in. You can apply this to words or lines as well.
To do this, scroll up to the Transform section where you are given the first option: “Component.” This is where you can switch between letter, words, and line. For now, I will select “Word.” Now go back to the Range option. In the End value, if I set it to zero, the text will disappear. If I keep it at 100, the text will appear. So, if I go to the End value and add a keyframe 5 seconds before the final keyframe of the Start value, and then move the playhead to the very end and change the value to zero, the text will fade out after adding keyframes to the End value. Now, come back to “Transform,” and leave the anchor settings alone as they aren’t useful right now. Under “Offset,” you will see X and Y. The X-axis moves an object left and right, while the Y-axis moves an effect up and down. If I adjust the X-axis value to the left side, your words will appear from the left side. For now, let’s reset its value to zero. If I shift the Y value to the right side, you will see the words moving downwards. This means when I play it, the words will appear by moving from bottom to top, making this text animation look really good.
Now let’s speed things up a bit. If we increase the “Angle” value, the text will rotate into its position. Just remember that whatever tweaks we make in Transform will start from the beginning and finish at the end. Let’s reset the Angle value to zero for now. Next is “Scale.” If we increase this value, the text will appear large and then shrink to its size. Similarly, if we decrease this value, the text will appear small and grow larger. Let’s set this value to zero and move to “Stretch.” Here’s how it works: if you increase this value, the text stretches out a little bit before returning to its original size, like this. I have already explained Alpha. Now let’s move to “Visual Attributes.” Its job is simple: after turning it on, whatever color you select will show up at the start, and then the original color will return, like this. I don’t know why I’m struggling to explain this properly. I usually keep it black to get an overfading effect; it’s just that simple. The next section is “Interpolation & Easing.” Here you will find Ease In and Ease Out. If you have watched my previous video, you will easily understand this. I usually keep Ease In at -50 and Ease Out at 50 to create a smooth text animation. Below this is another value called “Overlap,” which is very useful. Right now, one word animates, then the next comes, and then the next. But if you increase the Overlap value, the second word will begin fading in before the first one finishes, and the third one will follow closely. Increasing this creates a very smooth animation flow. The next section is “Random Order,” which basically animates the words randomly—it’s that simple. If you still haven’t understood despite this detailed explanation, let’s try building an effect together, and you will definitely get the hang of it.
If you, like me, feel that the way it fades out using the End value doesn’t look great, you can go to the End value and remove those keyframes. Instead, go to “Blending & Opacity,” add a keyframe at the exact same spot, and set the opacity to zero at the final keyframe. This looks much better now. Now go back to effects, remove Text Transform, and add Text Transform once again. I will show you another animation style that can be very helpful to you. First, add your keyframes in Range, and increase the value of the second keyframe. Now in Transform, keep the Component set to “Letter.” First, scroll down and set Alpha to -1, then adjust Interpolation & Easing like this, and increase the Overlap as well. Now let’s play it… Wait, let’s extend its duration a bit. Go to Range, tap and hold the second keyframe you placed, and drag it to the very end. This extends the duration. Now go to “Move & Transform.” Add a keyframe in the scale section, move to the end, and increase the size. This will make the text scale up along with the animation. In the text section, we also need to learn one more effect: “Text Spacing.”
Apply it with standard settings, and add a keyframe at the beginning of Letter Spacing. Now go to the end and increase its value—let’s say 20… no, that will be too large. Let’s keep it at 10. Finally, go to Opacity, move the playhead 10 frames back from the end, and add a keyframe. Now move to the absolute end and change the value to zero. That’s it! Your text animation is ready. However, there’s one catch: you can make it even smoother if you add keyframe graphs to the Range, which I have already explained. Everything will become clear in that video, so see you over in that video!
