In this video tutorial, Creative Cow contributing editor Eran Stern will show you a cool technique for filling an image of a human head with animated numbers using After Effects CS3's Text tool.
Take a look here:
http://cowcast.creativecow.net/podcast/digits-man-revisited--255
Digits Man - Part 1 by Reynaldo Der on Oct 3, 2008
Hello. This tutorial is amazing. Thank you Eran.
Unfortunately I ran into the same problem: after filling about half of the 1000x1000 text box, all the text disappeared. I am on an Intel Mac, so I guess it is not an exclusive Vista thing. I tried the one space approach but it didn't work for me when I tried to delete it. So what I did is write the number sequence with spaces in between (i.e. "1 2 3...." as opposed to "123...") and set the tracking/ kerning to about -115. That brings all the numbers together as if there were no spaces in between. Just in case I also set the "Advanced>Based On" part of the animator to:"Characters excluding Spaces". I hope this helps.
thanxx a lot for that great podcast. Sadly I've got that same problem: it's not my computer, which is not able to show that text, it is after fx itself. I'll hope that adobe help to solve that problem.
@Raoul: are you @ Hamburg again any time? Nice to meet you here :-)
Digits Man - Part 1 by Frank Panknin on Mar 13, 2008
First of all thanks a lot for this really inspire tutorial.
Unfortunately I do get the same error as the previous posters.
Once added about half of the numbers everything is disappearing.
... not even the space trick helps, as after deleting it the text disappear again.
btw. tested in Photoshop as well, and it did not worked :-(
Digits Man - Part 1 by Don Bricker on Feb 19, 2008
I had the same problem as the previous posters, once I added enough numbers to fill half the text box all the numbers disappeared. Taking a clue I added a space about half way down then filled up the rest of the text box then went back and deleted the space. That worked, thanks for a great podcast.
Thanks Eran for your quick reply.
I spoke to friend of this problem, and they have the exact same error on their computer. And it's not only in AE, same probleme append in photoshop and illustrator. When you reach 6500-7000 character without space, text disappear... Maybe because we are on french system and the "cutting word" is not the same (don't know the word in english).
Anyway thanks a lot and sorry for my froggish english...
I've seen this problem before (especially under Vista). This usually happens when you copy and paste many digits and AE needs to calculate allot of stuff before displaying all pasted digits. I'm not sure if this is a bug or just slow behavior from AE.
Anyway here's 3 possible solutions:
1. Wait for it, I found that sometime it does take several minutes to get the computer to respond.
2. Change the Text Paragraph size then try to paste, Also reduce your paste line to smaller chunks, say 2 lines each time.
3. Download the project files and use my project which should work perfect for you, then you can use your own image as well (like I will demonstrate in Part 2).
I know it looks like a simple technique, but I've warned you it will bring After Effects to its knees, so you'll have to be patient here :-)
Eran Stern
Digits Man - Part 1 by Frank Crispo on Feb 16, 2008
Thanks for the great tutorial. However I encountered the same problem as the previous poster. Every time I tried pasting the numbers I'd get approximately half way down and all my numbers would disappear. I started over 3 or 4 times with the same results each time. Can someone tell me what the problem might be.
Thanks for your very usefull tutorials.
I have a probleme on this one, when i pas the number to fill paragraph box, when i reach the middle all the characters diseaper(i use same font,size, etc). Can't find from where the problem comes. Any idea ?
---Digits Man - Part 1
