Accessing “Right To Left” Languages Within After Effects

Accessing “Right To Left” Languages Within After Effects

on Jul 5th 2010 with 22 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Requirements: Just After Effects... enjoy!
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Running Time: 28 minutes

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Right to left languages are widely used in After Effects, but traditionally these languages are not treated like text in After Effects. We have to instead covert them to vector graphics which limit many possibilities that are only possible with text layers. In this Quick Tip we will learn to enable languages and manipulate “RTL” text right within After Effects. This tutorial is for After Effects CS4 and the preview video for this tutorial is just to show the capabilities of RTL languages in After Effects. I will not be discussing how to achieve this effect.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 254MB

 
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Saqib Naqvi is freelance News Producer in Associated Press TV News in Islamabad Bureau Pakistan. He enjoys experimenting with motion graphics because it is his one of the best tools in post production, documentaries, and features. He is addicted to playing around with After Effects.  

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  • Abdul Khaleek

    Ye kya Chutiya Panthi hai be Kattu!

  • http://www.samirgraphics.com Samir GFX

    Nice to think in this way

  • http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva Todd Kopriva

    Thanks. Even though most of the video is about general setup outside of After Effects, it’s still useful. I wouldn’t call it a “quick tip”, though.

    By the way, Salahuddin Taha provides a script that enables right-to-left languages in After Effects:
    http://bit.ly/djOgOF

    • jink

      Tiberias knows more than a Christian should about Salahuddins intentions…

    • Saqib Naqvi
      Author

      What I have observed about Salahuddin Taha’s script is that, it only works in certain conditions and not applicable to many/some things like presets etc.(May be my observations are wrong because I haven’t tested it yet.
      Moreover, prediction about other languages is not certain because many languages use scripts that contains more alphabets than Arabic and in the end you will have to pay 5 box to get this, though 5 box is not a big amount but it is.
      While I tried to provide the solution for almost all RTL languages in both operating systems and this is for free.
      This was the actual intention behind this tutorial.
      And yes if you ask about the length of the tutorial video, yes it is not quick Tip, but when you follow it on either Windows or Mac, it will be really quick to enable you to write RTL in AE. Don’t you think so?

  • xsid

    loooking interesting.
    thanks a lot

  • http://aefreebies.com Free After Effects Templates

    Thanks this is very useful! Also @Todd thanks for the script.

  • http://www.alpaproductions.com alpaproductions

    Super helpful here. I had a big problem with this for the longest time and had other ways of actually getting around it but this is much simpler (I don’t need the CS4 ME version now). Thanks!

  • http://www.e11world.com e11world

    Really nice method you got here. Thank you very much for sharing this!

  • Othman

    Thank u so much the tut. helped me so much, but I want to ask u a question, please. Can this template be editable in premiere as it is in AE?
    Thanks again.

  • Othman

    PlZ, can u tell me how to produce the glassy text?
    Thanks again

    • Saqib Naqvi
      Author

      It is very easy

      You just follow the order with the effects told
      (The order of layers will be from bottom to top)

      1st bottom layer will be a grungy texture(you can use any texture from DJ or VCP or any other collection that you have or you may create your own), you may apply a curve effect to adjust the tone of the texture

      upon it place your text in white and apply bavel alpha on the layer with the light angel 0 degree and use white light color. then use trackmatte Alpha (with Texture), this will leave text only with the texture inside.

      upon it place an adjustment layer and apply glow effect and play with it to suit your needs, You may apply this affect 2 times with different trashold values

      after that the topmost layer will be the copy of the text again but make it black and apply bavel alpha over it, with the angle of light to -180 degree with white light

      I know that it is too brief, but I hope it will help.

      Best Luck

      • Saqib Naqvi
        Author

        BTW, Sorry for a late reply about your question for Premier, I was in a remote area for shooting a documentary so couldn’t see it. , Anyway I don’t think that it will work in Premier but I will check it out and will let you know.

      • Othman

        Thank u so much, I could do it by the aid of ur tutorial.
        What about premiere?

      • Saqib Naqvi
        Author

        Sorry Bro, once again, I was too busy to reply you. But I have tried in Premiere but there is no way to edit photoshop file as a text, and I wasn’t able to import this template in Premiere’s title either. But if you have enabled RTL language support in Mac then with only changing the language will work in Final Cut Pro. In simple words, you can write in RTL languages in Final Cut Pro’s text like in crawl or typewriter or scroll in text menu.

  • http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow/accessing-right-to-left-languages-within-after-effects/ AmmarAhmad

    A.A

    thanks bro its working very well. its really nice sharing for RTL users. it may very help full for me in future
    as well for others keep it up good work like this.

    See U Soon

  • http://www.faouweb.net bah7911

    Hi thank you very much, there is a probleme with the video, it’s stops at 12 minutes and i think the video is about 27 minutes. I have tried to watch it in IE and FireFoxe but the same probleme!

  • Hazaraboy

    Hi!

    Download frome here RTL-PLUGINS for After Effects CS5

    Download

  • Michael

    Thanks. but is there a way to use the typewriter effect in Arabic ?

  • http://www.alkabeergrafix.com/index.html Asim

    Excellent, though I didn’t try it yet but happy to see something from my country fellow… Good Luck! :-O)

  • VideoKurd

    Nice work,

    I want to ask how do you links the letters to each other? When i type the letters are separate