Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 353)

347 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
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Last updated 12/21/2009
Formatting characters and the Character panel
Use the Character panel to format characters. If text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect only
the selected text. If no text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect the selected text layers and the
text layer’s selected Source Text keyframes, if any exist. If no text is selected and no text layers are selected, the changes
you make in the Character panel become the new defaults for the next text entry.
• To display the Character panel, choose Window > Character; or, with a type tool selected, click the panel button
in the Tools panel.
To open the Character and Paragraph panels automatically when a type tool is active, select Auto-Open Panels in
the Tools panel.
• To reset Character panel values to the default values, choose Reset Character from the Character panel menu.
After Effects doesn't provide a character style for underlining text, but you can underline text with a variety of other
graphical elements. Possibilities include using a shape layer containing a path with a stroke, applying a stroke to an
open mask, using the Write-on Effect, and using an animated series of tightly spaced (kerned) underscore or dash
characters. For a discussion of why underlining is considered bad typographic form and how you can create underlines
in After Effects, see
this post on the Creative COW After Effects forum.
Fonts
A font is a complete set of characters—letters, numbers, and symbols—that share a common weight, width, and style.
In addition to the fonts installed on your system in the standard location for your operating system, After Effects uses
font files in this local folder:
Windows Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts
Mac OS Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
If you install a Type 1, TrueType, OpenType®, or CID font into the local Fonts folder, the font appears in Adobe
applications only.
If the formatting for a character specifies a font that is unavailable on your computer system, another font will be
substituted, and the missing font name will appear in brackets. Font substitution sometimes occurs when you open a
project on Mac OS that was created on Windows, because the set of default fonts differs between the two operating
systems.
When you select a font, you can select the font family and its font style independently. The font family (or typeface) is
a collection of fonts sharing an overall design; for example, Times. A font style is a variant version of an individual font
in the font family; for example, regular, bold, or italic. The range of available font styles varies with each font. If a font
doesn’t include the style you want, you can apply faux styles—simulated versions of bold, italic, superscript, subscript,
all caps, and small caps styles. If more than one copy of a font is installed on your computer, an abbreviation follows
the font name: (T1) for Type 1 fonts, (TT) for TrueType fonts, or (OT) for OpenType fonts.
The font size determines how large the type appears in the layer. In After Effects, the unit of measurement for fonts is
pixels. When a text layer is at 100% scale value, the pixel values match composition pixels one-to-one. So if you scale
the text layer to 200%, the font size appears to double; for example, a font size of 10 pixels in the layer looks like 20
pixels in the composition. Because After Effects continuously rasterizes text, the resolution remains high when you
increase the scale values.
Note: When choosing fonts and styles from the menus in the Character panel, press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS)
to accept an entry, or press Esc to exit the menu without applying a change.