DecomposeText

Breaks up text by character, word or line into separate layers.

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DecomposeText

Version: 2.2 Sign up to be notified by email when a new version of this script is posted

This script breaks up text into separate layers.

The script has 4 modes:

Preserve characters location maintains the characters at their current location, but it creates text layers having the same number of characters as the original layer (therefore their anchor point is the same as the original anchor point).
Appropriate anchor point creates text layers containing only one character (therefore their anchor point is as defined in the Paragraph panel), but it places all text layers at the same location.
Separate into words and Separate into lines are the same as Appropriate anchor point but create text layers containing only words or only lines.

: DecomposeText UI

Version History

2.2 – Minor bug fixed, added CS5 compatibility (Aug 2010)
2.1 – Added separate into words and separate into lines option by Lloyd Alvarez (21 Jan 2010)
2.0 – Initial Release on aescripts.com (05 June 2009)

Last updated August 25th, 2010
9,924 views
Tags: Breakdown, Characters, CS3, CS4, CS5, Layers, Separate, Text, Words

Charles Bordenave

About the author

My name is Charles Bordenave and I am currently located in France. I started working with After Effects in 2005, when I was a PhD student in computer science at Montreal. My interest quickly converged to expressions and scripting. Nowadays I'm regularly hired on a freelance basis by production studios focussed on tv broadcast, cartoon animation, motion graphics or cinema. My job usually consists of developing customized automation tools for After Effects.

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decompose text after effects script
January 27, 2010

5 Comments

OnBoard (Reply to this comment)
August 27, 2009

Hello !

Is it possible to place each word of the selected text layer on its own layer rather than just characters ?

It would be nice !

Sorry for my english…

French : Serait-il possible de dé-grouper le calque texte par mots seulement plutôt que chaque caractères ?

Ça pourrait faciliter la création d’animations typographiques !

OnBoard
nhocviet8x (Reply to this comment)
October 31, 2009

I can’t download it! Oh dear!
John Stanowski (Reply to this comment)
January 26, 2010

Niiiice
Karmafx (Reply to this comment)
September 3, 2010

I’ve a UI problem testing the 2.2 version on AE CS3.
Just when i launch the script.
“Unable to execute script at line 223. Function this.throwErr is undefined”.
Hope that this work like a bug report.
Thx!

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