Blackmagic Forum

I just read this in the release notes for 17.4

Multiple Text+ improvements for character styling and animation.

Does anyone know if these are internal improvements (i.e. less crashing/more stable results) or are there also changes in UI, UX or workflow for styling and animation?

Hi,

It fixed a problem of Glyph substitution for Hindi/Devnagri for me.

They have a video on YT showing some of the new features. But in short they've added various things.

Unfortunately there's no mention of the styling/animation improvements in the video.
So there's that 12 minutes wasted in that sense.

I have a feeling it's a duplication, and that by "Multiple Text+ improvements for character styling and animation" they mean all the changes they already listed:

• Text+ support for combined glyphs and right to left language layouts.
• Improved vertical Text+ layout, vertical glyphs, rotation and line direction.
• Improved Text+ character grouping, spacing, underlining and borders.
• Text+ supports per-character stylistic sets for supported fonts.
• Support for OpenType features, including old-style numbers in Text+.
• Multiple Text+ improvements for character styling and animation.

Still no Uppercase/Lowercase option :/

Well I've tried to use two different fonts/sizes/colours in Text+ and it still won't do it!

RedRider14 wrote:Well I've tried to use two different fonts/sizes/colours in Text+ and it still won't do it!

No, I don't think they've added that in the base Text+. But that's already achievable with the Character Level Styling modifier. You can specify different fonts, font styles, and many other things on a per-character basis.

Unfortunately it can't be manipulated from Edit, because the Modifiers tab is not visible on the Edit page Text+ title. But you can click the little Fusion icon to go into Fusion and configure it there, then go back to Edit.

Text+ on Edit, with Character Level Styling configured in Fusion:


You could also make a Fusion Effect that included a Text+ with Character Level Styling plus some custom controls and expressions which made the CLS editable directly on Edit. Although I don't think the Edit "Fusion overlay" viewer controls properly support CLS control yet, so I'm not sure you could use it to create new titles, only edit existing ones (without going into the Fusion page).

Yes, thanks Tom. I am aware you can do it at the Character Styling level, I was just hoping BM facilitated it on the Edit Page.
So right now, for me, it's just as easy to use multiple layers of Basic Text on the Edit Page to achieve the same effect.
Maybe the next version?!?

OK fair enough.

If they improve this, I hope they do it by making CLS and other modifiers available on Edit. I wouldn't like to see them add some other method for selecting multiple fonts within Text+ itself. The modifier is already there, it works pretty well, it just needs some UI love to make it work fully on Edit.