How to animate numbers in After Effects with Type
Animating numbers in After Effects is a common task for motion designers.
In this guide, we’ll go over 3 different features of Type that will help you animate numbers in After Effects.
How to format numbers
The number rig will help you format your number to any locale, and give you an easy way of keyframing and animating the number itself.
To get started press the number rig button from the Type panel.
This will create a new text layer – or reformat your existing text layer if one is selected.
With the layer selected, navigate to the Effect Controls. Here you will see an effect called Num. Each control is pretty straightforward, but I’ll cover what each one does in order.
Number
Control and keyframe the actual number.
Thousand separator
Choose how you want thousands to be separated (i.e. 1,234, 1.234, 1’234).
Decimal separator
Choose how you want decimals to be separated (i.e. 1.23, 1 23, 1,23).
Decimal places
Choose how many decimal places you want to display. If this is set to 0, the decimal separator and decimals won’t be displayed.
Symbol
This lets you add a $ to the beginning of your number or a % to the end of your number. You can also set a custom symbol by selecting Custom Leading or Custom Trailing, then change the actual text of the text layer to whatever you want.
Financial
When toggled on, this will wrap negative numbers in parentheses instead of appending a minus symbol in front of them.
Fixed digits
This will set the minimum number of digits (excluding separators) for your number, meaning that it will add leading 0s to your number if necessary (i.e 000123).
Big numbers
The big numbers section will help when animating numbers over 10,000.
Abbreviations
When toggled on, any number 10,000 or more will be abbreviated (i.e. 10K, 123M, 5B).
Abbreviation decimal places
Choose how many decimal places you want to display when the numbers are being abbreviated. Just like the decimal separator, if this is set to 0, the abbreviation decimal separator and decimals won’t be displayed.
Power of 10
This multiples the number by 10 to the power of whatever this is set to. Essentially, this will add trailing zeros to your number. But you can also keyframe this value to exponentially increase a number.
How to make your number monospaced
Another feature of Type is monospacing. This is especially useful when animating numbers with a non-monospaced font. Adding monospacing will prevent your number animation from appearing wobbly.
To add monospacing, simply select your layer then click the monospace button. Make sure your text is set to Metrics (not Optical).
Under the Effect Controls, you will have a new effect called Spacing. This will control the amount of space between each character in your number.
Variable spacers
You can adjust the spacing of a specific range of your number using a variable spacer. This can be added by selecting your text, holding shift and clicking the monospace button.
Under the Effect Controls, you can adjust Variable Spacer.
Start & End
This sets the index range of numbers that will be affected.
Spacing
Sets the spacing for the given range. This is in addition to the spacing set in the Spacing effect as well as any other Variable Spacers for this range. You can set this value to a negative amount to counteract existing spacing.
Direction
This determines how the range is counted. If you have a number that is increasing in number of digits, it might be simpler to count from the right when targeting a specific character.
You can add as many variable spacers to your text as you want. Note: duplicating the Variable Spacer effect will not work. You must add each variable spacer by holding shift and clicking the monospace button.
How to add number motion blur
Type also lets you add a text motion blur to your numbers. Since changes to text do not classify as true motion, the native motion blur effect is not applicable. Instead, text motion blur tracks the changes to specific characters within your text to create a blur.
To add a motion blur to your number animation, click the text motion blur button.
Text motion blur
Under the Effect Control you can adjust the appearance of the text motion blur.
Max Blur
This sets the most a character will be blurred horizontally and vertically. Having a larger X value will simulate more horizontal motion, while having a larger Y value will simulate more vertical motion.
Falloff
This sets the amount of frames the blur animation will last for a given character. Note that as soon as a character changes, the blur animation resets.
Balance
This sets when a blur is triggered. When set to 0%, it will only factor in the next frames. When set to 100%, it will only factor in previous frames. This can be set to any value between 0 and 100, to combine next and previous frames.
Right aligned
By default this will be toggled on if your text is right aligned. This helps to target and blur a character while it is being shifted to the left, even though the character itself may not change.
Unlock the power of Type
Type makes it easy to format and animate numbers in After Effects.
But there’s way more to Type than just numbers. Animate text being typed out, add blinking cursors, highlight, underline, strikethrough text, make text boxes, animate time counters, split text by word, and more.
