Among all the possibilities for animating text that exist in After Effects' layer properties, there is one that can be quite striking and easy to use. It is the fading of characters: an effect that comes in handy when you want to present a message and vanish it without abruptness.
If you've already written something in your composition and you're wondering how to make your characters change little by little, read on because you'll learn how to blur text in After Effects progressively.
When you open the properties tab of a Text layer, you will find three groups of options with tools to animate your characters and paragraphs.
Text is the first option and includes the Source Text button. That feature allows you to change one word to another without deleting the first one. Transform is the second one, and it is present in all layers to create basic motions. The third option is Animate: the one you will need to fade your texts. Here’s how you can use it:
The above steps work to fade all the characters in the text at the same time. If you want to fade one letter first and then the other:
We recommend you follow these last steps with words of many characters; otherwise it will be hard to appreciate the sweep. Remember to play with the Start and End buttons' values to change the speed of the effect and see the results.