Clone Text Layer in Motion with different behaviors

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a lower third template. The lower third will include two text layers with name and function. I built a rig to make it available on either left or right of the screen, the background can be resized in x for different needs.

I also set up a rig to choose from different transitions: fade in/out, fade in only, fade out only, no fades.

The concept works fine. One thing bugs me, though, and I hope that the brain power in this forum can help!

For the different fade options, for the text layers, I use the "Scale In/Out" behavior that comes with motion. Client loves it. Here comes the down side:

I have four groups, each containing the background and two text layers. The rig toggles the visibility of the groups depending on which fade is chosen. At the moment I need to publish "name/function" for each group individually which gives confusing results. I would love to just publish "name/function" once and clone it for the other three groups. BUT a text behavior seems to only be applicable to text, not to a clone of a text. This means I can't use "Scale in/out" for the cloned text and am stuck with eight text boxes to publish.

Hope this is understandable, I'm German

Any idea how to make this easier is much appreciated!

Thanks,
Sebastian

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EDIT: I figured out a way to do this by having only one group instead of four. I rigged the offset of the scale behavior and was able to "hide" the scaling. Anyway, does anyone know if it's possible to enter text once and have it trickle through to other layers like a clone whilst keeping the ability to use behaviors on the clones?

Nobody? Really? Is there probably a way to link a text layer to some sort of database entry? Enter name/function once to a variable that can occur in different layers?

Would be sweet.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Hi Sebastian,

Struggling with the same problem here : I try to specify different style (bold, color, italic...) to a clone layer of a text. No way to do it.

(I try different ways : as the inspector tab doesn't exist for a clone layer, I try to add style "effect" from the library -> no success.)


And I also try to add a specific mask to this clone (a mask that is different of the mask of the original text), but without any success.

Anybody can help ?

Thanks all.
(sorry if I don't use the right name for item, because I'm on a french system, and more an after effects guys until now

You could try using the Link parameter behavior to link specific parameters from one layer to another.

What you're trying to do is not going to work with a clone, you need a normal duplicated layer, I believe.