Character Detect Matchbox

Flame Matchbox
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Is anyone familiar with any recreations of the text specific Matchbox nodes that Ivar created?

Working on a project now that would be great to use md_reveal, md_center, md_textslide, etc.

I know the new type tool has cascade, but I haven’t found a way to easily copy keyframes from letter to letter.

For instance I have a type node with an opacity animation for the individual letters in the word UP. Now I need that same animation on the word DOWN. I can overwrite the first two letters, preserving their animating opacity, but the only way I can see to add that same animation to the following channels is to copy and paste. Which can be tedious.

Another example would be I have kerned the word Down perfectly and have it animating a certain way. Now I need the same exact word and kerning but with a different opacity animation on each letter. Again, copying and then selecting each individual opacity channel of every character to paste the new animation is quite tedious.

It looks like a lot of Ivar’s text tool detect characters down stream of the type tool, so I can create animations regardless of what words and the number of letters that are input. Which is a lot more flexible.

Thanks! David

2

Those weren’t Ivar’s matchboxes. md was Mark Doney who sadly and unexpectedly passed away a few years ago. There’s been a discussions over the years about the fate of those matchboxes but I don’t think they’re attainable any longer.

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Oh my goodness, you’re right. I’m so sorry. Crok was Ivar. Yeah I know I tried to buy them from his old site over a year or so ago and my money went into a PayPal black hole. I had no idea that he had passed. Very sad.

I know there’s been some new shaders that others have worked on over the years. Was wondering if perhaps anyone had done any similar work to those nodes.

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Hi, Have you had a look at the paste special features in the context menu.

5 Likes
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Oooh. Love that! Thank you. Amazing what you can do if you just read the manual!

Appreciate you taking the time to post the video. I’ll be trying that out shortly

I feel like I looked through that context menu and must have missed that.

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I used to have a couple of those little Matchbox cars with characters on them when I was a kid. Funny how something so small sticks in your head for years

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I used to bust mine up, take a torch to the pieces then superglue them back together to make miniature wrecks.

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I used to destroy my Matchbox cars too…mainly because they weren’t Hot Wheels™.

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So unfortunately this doesn’t work in my use case. The paste attributes not only replaces the opacity, but the kerning as well. The font I’m using requires custom kerning per character, which is why I can’t just overwrite the existing type with the alternate keyframes. I need to just be able to paste the opacity and cascade. Too bad there’s not a more granular way to select which attributes are pasted.

Back to the drawing board.

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3D text in action can probably do this if you explode the letters.

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@fredwarren Shouldn’t be too hard to add one more right? :slight_smile: