How to create Typewriter-Effect??

Hi everyone!
Currently I am doing some blender to promote a german theatre festival, called “ARENA… of the young arts”.
I recently made a short running in two arthouse cinemas here in Erlangen, Bavaria. It’s on youtube, too…!

Now I am about to animate a larger amount of text. It should appear letter after letter, just like if it has just been typed.
The only method I found out is letting each letter appear from behind a plane using ipo-keyframes. Animating each letter individually ist a very exhaustive business. Does anyone of you know a better way to achive a “typewriter effect”?

Thanks a lot!
Benno

This is an idea that should work. Use a plane to cover your writing. Now animate the plane sliding over the letters so that the letters are uncovered by the plane as you need the typing effect.
Depending on if you have a uniform background or not you can assign the uni-color to the plane and simply animate it and it will look as if the letters appear out of nowhere or if you need to match the background you can either give the plane a color you can later chromakey out or you assign a texture that matches the background plate. Just make sure that the material for the plane is shadeless or else it won’t work.

Another Idea I have is to use a animated texture that you slide across your writing and which is mapped to alpha and uncoveres the letters as needed.

Nice job gecko!

Thanks a lot for advise and comments. Here’s a WIP of the Text animation.


It has to be finished until Saturday and there are about ten or more lines of text to go, so I will be quite busy for the next two days:-)