I’m doing a little movie and would like to use a typewriter fx to let letters come in the screen as if they are typed real time… Is there a nice and simple work around in Blender? I bet there is!! 
Thanx a lot…
Twan 
Sounds like Python
and if you dont know any python, (and the previous post surely will not help you to), just type the text as normal in your blender, and then move a plane over it revealing one letter at a time for the camera.
.b
Thanx a lot.
It is indeed very simple
But now for the hard part: i want video underneath it. With the plane, parts of the video will be lost. I’m sorry i didnt mention it… 
Twan
Turn on the Env of the plane material, it act like a mask
If you want the letters to appear one by one and not each letter to appear gradually, you’d be better using Layer keys (Mkey to move from one layer to another, then choose Layer in the keyframe menu Ikey).
Martin
You can do it without layer keys too. You can set up the letters out of view of the camera, then set each of them a keyframe at the frame before they appear, and one for when they appear, but before animating, select all your ipos, hit T in the IPO window, and select ‘constant’. Come to think of it, you could set all your initial keys at once, at the first frame. I believe that should work too. Good luck.
Do you mind explain just what ENV does and where it is?
Another option would be the build effect.
Set Len to 1.
Controle the frame with start frame (Sfra)
Drawback you have to do this for each letter (individual text objects).
(Same problem as with layers)
Hope your text is not to long.
Do you mind explain just what ENV does and where it is?[/quote]