Type fill transition

When to use

Use when a word is on screen and the next shot should grow out of it. The camera scales into one letter, in the next shot's colour, until the stem is the whole frame; that colour is the ground of shot B, so there is no cut to hide. The detail that sells it is the geometry: the zoom is aimed at the middle of a stem (an I, an L, a T), the other letters fly off the frame as it grows, and the letter drifts to the middle of the frame so the fill is even. Clip: type-fill-transition.mp4. Demo: demo/type-fill-transition.html.

The code

import { EASE, easeFn } from '../../core/motion/presets.js';
const E = easeFn('land'), W = innerWidth, H = innerHeight, t0 = 0.35, dur = 1.0, COVER = 0.62;
const whip = easeFn('swap');
vawe.onFrame((t) => {
  const ox = word.offsetLeft + letter.offsetLeft + letter.offsetWidth / 2;    // offset metrics ignore transforms
  const oy = word.offsetTop + letter.offsetTop + letter.offsetHeight / 2;
  const S = (1.1 * W) / (0.4 * letter.offsetWidth);                           // a stem is about 0.4 of its box wide
  const u = Math.min(1, Math.max(0, (t - t0) / dur)), p = 0.4 * u + 0.6 * whip(u);
  const s = Math.exp(Math.log(S) * p);                                        // log path: equal steps, equal speed
  const px = ox + (W / 2 - ox) * p, py = oy + (H / 2 - oy) * p;
  world.style.transform = `translate(${px - s * ox}px, ${py - s * oy}px) scale(${s})`;
  const covered = u >= COVER;                                                 // the letter colour equals shot B's ground
  world.style.visibility = covered ? 'hidden' : 'visible'; shotB.style.opacity = covered ? 1 : 0;
});
// shot B's lines rise from a mask at t0 + dur * COVER, as in mask-rise

Easing and timing

The clip runs 1.8 s. The look is brutal.

The clip uses 2 named eases from core/motion/presets.js. Each is a pair of After Effects handles: influence is how far along the segment the handle reaches, and speed is how fast the value moves at the key, as a multiple of the segment's average speed. Motion in the docs explains both.

Notes

Pick a letter with one solid stem; an o or a puts the counter in the middle of the frame. Set COVER by looking at the frames: it is the moment the frame is one flat colour, and shot B's text must start rising there, or the clip has a blank beat (the render refuses a flat run over 0.1 s). The last doubling of scale is the fastest movement of the stem's edges: that is correct, it is what a zoom looks like, so do not slow the end to hide it. Type must be heavy (800 and up): a thin stem needs a scale so large that the fill takes the whole move.

Looks (ground, type, radius, accent) live in demo/demo.css; this snippet keeps neutral tokens.

Sound

Sound: none; the letter filling the frame is the cut, and the film keeps its one swell for a stronger one.