Pro 2D & 3D Text/Type Animation Software [Almost Free]: Boris Title Studio

If you want to create professional 2D and 3D Text/Typography animations, look no beyond Hitfilm Express + Boris 3D Objects [BCC Title Studio] add-on. This combo of rich video editing/compositing functionality is almost FREE. Above video was made with this.

Hitfilm Express is a fully FREE Video Editor + Compositor. You can do video editing, keyframe-based animations, shape animations (motion graphics), and even text animations. But since it’s not a specialized tool for type animations, you’ll need to learn and work for a longer time. That’s where the below tool comes in handy. No wonder it’s the #1 Choice for Free Video Editors as per this list.

Boris 3D Objects [Boris Title Studio] is an inexpensive add-on for Hitfilm Express. You can access all its features from within the Hitfilm compositor interface – and this add-on has more than sufficient features for creating and animating typography. Not just text, but you can also create and animate shapes, outlines, and other motion graphics.

The only issue is, it takes time to get used to their difficult interface, but it’s feature-rich. So don’t give up on it soon. Here is a YT Channel for in-depth tutorials on Title Studio.

Main Text Creation & Animation Features with BCC Title Studio:

1. All basic text features like bold, italics, underline, justify, font style, font size, text color, subscript, superscript, etc. are available.
2. In addition, you can set tracking (space between each character of a word) and animate it.
3. You can set the skew angle (text tilt, per character) and animate it.
4. With just a single click, you can arrange the letters of a word in top-down order or reverse (right-left) order.
5. You can apply gradient colors to the text. There are six type of adjustable gradients.
6. You can give up to 5 outlines for a single layer of text. You can select the position, style and colors fo reach outline.
7. You can set up to 5 shadows for a single layer of text. You can choose between drop shadow, cast shadow and solid shadow. You can determine the color, distance and opacity for each shadow.
8. You can animate the position, rotation, and scale for the entire word or line, but also for individual letters. You can animate the x,y,z axes independently for each.
9. You can animate the tumble (x), spin (y), rotate (z) parameters in 3D, even for 2D text.
10. You can animate the distance, angle and rotation for drop shadow.
11. You can do some basic masking animations for text using ‘crop texture’ and ‘crop output’ parameters.
12. You can animate the fill color and opacity of text, and borders.
13. You can switch off the fill, apply just a border (or up to 5) and animate the border begin and end, which gives it auto-writing/drawing effect.
14. You can draw a path and animate the text along the path.
15. You can do different type-on text animations. This is one of the best features of this software as you can animate different paramters, per letter. You can even do an overshoot animation for each and you can animate each letter in the forward, reverse or random order. And I have just touched the basics of type-on animations!
16. Jitter enables you to animate each letter – position, scale, etc. continuously.
17. Generator enables you to create scrambling letters animation and then reveal the original.
18. Boris Title Studio has many shaders that enable you to create and animate visual effects for text like blur, glow edge, glow light, light rays, light sweep, wipe, gradient, etc.
19. For 3D text, there are many deformers like bend, taper, twist, curl, ripple, shatter, pulse, slice stretch, etc. that enables you to create superb 3D effects.
20. There are ready-made material and extrution styles with prebuilt textures including metals, plastics, wood, paper, etc. that makes 3D text even more attractive. You can apply separate colors/textures/materials or front, back, bevel, and side surfaces. You can even animate the textures, but sometimes this crashes my system.

You can combine any of the above in infinite combinations to get infinite text/typography animation effects.

There are readymade basic shapes and a pen tool to draw your own shapes. You can extrude these shapes into 3D as well. So far, this tool is the easiest option I have found to create and animate 3D shapes to make basic 3D icons, lower-thirds, etc. You can import 3D models, but my blender models didn’t work. I guess you need Cinema4D models.

I have not even started with the availability of built-in lights, cameras, motion blur, etc. In fact, you can not only use the camera to pan/zoom, but you can also orbit around text very easily. I cannot cover all the features of this thoughtfully made software for titling and animation in one blog post, but I have done my best to summarize.

I love both Hitfilm and BCC Title Studio 🙂