Blender Scale Text by Each Letter

This was written using Blender 4.0 by a Blender novice.

The animation in this post looks like next.

Except step 4, I referred to this stackexchange answer.

Step 1: Scale an entire text on Geometry Nodes

1. Add a Instances > Scale Instances node and connect between Group Input and Group Output
   • Set Y of Scale to 2.0 and make sure the text scales
2. Add a Utilities > Text > String to Curves node and set the String field on the node
   • Connect from Curve Instances of String to Curves to Instances of Scale Instances instead of Group Input.
3. Add a Curve > Operations > Fill Curve and put it between String to Curves and Scale Instances

Note that I couldn't figure out how to use the text of its mesh from the Geometry Input node for following animation steps correctly.

Step 2: Animate texts by time frame

1. Add a Input > Scene > Scene Time node
2. Add a Utilities > Math > Map Range node and on the node,
   • Connect the Frame of the Scene Time node to the Value
   • Connect the Result to the Scale of the Scale Instances node
   • Update the From Max and To Max values for testing. For example,
     • From Max: Set 10 so that the text gets the biggest size at 10 keyframe
     • To Max: The max scale size of the text
3. This is optional for an animation to change pop up a text from the bottom center instaed of bottom left of each letter. On the String to Curve node,
   • Updbate Pivot Point to Bottom Center
   • Connect the output of Pivot Point to Center of Scale Instance

What Map Range does is to convert the value from (From Min, From Max) to (To Min, To Max) ¹.

Step 3: Animate texts by each letter

Now use the Index² node to change the scale for each letter via Map Range node.

1. Add a Geometry > Read > Index node
2. Add a Utilities > Math > Math node, which is used for the interval frames of each letter, and on the node
   • Update the function to Multiply
   • Connect the output from the Index node to one of Value
   • Connect the output of Value on this node to the From Min of the Map Range node
   • Set another Value to an arbitarily number like 10 for the interval
3. Add a Utilities > Math > Math node, which is used for how long it takes to scale each letter, and on the node,
   • Update the function to Add
   • Connect the output of Value on the Multiply node to the one of the Value of this node
   • Connect the output of Value on this node to the From Max of the Map Range node
   • Set another Value to an arbitarily number like 20 for how long takes to animate each letter

Step 4: Animate texts like soft objects

Animate texts like following squash and stretch principle. I couldn't refer to anywhere, so there might be a better way.

The logic of this animation looks like next.

• Decide what is the max scale of each letter, let's say threshold.
• Assuming the value of the Map Range node is v_index,
  • Set the To Max of the Map Range node to 2 * (threshold - 1) + 1, let's say t_max
  • Set the scale
    • t_max + 1 - s if v_index > threshold,
    • v_index otherwise

Note that the speed for a text to be bigger than 1.0 to threshold, and from threshold to 1.0 is the same.

To change the scale value based on the value by the above formula, I used Greater Than and Mix nodes by connecting the output of Greater Than to Factor of Mix. Other than that, add many Math nodes to calculate the above.

Reference

• Stackexchange answer