Is there a tool for creating VF animated images?

Igor Petrovic
Igor Petrovic Igor Petrovic Nostalgic Dolphin Studio Independent Type Designer Belgrade, Serbia https://nostalgicdolphin.com/ An independent type designer focused on quality over quantity. A careful craftsman and researcher with a decade-long theoretical and practical experience. Specialized in making highly unique display typefaces with strong yet refined personalities that celebrate traditional typographic values of balance, proportion, rhythm, consistency, curve quality, and spacing. Designs outstanding type specimens. Founded "Nostalgic Dolphin" studio that specializes in branding and custom type design. Works as a consultant for Cyrillic script and offers mentorship service for beginner-to-intermediate type designers. Writes on the studio's blog. Critical thinker interested in philosophy and psychology (overlapping areas in particular). Audio producer (indie/gothic/synth pop). Posts: 331
edited January 2023 in Type Resources
From time to time I see animated images in type specimens presenting VF. I guess this is usually done in Adobe AE, but I was wondering is there a simple tool where I can load my VF, type a word, set animation parameters and download it as a GIF?

For example, Fontgauntlet by Dinamo has a pretty good base for this, with all parameters, animation types etc. I hope it wouldn't be much work from there to enable GIF download...
 

Comments

  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Yves MICHEL designer Belgium Type design as a hobby Posts: 218
    I'm afraid the link you provide is not the good one.
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Adam Jagosz Poland https://www.adamjagosz.com/ Posts: 689
    edited January 2023
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Craig Eliason he/him Teeline Fonts St. Paul, Minnesota (USA) teelinefonts.com Posts: 1,485
    Of those, Drawbot is much easier described as "a simple tool" (from my impressions anyway). 
  • jeremy tribby
    jeremy tribby Posts: 277
    edited January 2023
    There is a Coldtype plugin for Blender called st2 that is really cool, and hopefully less complex for some than Coldtype itself, which is pretty idiomatic in some areas and sparse in others. still, it's great if you've got a programming background / are OK running ffmepg to build the videos and so on
    The only VF plugin I know of for AE (VF not natively support) isn't great - I would surprised if much or any VF animations are made with AE these days. opportunity area for Adobe....

  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Raymond Larabie he/him Typodermic Fonts Inc. President Nagoya, Japan https://typodermicfonts.com/ I'm just a font nerd who stumbled into creating a type foundry back in 2001. These days, I'm tapping away on my keyboard in Nagoya, Japan, dreaming up new letterforms. I've somehow managed to cobble together over 500 typefaces, ranging from "space-age chic" to "grandma's attic nostalgia." It's been a wild ride, and I'm still pinching myself that designers actually use my squiggles in their work. Posts: 1,466
    edited January 2023
    While Adobe AE doesn't support variable yet, there's a plug-in called Varifont that sort-of does the trick. I found some other tools, but they were Mac only. As far as I know, that's the only way to get the job done on Windows. There's a kerning bug which causes it to only use the kerning from one master, so you may have to choose test phrases selectively. I don't know if there are any standalone Windows tools that generate animated GIFs from variable fonts.
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Adam Jagosz Poland https://www.adamjagosz.com/ Posts: 689
    edited January 2023
    ColdType runs on Windows just fine.
  • Jasper de Waard
    Jasper de Waard Jasper de Waard He/him Bureau Roffa Type designer Amsterdam, Netherlands bureauroffa.com Scientist by day, type designer by night. Posts: 654
    Wouldn't it be easiest to just take a screen capture from Font Gauntlet and convert that to gif? 
  • There is also vartype from Space Type for prebaked animations
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Igor Petrovic Nostalgic Dolphin Studio Independent Type Designer Belgrade, Serbia https://nostalgicdolphin.com/ An independent type designer focused on quality over quantity. A careful craftsman and researcher with a decade-long theoretical and practical experience. Specialized in making highly unique display typefaces with strong yet refined personalities that celebrate traditional typographic values of balance, proportion, rhythm, consistency, curve quality, and spacing. Designs outstanding type specimens. Founded "Nostalgic Dolphin" studio that specializes in branding and custom type design. Works as a consultant for Cyrillic script and offers mentorship service for beginner-to-intermediate type designers. Writes on the studio's blog. Critical thinker interested in philosophy and psychology (overlapping areas in particular). Audio producer (indie/gothic/synth pop). Posts: 331
    Thanks for all the answers!

    Though there is no simple solution similar to what I wished for there are a few possible workarounds. And I appreciate having a quick overview of currently available options.

    Samsa project offers animated SVG export, but after giving it a quick try I haven't managed to export a solid color word (only a single wireframe character).

    Anyway, it would be great to have a very simple in-browser layout platform where one can perform a basic presentation of variable font and download it in universal format (GIF/SVG/MP4). So to set resolution, type text, run and set axis animations, and set background color or image. That would make it easier for type designers to quickly show previews on social networks etc.
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Igor Petrovic Nostalgic Dolphin Studio Independent Type Designer Belgrade, Serbia https://nostalgicdolphin.com/ An independent type designer focused on quality over quantity. A careful craftsman and researcher with a decade-long theoretical and practical experience. Specialized in making highly unique display typefaces with strong yet refined personalities that celebrate traditional typographic values of balance, proportion, rhythm, consistency, curve quality, and spacing. Designs outstanding type specimens. Founded "Nostalgic Dolphin" studio that specializes in branding and custom type design. Works as a consultant for Cyrillic script and offers mentorship service for beginner-to-intermediate type designers. Writes on the studio's blog. Critical thinker interested in philosophy and psychology (overlapping areas in particular). Audio producer (indie/gothic/synth pop). Posts: 331
    edited January 2023
    Just found out about 2D animation software Cavalry which supports variable fonts natively. It has a free version, and I was able to easily animate my VF and export MP4 (it has no GIF as I can see). Not tested thoroughly but everything looks pretty nice so far.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Thomas Phinney he/him or they/them Font Detective LLC Font-related forensics, type design, font production, general typography expertise. Portland, OR, USA https://thefontdetective.com Thomas Phinney is a font forensics specialist and type designer, who has created fonts for Adobe and Google. He helped lead Adobe’s conversion of their font library to OpenType in his time there (1997–2008). Phinney is also involved in the business of type, having been product manager for fonts at Adobe and Extensis, and CEO of FontLab. He has four patents, an MS in printing/typography from RIT, and an MBA from UC Berkeley. Phinney served on the board of ATypI from 2004–20, and 2023–25. He was at various times President, VP, Treasurer and Secretary, served on many ATypI committees, and was involved in conference program selections for almost all the ATypI conferences in this time, including often being curator or co-curator of font technology portions of the program. Phinney did his Master’s thesis on “Extreme Form Change in Multiple Master Fonts,” a precursor to modern variable font technology. He designed Adobe Original typeface Hypatia Sans, and his team’s open-source typeface Science Gothic is a 4-axis variable font commissioned by Google Fonts. He developed and maintains a variable font version of Google’s Material Design icons for Google, with Vassil Kateliev, with over 3000 icons. Posts: 3,085
    There exist plenty of free MP4 > GIF converters, to go with that. Here is one: https://www.adobe.com/express/feature/video/convert/mp4-to-gif
  • @Justin Penner, thank you! I haven't had time to play around with your script yet, but I can definitely use it.  :)
  • Grzegorz Luk (gluk)
    Grzegorz Luk (gluk) Posts: 166
    edited January 2023
    @Justin Penner  I leave my test animation for few minutes and it indeed crashes Chrome tab. Now I play with your script (thank you!) and test for my variable COLRv1 font work since 30 minutes. To be honest I'm not 100% sure I'm using it correctly :)

  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Dave Crossland he/him Google Font Expert Denver, Colorado, USA fonts.google.com I free fonts Posts: 1,505
    Varifont is heroic and has many impressive hacks to work at all
  • @Justin Penner Interesting idea, thanks for sharing! It's not working for me in Chrome (v108) on macOS Ventura, though. I took the idea and tried to see what else could perhaps trigger a garbage collection/cache clean-up. Removing/restoring the entire animation, swapping out the font itself, even removing and restoring the entire element... But nothing will convince Chrome to clean up the cache, and memory usage remained the same.

    Did you have luck with this method on Chrome on Windows?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Thomas Phinney he/him or they/them Font Detective LLC Font-related forensics, type design, font production, general typography expertise. Portland, OR, USA https://thefontdetective.com Thomas Phinney is a font forensics specialist and type designer, who has created fonts for Adobe and Google. He helped lead Adobe’s conversion of their font library to OpenType in his time there (1997–2008). Phinney is also involved in the business of type, having been product manager for fonts at Adobe and Extensis, and CEO of FontLab. He has four patents, an MS in printing/typography from RIT, and an MBA from UC Berkeley. Phinney served on the board of ATypI from 2004–20, and 2023–25. He was at various times President, VP, Treasurer and Secretary, served on many ATypI committees, and was involved in conference program selections for almost all the ATypI conferences in this time, including often being curator or co-curator of font technology portions of the program. Phinney did his Master’s thesis on “Extreme Form Change in Multiple Master Fonts,” a precursor to modern variable font technology. He designed Adobe Original typeface Hypatia Sans, and his team’s open-source typeface Science Gothic is a 4-axis variable font commissioned by Google Fonts. He developed and maintains a variable font version of Google’s Material Design icons for Google, with Vassil Kateliev, with over 3000 icons. Posts: 3,085
     <3 
  • A new After Effects plugin has arrived: https://supa.supply/variety
    Haven't tried yet, I'm curious how it stacks up against Varifont

  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Igor Petrovic Nostalgic Dolphin Studio Independent Type Designer Belgrade, Serbia https://nostalgicdolphin.com/ An independent type designer focused on quality over quantity. A careful craftsman and researcher with a decade-long theoretical and practical experience. Specialized in making highly unique display typefaces with strong yet refined personalities that celebrate traditional typographic values of balance, proportion, rhythm, consistency, curve quality, and spacing. Designs outstanding type specimens. Founded "Nostalgic Dolphin" studio that specializes in branding and custom type design. Works as a consultant for Cyrillic script and offers mentorship service for beginner-to-intermediate type designers. Writes on the studio's blog. Critical thinker interested in philosophy and psychology (overlapping areas in particular). Audio producer (indie/gothic/synth pop). Posts: 331
    Cavalry (2.2) now supports OT features, as well as some other typographic tools:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC-aQfaT5ag&amp;ab_channel=Cavalry