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DISKO Typetrace

Handwriting, minus the hand cramp.

Font-aware write-on animation for live text.
Typetrace

Handwriting, minus the hand cramp.

Rent it - $7.99: DISKO Typetrace, on disko.media Full details on disko.media

Pay once, no subscription. Every 1.x update is free; V2 comes later as a paid upgrade, and V1 keeps working.

Typetrace reads the rendered shape of your text, plans a human stroke order (bowls before stems, real pen lifts) and writes it on from 0 to 100%. Change the copy, font, size or tracking at any time and the animation rebuilds itself. No outlining or per-letter setup needed. Want a letter written your way? Sketch a few rough masks over it, turn on Follow Masks, and the pen follows your lines in your order (After Effects).

Side A What it does

  1. Works on any live text layer and any installed font
  2. Human stroke planning: open curves start at their entry, loops close before stems, descenders after the body
  3. Follow Masks (After Effects): sketch rough open masks over any letter and the pen follows your lines, in your order; masks guide the pen and never reveal ink
  4. Stroke Pause sets natural pen lifts between strokes, longer at line changes
  5. Auto start direction, or force Top, Right, Bottom or Left
  6. Smooth Ink: an organic moving edge that resolves to the exact font
  7. Exact transparent output at 0% and the exact original pixels at 100%
  8. Boil: the hand-drawn wobble of frame-by-frame animation, held On 2s, 3s, 4s or 6s, while writing and after
  9. Keyframe Write On with easing and expressions like any slider
  10. 8, 16 and 32 bpc, Multi-Frame Rendering

Side B In Effect Controls

  1. Write On
  2. Stroke Pause
  3. Start Direction
  4. Smooth Ink
  5. Follow Masks
  6. Boil
  7. Boil Amount
  8. Boil Rate
  9. Boil Seed

Specs

Version
1.8.0 (every 1.x update is free)
Plays in
After Effects 2024 or later, Premiere Pro 2024 or later
macOS
macOS 12 or later, Apple silicon and Intel (universal)
Windows
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
License
Pay once, no subscription. License codes work offline, on up to three computers you use.
Help
DISKO Motion support

Try it first. Every effect is fully featured before you buy. Renders carry a DISKO MOTION TRIAL watermark until you enter a license code. More about the trial at disko.media/motion

The box set

DISKO Motion V1

$59.99 instead of $79.90

Every disk on the shelf in one box: Typetrace, Flow, Shutter, Balance, Match, Glitch, Inferno, Unboil, Stitch and Neon. One by one they come to $79.90.

Once the disks in your caddy cost more than the box set, the caddy on disko.media swaps them for it.

The whole box set, $59.99 instead of $79.90