USER GUIDE

SUMMARY

1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... page 3

2. INSTALLATION ...................................................................................................................................... page 4
3. DISLAIMER .............................................................................................................................................. page 5

4. QUICK START (THE GENERATE TAB) .................................................................................... page 6

5. TUTORIAL PART 1 : GENERATE .................................................................................................... p 7 - 8
6. THE ANIMATE TAB ............................................................................................................................. page 9
7. TUTORIAL PART 2 : ANIMATE ...................................................................................................... p 10 - 11

8. TROUBLESHOOTING ...................................................................................................................... page 12

9. LAST WORDS ! ..................................................................................................................................... page 13

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 1. INTRODUCTION

introduction
Well known by C4D users, Mograph still remains one of the most powerful and robust
procedural cloning and animation module.
AfterEffects users can taste a little bit of its power for free, thanks to the «Fracture» and 2
«Effectors» (Plain and Random) that come with the Cinema 4D Lite version, packed with
every AfterEffects CC version. But it is definitely limited and frustrating, since the most
interesting tool is still missing : the CLONER !

How many times a motion designer has to duplicate and animate sequentially a bunch,
sometimes dozen, of similar graphic shapes in their projects ?

Of course you can animate your designs with keyframes, then duplicate them, sort them
with a time offset... but it is time consuming and what if you are asked to change the whole
animation later ? Well, you’ll have to redo the entire process, again and again, until your
client is really satisfied !

Some existing tools aim at making this process way more efficient and less tedious, but
you’ll still end up with a lot of duplicated layers in your timeline, and, who wouldn’t prefer to
keep a well organized timeline, just like in Cinema4D, where you can just deploy or close
objects hierarchies to keep things tidy up.

Introducing... Moglyph FX, a Mograph like toolset that allows you to clone predefined
glyph shapes and animate them proceduraly, within one single text layer !

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 2. INSTALLATION

inSTALLATION
The Moglyph FX toolset comes as a folder than contains one single « MoglyphFX.jsxbin »
file (+ one «manifest.txt» file needed by the aescripts&plugins manager app if you prefer)
and two subfolders called « Fonts » and « MoGlyphAssets ».

First install all the Moglyph fonts (like you would install install any other font on your OS)
contained in the « Fonts » folder (all available fonts are arranged in 2 more subfolders
called «MoGlyph-StarterPack» - that containts the 7 first fonts created for the product’s
first launch - and « MoGlyph-AdditionalFonts » - a continuously growing library of fonts that
will be available with new released versions).

To install the script and the assets properly, you can either use the aescripts + aeplugins
manager app (easiest) or manually copy both the « MoglyphFX.jsxbin » file and the whole
« MoglyphAssets » folder, then paste them at the same level inside your Application > After
Effects’ current version > Scripts > ScriptUI Panels folder.

On Windows, you’ll find the ScriptUI Panels folder at this location :

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects XX\Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels
On OSX, you’ll find the ScriptUI Panels folder at this location :
/Applications/Adobe After Effects XX/Scripts/ScriptUI Panels

Inside After Effects, Allow Scripts To Write Files and Access Network by turning on the
corresponding option in your AE Preferences > General tab.
Then restart AfterEffects.

Launch « MoglyphFX.jsxbin » from the Window menu, then enter your license code.
Depending of your OS and permissions, a few more steps may be needed ; just follow the
instructions that appear on the screen and restart AfterEffects again when the message asks
you to do it. Once AfterEffects has re-opened, dock the panel wherever you want in your
AfterEffects layout and you are ready to go !

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 3. DISCLAIMER

DISCLAIMER
Some of you may have noticed that another tool, called Cloners+Effectors available here
on aescripts.com, aims at animating clones in same Cloners setups procedurally, like
Mograph as well. It is true, and this tool is really cool and efficient for this purpose, so...
What are the differences between both products ?

In order to help you make your choice, here are a few arguments and comparisons :

Moglyph FX relies entirely on Afters Effects Text layers, which means that you will always be bound to use
the one-color symbols, called «glyphs», provided in the different thematic Moglyph Fonts. This is the main
limitation of Moglyph FX and where it really differs from its contender Cloner+Effectors, since this one lets
you use any layer (that can be precomposed with animated graphics in it) as clones. And this is mainly why,
Moglyph FX costs almost half the price of Cloners+Effectors.
I will do my best to provide as many useful and nice glyph shapes as I can, in a continuously growing font
library, but this is definitely something to keep in mind while purchase one of these products.
Another major difference between both products is how the «Falloff» options for the Effectors affect the
clones. In Cloners+Effectors, you’ll find the 2 most used Falloff shapes that Cinema4D (and other proce-
dural modules like Mash for Maya) offers : «Linear» and «Radial», which allows you to animate your clones
just by dragging the Effectors accross them, just like in Cinema4D. Moglyph FX is an entirely different
beast while dealing with Effectors falloff ; since the effectors are in fact some complex «text animators»,
you’ll never be able to separate their position from the cloner and, then, to animate your clones in this way.
Moglyph FX Effectors’ falloff rather consists of a bunch of «completion» sliders (with a «Start», a «End», an
«Offset»...) than will help you animate your clones one by one, depending of their index order, from the first
to the last by default, or row by row if you check the corresponding option in the «Animate» tab. Note that
you can randomize these clones indexes with another cool Effector’s option from this tab, if you do not want
to animate clones in a sequential way.
Moglyph FX offers ALL the 5 Cloner types that Cinema 4D has, including the really awesome «Spline
cloner» (which I use a lot in real productions) and the «Honeycomb» that appeared for the first time in
Cinema 4D R18 versions, while Cloners+Effectors has only the Linear, Radial and Grid types. Note that
Cloners+Effectors offers another great feature that mimics the «Fracture» object from C4D (called «Clus-
ter»), that MoglyphFX will never be able to reproduce due to After Effects Text layers limitations.
Since Moglyph FX is based on presets with all the proerties linked to some effects, it is faster (almost
in realtime, just by playing with «Count» slider) to generate a large amount of clones in your comp, while
Cloners+Effectors is a bit slower on this point because of the way the script duplicates each layer. But
keep in mind that both products, whichever it is, will become to slow down your composition’s preview and
render, as soon as you try to animate a large amount of clones with the help of effectors. This is totally
normal, and this is mainly due to After Effects own limitations. If you feel that you have reached the limits and
it slows you down in your workflow, just consider learning and buying a real 3D software like Cinema4D (but
even there, large amounts of clones can become very slow !).
Moglyph FX is based on Text layers, which means that you can for example extrude the generated glyph
shapes within Element 3D (just choose your Moglyph Cloner layer as a custom Text & Mask layer in E3D),
use 3rd party text scripts and presets on top of the cloners (animate clones with cool tools like Animation
composer or Text Evo), save your setups as reusable presets (drag and drop all the Cloner’s text groups,
mask and effects in the preset library to re-use them later) or even use the thematic Moglyph fonts in Illus-
trator’s glyph panel (perfect for the design and storyboarding process).

So, as you can see, there isn’t really a better product than the other : it is just a matter of
preferences and needs. Both products have their own strength, are great, crafted with
passion, but they also have their limits. So the choice is really up to you !

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 4. QUICK START (GENERATE TAB)

GENERate tab OVERVIEW

1 Choose

a Moglyph font (or a custom one)
This dropdown list contains all the thematic Moglyph fonts available (with 100 glyph shapes in each), and the
option to use a custom font (works like Cinema4D’s MoText tool in this case). More glyph fonts will come in
the future, you’ll find them here after a correct installation of the assets.

2 Choose

how the glyph cloners should be populated
Choose one of the 2 modes available : Procedural (by default), allows you to automatically generate a specific
amount of glyph clones and arrange them by iteration or randomly if you have created more than one glyph
shape ; Manual is less common, but it can be useful if you want to create manually your own « sentence » of
glyphs, one by one, by picking them in the Glyph panel.

3 Create

a Cloner setup
Click on one of the 5 different Cloner setup buttons. From left to right :
Spline Cloner (arranges clones along a path), Linear Cloner (clones are arranged inline), Radial Cloner
(clones are duplicated in a circular shape), Grid Cloner (clones in grid array) and Honeycomb Cloner (similar
to the grid but with alternated odd and even amounts of clones in the rows).

4 Add

new glyph shapes to your cloner
By clicking this button while a cloner layer is selected, you’ll open up a «Glyph panel», just like in Illustrator,
that allows you to replace the default glyph shape (if you choose only one glyph), or to create iterations or
random arrangements with multiple shapes.
Once you have finished your selection, just close the window (you’ll be able to add more glyph later, at any
moment, by re-clicking on the Add New Glyph button).

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 5. TUTORIAL PART 1 : GENERATE

PART 1 : GENERATE
The MoglyphFX toolset has been designed to be as simple to use as a procedural cloning
tool should be, just as in Cinema4D’s mograph module ! Here are the few steps you need
to generate and animate glyph clones :

1. GENERATE YOUR GLYPH CLONES

 hoose the font you want to pick your glyph shapes from in the Fonts dropdown list first. The «Custom font»
• C
item will grey the «Add New Glyph» button out because the tools assumes that you will choose any system
font or glyph font that hasn’t been designed to be specifically used within the toolset. In this case, this is a
perfect equivalent to use a «MoText» generator - where you type the text characters directly - instead of a
true «Cloner» inside Cinema4D.

• C
 hoose how the cloner you are going to create should handle your clones. Choose «Procedurally» in order
to let the cloner duplicate the correct amount of glyph, by iteration or randomly in case of multiple glyph
shapes ; or «Manually» if you prefer to begin with an empty text field and to pick each glyph shape one by
one just as you would do it within Illustrator’s own Glyph panel.

 lick on any of the 5 cloners buttons to generate the wanted setup (Spline Cloner, Linear Cloner, Radial
• C
Cloner, Grid Cloner and Honeycomb Cloner). Note that the Spline Cloner needs you to select a layer that
contains at least 1 bezier path (could be a layer with a mask or a drawn shape layer) before clicking the but-
ton, whereas the Linear Cloner will prompt you to choose if you prefer to align clones on the first one (justified
on the left) or on the middle one (justified in the center).

 hange the default glyph shape and/or add more than one glyph shapes, by clicking the big Add New Glyph
• C
button while a cloner layer is selected ; it will then open up a «Glyph panel», just like in Illustrator.
In this new panel, just click on any shape you like to add it in the shapes to clone ; you’ll instantly see your
cloner being populated with this new shape. If you click on several shapes one after the other, the cloner will
iterate threw the different shapes you created, because or the «Clones» mode option in the cloner’s effect,
which is on «Iterate» by default. You can change this by choosing «Randomize», and you’ll end up with a
random distribution of your different glyph shapes.

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 5. TUTORIAL PART 1 : GENERATE

• Y
 ou can add as many shapes as you want inside a same cloner layer. Each time you create a new glyph
shape to clone, you’ll find a useful Glyph-N effect on top of the Cloner layer’s effects, where N is the order
of the glyph creation. Play with these sliders to change the clones shapes later if needed (you can easily
retrieve the exact number to enter for the wanted glyph, just by holding your cursor hover the corresponding
glyph icon preview inside the Glyph Panel).
Keep in mind that its remains a native AfterEffects text layer, so, all this relies in fact on what is called «Ani-
mators » (shown with the dotted arrows in the screencapture above) : you can always try to play with the text
options and animators settings (and their stacking order as well).

Once you have finished to pick up the needed glyph shapes, just close the window (you’ll be able to add
more glyph later, at any moment, by re-clicking on the Add New Glyph button).

• D
 epending of the cloner setup you had chosen among the 5 available ones, you’ll find various common settings
(like «Clones iterate/randomize », «Seed » for this randomize mode, «Count »...) and some specific options as
well (like «Spline mask from» for the Spline cloner, «Align clones » for both the Spline and the Radial cloners,
«Odd/Even rows » for the Honeycomb one...) in the first «Object » sub-group of the cloner layer’s « Moglyph
CLONER » effect, that will allow you to tweak the arrangement of your clones.

• In order to transform all the clones at the same time, you can deploy the «Transform » sub-group of the cloner
layer’s « Moglyph CLONER » effect, and just play with the different settings to move, scale and rotate them
uniformly. Keep in mind that these options really differ from the « Object > Per step transform » options that
allow you to transform your clones in an incremental way while using the Linear Cloner.
Another important thing to notice is that there is one exception for the Radial Cloner : in order to transform the
X scale of your clones, you’ll need to tweak the «Scale X (+char. panel) » value in the «Transform » sub-group
AND to enter the exact same value as the character size inside the native AE Character panel.

Pro tip :
You can deploy the «CLONER Transform» text group
and add other properties manually like you would do
with any text layer animator (like 3D properties if you
turn «3D per character on, Stroke thikness, RGB...)

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 6. THE ANIMATE TAB

animate tab OVERVIEW

1 Plain

effector
Applies values uniformly, as defined in the Parameters effect’s group, to all the clones or just a portion of them
if you play with its Falloff ;

2 Delay

effector
Animates the clones sequentially from their initial state (you can invert its keyframes to reverse the animation)
to some specified parameters, with a nice elastic secondary motion.

3 Formula

effector
Applies parameters values based on 1 of the 3 different formulas available : Wave (sin), N selection (mod) or
Random direction (just set the Rotation Z to 360° and play with the N slider to set the number of orientations).

4 Random

effector
Animates your clones randomly, in an organic way, based on the parameters you specify. You are not bound to
have some animation : just set the Animation speed if you want a still design.

5 Step

effector
Play with the Curve’s keyframes to reshape your clones, from the first to the last, directly in the AfterEffects
«Graph editor», just as you would do in Cinema4D’s «Spline graph» !

6 Time

effector
Creates a perpetual motion onto the clones, based on the values specified in Parameters. No keyframes needed !

7 Effector

options
The Randomize Falloff order gives a more chaotic Falloff (randomly chooses the next clone to animate while
animating the completion slider) ; the Rows based (not glyphs) option is only useful for the Grid and the
Honeycomb cloners (animates line by line instead of character by character).

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 7. TUTORIAL PART 2 : ANIMATE

2. ANIMATE YOUR GLYPH CLONES

Now that you have set up your clones correctly with the Generate Tab, it’s time to aimate
them ! To do so, just click on the corresponding « Animate Tab » in the MoglyphFX panel.

• W
 hile your cloner layer is selected, you can add whichever cloner you want, just as you would do inside
Cinema4D, by clicking the corresponding button.
Each time you click on a effector button, a new effect will be added with the effector’s name, after the Moglyph
Cloner effect itself (and a new text animator with the same name will be created as well inside the Text
hierarchy > advanded users could eventually tweak the expressions inside it in order to fit their needs).
Keep in mind that the 2 «Effector Options» available (« Randomize Falloff order» and « Rows based (not
glyphs) have to be checked or unchecked BEFORE the effector’s creation.

Below are the 6 different effectors that you can create and their respective explanation :
• P
 lain effector
This simple yet effective Effector lets you apply the values specified in the Parameters group in a uniform
way, without any special effect, to the glyph clones. You can choose to affect all of them at the same time, or
just a few of them by playing with the different settings (completion, offset...) from the Falloff group.
Note that the glyph clones selection will behave differently depending of the options checked in the
EFFECTOR Tab of the UI, before the creation of the Effector. Indeed, by default, playing with the Falloff
completion slider will affect the glyph clones one by one and sequentially (in their character order), while
their order will be completely randomized if you had choosen to enable the «Randomize Falloff order »
checkbox. You can choose to affect your clones glyph per glyph, (which is the case by default), and row
by row as well, if you check the «Rows based (not glyphs) » option. This feature will be useful only with
the multilines Cloner setups (Grid and HoneyComb), and will be visible only while playing with the Falloff
Completion slider.

• D
 elay effector
This useful Effector lets you add a nice elastic motion to a sequential animation of your glyph clones. All you
have to do is to tweak the Effector’s Parameters values, and it will animate your glyph clones from the initial
cloner’s state to this new Transform /Style/Other values, glyph by glyph with a little decay between them, and
with a nice springy animation. The animation is done entirely in the already keyframed «Animation » setting, in
the Effector group ; you can edit these keyramed slider from 100 to 0% in order to reverse the animation or
to create nice IN and OUT transitions.
You can have a full control over the springness of the elastic effect thanks to the other settings (Elasticity,
Springs/Sec, Damping, Offset). Since the animation is already done for you, you do not even need to touch
to the Falloff settings, but it can still be useful if you wan’t to restrict the effect only to a specific portion of
clones. See how the EFFECTOR Tab’s checkboxes can affect the Falloff completion in the PLAIN Effector
description (this settings work similarly in all the effectors).

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 7. TUTORIAL PART 2 : ANIMATE

• F
 ormula effector
A really powerful effector that allows you to transform your glyph clones in a none regular way, thanks to
three predefined different formulas available in the Effector group’s dropdown list.
The first formula (the default choosen one) will animate your clones in a nice wavy way. Tweaking the N value
will then increase or decrease the number of clones in a wave, while playing with the F (Frequency/Phase)
setting will affect the wave speed (the amplitude relies, of course, on the Parameters values).
The second formula, called «N selection », allows you to affect only each N clone by the values you tweak
in the parameters, with a F number that allows you to easily offset the selection. So if you choose 2 as the N
number and 0 for the F number, only the even clones will be affected. But if you offset the F to 1, the clones
that will be affected will be the odd ones. You can choose other values for N to produce interesting effect ; for
instance, you can choose to enter the exact same number that the Cloner’s Count, and play with the F slider
to choose only one specific glyph clone (if you wan’t to change the very last clone to a specific glyph shape,
like an arrow shape at the end of a spline for example)
Finally, the third formula, named «Random direction », allows you to randomize the angle of your glyph
clones 90° by 90°, perfect for randomizing some tiles or some arrows directions. In order to use this 3rd
formula, the only Parameter you have to set up is the «Rotation.Z » in the Tranform sub-group : reset all the
other values and enter 360° in this Rotation.Z angle and you’ll see your clones directions randomized !

• R
 andom effector
If you prefer a more natural or chaotic animation, this effector is for you. As its name suggests, it will help
you randomize all or only a portion of your glyph clones (if you play with the Falloff settings), depending
of the values you enter in the Parameters. You can limit the Min and Max limits of the randomness thanks
to the Maximum and Minimum 0 to 100% sliders in the Effector group. In that group, you can increase
or decrease the Noise scale and its Animation Speed, and choose to Link the 2 dimensions of array
parameters (like anchor point, position, scale...) as well. If the overall random look doesn’t fit yoiur needs,
just play with the Source to change it entirely.
As for the other effectors, you can choose to restrict the random effect on a specific portion of clones only.
See how the EFFECTOR Tab’s checkboxes can affect this Falloff in the PLAIN Effector description (as
already explained above, its settings work similarly in all the effectors).

• Step effector
This really powerful effector allows you to make some incremental transformations and even to reshape
the clones arrangements thanks to a curve that you can directly edit in the AE native Graph editor !
The overal principle is pretty simple : the values you specify in the Parameters are applied at 100% to the
very last clone, and the transformation of the clones in between will be interpolated between this last clone
and the first one that is not affected at all. The 2 keyframes existing in the Effector’s Curve feature are linear
by default, so the interpolation between clones will be linear as well. But if you change these keyframes to
Bezier, with F9 for example, you’ll be able to play with the curve’s tangents directly in the graph editor, just
like you can reshape the interpolation within the Step Effector from Cinema4D ! Combined with the awesome
Cloner’s Spline mode, you’ll be able to created interesting « tapered splines of clones », and to create
unprecedent graphics in AfterEffects !
As for the other effectors, you can choose to restrict the random effect on a specific portion of clones only.
See how the EFFECTOR Tab’s checkboxes can affect this Falloff in the PLAIN Effector description (as
already explained above, its settings work similarly in all the effectors).

• Time effector
The Time Effector will allow you to give some perpetual, uniform motion to the glyph clones, based on
composition’s duration length, without having to set keys. Since we couln’t animate perpetualy some limited
properties like the Visibility (which corresponds to the opacity, limited from 0 to 100%), keep in mind that
only the Parameters names followed by a \»\(T\)\» mention will be automatically animated during time. Other
properties like Skew, Visibility, Fill\/Stroke Opacity, Fill\/Stroke Color or Modify Glyph, are just here to help
you access and define these fixed values without having to twirl down all the Text layer’s sub-groups and to
add them manually. So, for instance, you could choose to skew the glyph clones by entering a value of 40
in the TIME Effector’s Parameters Skew slider, and to animate its Skew Angle perpetually during time by
increasing its value.\n \nNote that you can accelerate the Time animation either by increasing Parameters
values one at a time, or by using the Time Multiplier slider in the Effector group. Here you’ll be able to offset
the phase of the animation with the Time Offset option as well.
This effect can be restricted to some specific clones just like the other effectors, thanks to it Falloff settings.

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 8. TROUBLESHOOTING

TROUBLESHOOTING
In order to plainly benefit of all the advantages Mogyph FX toolset has to offer,
be sure to observe the following caution instructions before using it !

KEEP IN MIND THAT THE MOGLYPH FX TOOLSET USES DOZEN OF

EXPRESSIONS TO LINK THE TEXT ANIMATORS DIFFERENT PROPERTIES.
SO, TRYING TO ADD TOO MANY CLONES INSIDE A SAME PROJECT COULD
REALLY SLOW DOWN AFTER EFFECTS DURING A PREVIEW OR A RENDER
(EVEN MORE WITH 3D PER CHARACTER). DO NOT OVERUSE THE PRODUCT !
IF YOU WANT TO CLONE AND ANIMATE MORE GRAPHICS, YOU’LL HAVE TO
USE A FULL 3D PACKAGE LIKE CINEMA4D OR MAYA.

DO NOT RENAME OR DELETE THE EFFECTS CREATED BY THE MOGLYPH FX

TOOLSET. IN ORDER TO PROPERLY REMOVE A GLYPH SHAPE OR AN EFFECTOR,
YOU’LL HAVE TO REMOVE BOTH THE « GLYPH N » EFFECT (OR « EFFECTOR XXX »)
AND ITS CORRESPONDING TEXT ANIMATOR (THEY HAVE THE EXACT SAME NAME)

FOR MORE IN DETAIL EXPLANATIONS, AND A FULL OVERVIEW OF THE OTHER

CLONING MODE CALLED « MANUAL » THAT HASN’T BEEN COVERED IN THIS
BRIEF .PDF INSTRUCTIONS, PLEASE VISIT THE FULL 4 PARTS TUTORIAL
VIDEOS ON THE PRODUCT’S WEBPAGE : https://aescripts.com/moglyph-fx/ )

KEEP IN MIND THAT THE WHOLE

TOOLSET RELIES ON AFTER EFFECTS
TEXT PROPERTIES. SO, AFFECTING
VALUES IN THE AE CHARACTER
PANEL WILL OF COURSE CHANGE
THE CLONERS AND EFFECTORS
APPEARANCE IF THIS PANEL IS NOT
SET CORRECTLY. BUT SURE TO
ALWAYS HAVE THESE EXACT SAME
SETTINGS SHOWN ON THIS CAPTURE
(except for the radial cloner, where you’ll
have to change the text size according
to the the «Scale x (+char. panel)» you
enter in the moglyph cloner’s transform
effect’s sub-group effect)

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 9. LAST WORDS...

last words...
Thank you all for having purchased the product !

Moglyph FX toolset has been developped with love by Matthieu FREMEAUX (aka
FREMOX), a french A.D. and motion designer from France, and one of the guys behing the
french motion design community called Motion Café.

All rights reserved. DO NOT copy or redistribute the product without permission !

Please note that the author has nothing to do with Maxon, even if the main idea behing the
toolset was clearly to make the native AE’s Text layer work like the Cinema4D’s
procedural animation named «Mograph» (this is why you’ll find a lot of parameters
and effect’s sub-group that are named exactly like in Cinema4D... so that it will be way
faster to understand and master the MoglyphFX toolset for C4D users !).

The toolset comes with a few Moglyph fonts already created, specifically designers to
be used with the product. Be sure to check each new release of the product because new
fonts will be added to the existing library in the future !

More informations and tutorials are also available on https://aescripts.com/moglyph-fx/

Now let’s generate and animate some glyph clones in After Effects ••

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