Editing Text

The text in the SWiSH movie is represented as the Text Object. This Object can be a Static, Dynamic, or Input. Dynamic text and is used to display text that can be changed by the script while the movie is running. So it can be used to display the dynamic content like the current date, dynamically changed news, etc. Input text is the Object that allows you to get text input from the user. It’s very useful when you’re creating interactive movies with feedback or search forms.

But the most important and widely used Text Object is a Static text. This object is used to display the Static text in your movie. All the titles, slogans, and button captions are represented by the Static Text object.

To edit the text in SWiSHMax, first of all you have to select an appropriate text object. There are several ways of doing this. You can use the "Select" tool to select an appropriate text in the Layout panel. Note that you should move the Timeline slider to the last frame to see all "texts/objects" in the layout panel. The other way to select the text object is to use the Timeline layers list or the Outline panel. You can open the Outline panel by clicking the "Panels/Outline" top menu item. Outline panel represents your movie structure and is very easy to navigate through to find an appropriate object in your movie.

The text object is marked with "T" icon in the Outline panel as well as in the Timeline. The name of the object is the same as its content. And it really helps to find the text object that you want to edit. Once you’ve selected an appropriate text object you can edit its content and properties in the Object panel. You can open the Object panel by clicking the "Panels/Object" top menu item. Note that this panel’s caption is different depending on the selected object type. So if you’ve selected the Text Object then the Objects panel caption will be with Text.

The edit area is located in the bottom part of the Text Object panel. You can see and edit the content of the text object there. You can change the font color by clicking on the color select box at the right of the font family and font size drop downs. Use these drop down menus to modify the text font family and the font size. Note that if you’re changing the font family and the new font type differs from the original then you have to change the font type as well. For example, if you’v e substituted the pixel font with the vector one, the font type should be changed to Vector Font or Vector Font pixel aligned. The text justification and the direction flow options are available in the Text Object properties as well.