The effect I am going for is text that appears in 3d space, so not UI, that is animated in various ways. My initial idea was to just create videos in After Effects and attach them to planes and other objects as textures using the Video Player. However, I plan on having a lot of these and feel having a ton of mp4 videos will make the project huge. Is there a more lightweight option? Or is this how other devs do animated text?
The best thing you can do is use TextMeshPro as your text. TextMeshPro has the ability to be viewed in a 3D space. Once you have it in the world place it where you want it. Set it up as you desire and then go ahead and go into the animator and create a animation that you want. Here is a tutorial you need regarding TextMeshPro in 3D world. Click Me For Tutorial. Also Here is a 2 to the plugin as well.