So, I don't have time to do a full model of this since I'm going on holiday this Friday and have other stuff to do until then, but I thought I'd throw together this quick tutorial and idea, maybe people might like to try it.

Basically it's a way of making fully editable, bevelled text which will work for any floating geometry, for baking normal maps. You could also then add Bend, Taper or Path Deform modifiers on top to make this text wrap to any surface, which may have interesting applications

This is all completely non-destructive through the modifier stack - no manual mesh editing is done at any stage, so there is nothing that can really "go wrong". You will always have the text and bevel settings fully editable!

Overview:


Examples:

Really nice Mop. Appreciated
Will try it for my piece.

Wow, awesome. Thanks for this Mop. I don't take advantage of the stack enough from the looks of it, most of my modelling within max is destructive.

This is going to help my workflow, thanks!

Oh shnap! This is awesome. Will have to give that a try. Much appreciated. Cheers.

Yeah, a lot of people like to be very destructive when working, and a lot of the time this isn't a problem, especially since we're mostly dealing with lowpoly meshes which are going to end up UV-mapped uniquely and skinned to bones anyway.

I rarely see people in game dev building up complex modifier stacks (hardly ever seen anyone with a stack above 3-4 modifiers to be honest!) but if you know how to leverage the right modifiers in the right place, you can really end up with a very interactive (and as a side-effect, easily animatable!) result which is ultimately non-destructive and very flexible.

For text, though, this may seem overkill in a lot of ways, since doing it in Photoshop with the NVidia filter or Crazybump is mostly going to be almost as flexible and fast (and won't require re-baking the normal-map!), and you rarely need this kind of detail on text anyway.

Still, it doesn't hurt to know how

I can't see anything...has it dissapeared?

Looks fine to me here, Blenderhead.

However, I just realised my initial setup was bone-headedly complicated!

I've updated the original post with the new method, which is much simpler and way easier to edit, with more options for end results and less editing time.

Apologies for misleading anyone with my original method - that still works, but it is far from optimal or easy compared to this method.

ok, but my button is more oval-shaped than perfectly circular. Can you write a tutorial for floating text on oval-shaped buttons?

But in all seriousness.. sub-forums aren't listed on the main page? This is the first I've ever heard of this forum. Shouldn't the main page serve as a table of contents listing everything?

I think I am missing something on this. When I try this work flow I can get the text but I am unable to get the button part.

Oh sorry. I forgot to point out, that thing in the background is just a cylinder with some edge loops

These hints are purely about the text effect and using the Sweep modifier with a profile spline to create quick but complex meshes.

Also, wingdings!!!1

mop, don't you understand, we don't care about your text effects, we want to know how to make those funky cylinders! And how to get them all being exactly the same size.. do you use snap to grid?

Weird...still don't see anything. Any reason your website would have its images blocked on a work computer MoP? Or are they up on imageshack?

I put the image in my dropbox. Try clicking this link blenderhead.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/469564/pa...ic_text_01.jpg

Very nice workflow, thanks for sharing mop

Blenderhead: No idea, maybe check your settings? It's hosted on my own site's FTP, and clearly everyone else can see them!

Very cool trick. I love non-destructive workflows.

I can see being able to adjust the angle of the bevel when baking, being very handy. Is it continuous or is there a break at the first spline vert where the sweep starts and stops. If that ever causes a problem I guess you could preform one destructive edit poly on top of the stack to weld and smooth the ends. Still fully editible stack undernieth as long as the number of verts doesn't change you won't have to redo the edit poly.

Was your original method to use actual geometry and PathDeform(WSM) it around the text?

Per, it just started up the day before yesterday so you're not missing much yet, but I get what you're saying people might miss out on the goods if its not more public.

Originally Posted by MoP

Oh sorry. I forgot to point out, that thing in the background is just a cylinder with some edge loops

These hints are purely about the text effect and using the Sweep modifier with a profile spline to create quick but complex meshes.

Also, wingdings!!!1

HAHAHAHA thanks I was going nuts trying to figure that out. I am such a noob

Cool, thanks MoP and P.I.G. It worked from your dropbox. Cool tutorial.

Wow, this is awesome, thanks for that MoP!

didnt really work here, maybe i made something wrong,
edit the shape was too big, but i still get intersections

Originally Posted by arrangemonk

didnt really work here, maybe i made something wrong

You're going to have to provide some more information if you'de like help.

To start, you must have some idea of perhaps why it isnt working, or atleast you should be able to tell us what i does do(other than not work). Like specifically what happened when you tried to set it up. Showing some images of your stack/the result that you did get would help too.

Sorry, again my initial image is probably still misleading. I scaled the "profile" spline up to show the shape of it better, and the number of control points.

The "profile" spline actually starts out quite small. The nice thing about using the Sweep is that you can just edit the "profile" spline and see the results update on the fly with your text, so you can tweak it quickly if the spline is too big or the wrong shape.

You can also play with the Sweep settings to choose where the "center" of the profile spline is relative to the text, if you look in the modifier settings for the Sweep you will see a little grid of 9 buttons with dots and lines on them - try clicking different buttons there to see how the "profile" spline moves relative to the text.

If I get some time later I'm also going to look into getting the same result in Maya using nurbs curves.

Thanks a bunch MoP, look forward to giving this a try when I get to that bit of the model.

very sweet share
always much to learn from you on this board