Write-on effect...with 3d flying text?

#1

I’m familiar with doing write-on effects using 2-d elements, with gradient wipes, etc. But I need to do a write-on effect using some 3d text, that will be flying past the camera. I’m using Max 7 for this. Does anyone have some ideas, or has done an effect similar to this? Any ideas would be appreciated. THanks

#2

I have done effects like yours I think.

  1. create your 3d text in max or by importing an illustrator file.
  2. convert it to a editable poly and detach each letter as an element
  3. now animate the visibility of the first letter (rmb>properties)
  4. copy the keys to the other letters and move them about 10 frames to the right

I think this is better than creating 10 or more materials for each letter and animate the opacity. you could also animate a gradient map as a mask by shifting the colorflags, but this method is only useful if you want to have a smooth transition from letter to letter.

Last but not least the method with most control is to do it in the post.

  • do 1. + 2. and give each element a diffferent Object ID and render to an rpf file
  • in combustion you can simply extract each letter by “extract g-buffer”
  • by applying an object id selection you could also animate a wipe for each letter

I hope that helps

#3

THose are some good suggestions. What if my text is a script font, and all the letters are connected. I want an effect like someone is writing the word out in cursive. Any ideas?

#4

ok that is a special one.
draw your text with a line and craete a loft object out of it.
than you could animate the loft parameters I think.

if not there is also a plugin called “AF_Loft” which you find here.
unfornatunately it is not a free one.
hxxp://wxw.af-video.com/

#5

Thats a good idea too, i didnt think about that. I’ve been at work, working on it. Here’s what I came up with.
I rendered out a still shot of the text in its resting place. Brought it into Illustrator and using the blend tool, traced the letters, so that I had a line going from white to black, over top the text.
THen went back to Max and created a plane with the same size dimensions, applied the black and white targa file that i saved out of illiustrator. Positioned it over the resting place of the text so it matched exactly. then I just linked it to the text, so it had the same animation.

Then rendered out the full color version of the flying text, and also the Gradient map as a seperate file sequence. THen brought them both into combustion and used the gradient pass as the gradient wipe layer on the Color version. It worked pretty well, so I’ll probably stick with this version.

#6

yes thats a nice one and it´s for free. I will keep that in mind for the next production.
The good old illustrator…

#7

I’ve been doing quite a lot of this recently in MAX.

  1. create text in a script like font
  2. use the sline tool to create a spline that runs continuously through all letters. Just imagine you are actually writing the text yourself. You must make sure all you tangent point are smooth tho or the result will look jaggy.
  3. instead of a loft I’ve been using a simple box primative with the hight segments set way up like 100 or more if required.
  4. I then warp the box to the shape of the path using the path displace modifier. I think that’s what it’s called.
  5. then you can simple animate the height of the box and it should follow your path perfectly.

If the result looks jagged try upping the hight segments on the box or even adding a mesh smooth or tesselate modifier to it.

Just a method that works great for me.

Cheers

d

#8

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