Hello MoI people,

is there a known technique to make a text to follow a curve ? I vaguely remember something but the forum search doesn't find anything relevant.

Thanks!

Hi Iwan,

There's no way that I know In MOI.

You can easily do it in other apps though,

For example you could download the Xara trial, draw a curve (or import a ai from MOI), select the text tool, place mouse over curve, click and type.
Export to AI then open with MOI, take a cup of tea.

Regards,

Marc

Hi Iwan, no there is not currently any way to do it directly inside of MoI, I mean other than moving and rotating letters around individually.

- Michael

Would it be possible to (probably a v3 thing, I'm assuming) extend the "align" tool? I'm imagining something that would take a pre-defined set of objects (like, say, text, or anything else, really) and lay them out in an array-like manner. Even if it was restricted to linear arrays only (as the 2d/3d cases could become a bit of a pain), this could be kind of handy -- set a group of objects and an initial direction (to determine the ordering of the objects), and then pick either a linear layout, a spiral, a path... maybe have an option to maintain either the relative or absolute spacing, or evenly distribute them, and to either maintain their orientation or rotate them to be normal to the path, based on their current orientation along the base line. I'm not sure if this would be too special purpose or not, but I can see this being something I'd use in other cases as well -- text on a path isn't something I do that often, but being able rearrange things quickly in complex ways is really nice, in terms of saving a lot of slow manual work.

Another variant that might be nice, along these lines (less related to text, now) is a "copy over selected" command -- select a source object, and then a bunch of targets -- possible points, but ideally just generic objects, and then the selected objects are replaced with the source. Finding the actual target point might be too problematic, but I could see it being sufficiently useful even if you just, say, centered the bounding boxes on each other. Then again, most of the uses for this would be replaced by having live clones of an object, instead of just deep copies, so maybe getting that working is a better use of time.

/Ella

Hi Ella - for the first one there is something similar to that which I set up back in Rhino called "Flow along curve".

The way it works is that you pick 2 curves, a "source backbone" curve, and then a "target backbone" curve. Then it will basically for every point in the object it will find the closest point on the source backbone curve, and make note of what percentage along the curve that is, and then go to the same percentage along the target backbone to place it in the new position.

I'd like to set up something for that in MoI as well when I get a chance to work on deformation type tools. I'm not quite sure exactly when that will happen though. Also it is pretty difficult to get this kind of morphing to work on solids without having joined edges between trimmed surfaces pull apart... The difficulty in that particular area is one reason why I have not really tried to get into those kinds of deformation tools yet.


For that second one, for points as the copy target I think that Petr wrote a custom command that can do that for you in MoI now, check out his CopyToPoints command:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#CopyToPoints
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=653.1

- Michael

Is there a reason "Array" doesnt do this? Can you illustrate a bit more?

Hi Burr - Array does something like that if you want to replicate one object along the curve, so your end result is many copies of the same object at different orientations.

But for example with text you don't want to repeat one object over and over again, because you want to use different letters.

I mean it can work for text if all you want is text that says: "AAAAAAAAAAAAA" for example.. :)

If you want your text to say something like "This is some text", then that won't work with Array because that is not just replicating one object over the curve, that involves placing the first letter "T" at the beginning, then placing the second letter "h", then placing the third letter, etc...

Does that make sense?

That why it would be a separate tool to deform an existing block of objects, rather than replicate a single object which is what all the various array tools are focused on doing.

But probably I'll be able to add in an option specifically for Text for doing it along a curve sometime before a general deformation type tool would be ready.

- Michael

And like this?

Ok, yeah, flow along curve sounds about right, and yes, it makes sense that it'd be a bit less trivial; it's not a real priority, personally.

/Ella

I wrote my question before you answered.

Frenchy did what I was thinking but I can see where a different tool would be more powerful.

Thanks.

Hi Pilou,

> And like this?

Well, what you show there is "Text that is cut by a curve".

Text that "follows a curve" is different, like this:



- Michael

Yes it's is the other side of the proposition :)

See this new Sketchup plug ;) http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=18210&p=147414#p147414
(2 video to see : Of course it is not nurbs ; so maybe more easy to conceptualize ;)

That's it. Another situation is for example the text rim on a lens, it's projected a different way but the idea is the same. Would be a great tool anyway as I usually cut all texts/icons in the object rather than making textures.