I'm trying to create an embossed text effect or conversely a sunken text effect on the surface of a metal sphere.

My approach so far has been to create the text at a certain thickness, snap the text to the quad point of the sphere so that most of the text is "sunken" into the sphere, then do a boolean intersect between sphere and text so that I'm left with a piece of text the surface of which is curved in such a way that conforms exactly to the surface of a sphere of that size.

Then I adjust the height of the text relative to the sphere and do a boolean union (for embossed) or a subtract (for sunken) and fillet the result to get rounded edges. It seems to work, but I can't help feeling it's a bit clunky and long-winded. Is there a better way?

Cheers
Dan

Hi Dan,

Just a slightly different approach.

Following your path, you could drop a step by boolean out the text from a sphere (for sunken text), then add a second sphere inside the first, that would make the depth/ curve on depth correct easily.



For extruded text, then create text + a sphere that is the size of the finished sphere+size of extruded text, then use boolean isec to create the curved text, then add that text to a sphere of correct size(for the finished sphere).







- Steve

Hi Dan, yeah I think the way Steve describes above about creating 2 spheres will be easier. You then use the 2nd sphere to cut the excess parts of the text. That way you don't have to worry about moving the text around, it just gets its ends cut off with another sphere.

You can either draw in the second sphere or use Construct > Offset to create it at a given thickness away from the main sphere.

- Michael

Hah, thanks guys, just the kind of tips I was looking for, that approach does sound like a time saver.
Having said that, I can see now why "text on a curve" is on the wish list.

Dan

I use a little different technique.. I don't think it's any quicker, but, anyway...

Create a sphere, copy it, hide it, paste the copy.
Create curves for the text.

Project curves to the sphere's surface and trim surface with the text curves,
removing all but the trimmed out surfaces of the letters.

Extrude the text surfaces (from BOTH sides, cap ends) to the desired thickness.

Un-hide the original sphere and boolean add or subtract the extruded text accordingly.

It also works for shapes other than spheres.

Jesse