- [Instructor] Modeling 3D typography is easy
using the TextPlus primitive.
You'll find it in the Create panel
under Standard Primitives, TextPlus.
Click on that and then click and drag
in the front viewport here,
and you're initially drawing out a region
within which the text will wrap.
Release the mouse,
and then right-click to exit out of TextPlus,
and we can frame everything
by clicking on Zoom Extents All Selected.
Let's now go to the Modify panel,
and we see the region values here in the Layout rollout.
If we reduce the width, for example,
we'll constrain the type to a narrow column.
If you want the type to act
just like a normal 3ds Max object,
then you can just choose the Type of Point,
switch that over to Point,
and now the text will be centered
on the object's pivot point,
and there's no enclosing region.
All right, I'll Zoom Extents All Selected once again.
Let's look at the basic text parameters.
First, I'll just turn off the geometry for a second.
We can go down here into the Geometry rollout
and disable the check box to Generate Geometry.
That means we won't have any polygons.
We're left with just the type outlines or splines.
Now let's adjust some of the basic type parameters.
Up here in the Parameters rollout,
we can have the content of the type
and also the font or typeface and variation.
We'll need to select whatever text we wish to change
before we make the changes.
I'll click to select all of this
and then set the typeface under Font to Arial Black.
Now, some of this is in italics.
If I don't want that, I'll just select those characters
and then turn off the italic button.
And now everything is in Arial Black and no italics.
And of course, we can change the content
of our type or text.
We can go back up here, select all that,
and maybe type in some thing else like kinetECO,
and that'll take effect pretty instantly.
And I can go ahead and deselect that by clicking off of it.
And now we've got kind of a basic logo.
Additionally, we can adjust the global parameters,
which'll affect all the characters equally,
such as the size, which is the global scale of all the type.
We've got tracking, which is the spacing between letters,
the leading, which is the spacing between baselines,
and we can also get a faux condensed or extended effect
by adjusting the H and V scale parameters here.
If I want to reset everything,
I can just click on the Reset Parameters button.
I get a pop-up dialogue box,
from which I can choose what I want to reset.
I'll just choose to select everything here
and reset all of the parameters,
both global and per character, and click reset.
And that sends it back to basically default parameters.
Now let's re-enable Generate Geometry
down here in the Geometry rollout,
and we need to give it some non-zero extrude amount.
Usually, we want a negative extrude amount
so that the pivot point of the object is at its front.
So I can click and drag on that extrude spinner
and give that a negative value.
And now I've got a straight right angle extrusion.
So we can see this a bit better,
let's turn on edged faces in the perspective view.
I'll right-click in that view and press F4
and get in really close on one of these corners
with Control + Alt + Middle Mouse,
and maybe pan with Middle Mouse.
So we've got a straight right angle extrusion here.
There's no bevel yet.
We'll need to enable that.
So here we go.
Beveling, turn on Apply Bevel,
and we get a nice default chamfer effect.
We've got some options here in this little pull-down list.
We can choose a different effect.
We can maybe set this to a convex chamfer,
and that's actually going to give us a rounded fillet.
Now, there's no effect on the back of the characters.
We can see that.
If we Dolly back out again
and orbit with Alt + Middle Mouse, pan with Middle Mouse,
we can see that there is something back there,
but we don't have any bevel or fillet there.
And to enable that, we would want a bevel on the backside,
and that's done by going into these advanced parameters.
We scroll down here, open up Show Advanced Parameters.
And then within here,
we have the ability to change the end capping.
So let's set the End Cap to Bevel Cap,
and now we've got that nice, rounded effect
on both the front and the back.
We can have some fun with some of these parameters,
such as up here, we got Bevel Push.
I'll get in real close on that.
We can see this better.
So I can increase or decrease this bevel push amount
to get different effects.
With a positive value,
I get this pretty interesting outline effect.
If I give it a negative bevel push,
it's equivalent to doing a concave bevel,
as we can see here.
Well, I actually just want a basic chamfer effect.
So I'll set my bevel push back to zero,
and I can also set the Bevel Type up here to just linear.
Those things actually accomplish the same
in terms of the shape,
but the linear effect will remove
any of the segmentation there.
Now, if you look closely, some of these characters
are actually crashing into each other,
and we can adjust that with the tracking.
We can also adjust it with the outline.
So just like in a bevel modifier,
we can adjust the outline or the thickness
of each one of these characters,
and we have an Outline Offset parameter.
We can bring that down just a little bit.
We bring it down too much,
we'll start to see our model actually start to corrupt.
So let's just set the outline offset to -0.5 centimeters,
and that'll be enough to prevent
these little character edges from crashing into one another.
All right, so that's the essentials
of modeling 3D type with TextPlus.
In the following movie,
we'll fine-tune the transforms of individual characters
for advanced typographic effects
and also adjust the level of detail.