Moving Text Around a Path

Author: Trent Schwarz


This tutorial covers basic text generation, and shows how to get an object (in this case - the text) to deform and follow a circular path. It is assumed that you have an understanding of the locations of toolbars (create, modify) and transform buttons in MAX (move, rotate, scale), and some understanding of 3D principles.









Creating the Circular Path


First, (if you haven't done so already), load or reset 3D Studio MAX.
In the top viewport, create a circle SHAPE.

This is a 2D shape, which you can access by going first into the CREATE toolpanel on the right, and pressing the SHAPE button at the top. Select the circle tool, and move your mouse cursor over to the TOP viewport.





Many of the 2D shapes and 3D objects in MAX are created using a click-drag method. Create the circle by LEFT mouse clicking in the middle of the viewport, hold it down and drag outwards to create the circle.

Make it around 60 units in size.



Creating the Circular Path (cont.)


You should get something in the top viewport like this.



Okay, it's not award winning stuff, but that's just the start.




Creating the Text


Next, create the text 'Flashkit.com' with a font size of 20 in the top viewport.
Text is also a shape. Although we can make it 3D at any time (in a minute, in fact) it's still in essence a 2D shape. You'll find it three below the circle tool in the SHAPE toolbar. (ref shape toolbar image above).
Once selected, the text options menu will appear



Select a suitable font (arial is bog standard boring, but will do fine for the purposes of this example), and enter '20' for the text size.
In the large white box underneath, you will see the words 'Maxtext'. Change this to 'Flashkit.com' or your name, or perhaps some sort of stupid phrase or two if you're so inclined, just keep it short for the exercise.



Creating the Text (cont.)


Creating text only requires a single left mouse click in the top viewport. Anywhere will do, we'll shift it around later.



Conforming to The Path


Once we've extruded our text, we need to get it up and boogying. We're going to add another modifier, this time getting our object to deform and bend around a path (our circle). On the modify panel, click the 'MORE' box at the top. This will bring up a huge list of additional modifiers we can choose. Under the top section - 'World Space Modifiers', you will see the 'path deform' modifier.



Highlight this, and select OK. We've now got another modifier applied, and have to change a few things to get it to work the way we want.




Select the text you've created, and apply two Modifiers - Extrude (1 unit), and WorldSpace PathDeform.
You may or may not have worked with modifiers, this is a simple exercise and will assume that you haven't, or haven't had extensive experience with modifiers.

A modifier is a command that MODIFIES our object or shape. It is set up in a cue, first to last. It is important to understand that the order in which you apply modifiers can affect the final result. Modifiers can (mostly) be altered, changed, added, removed, or their position in the stack moved up or down at any time, and most things can be animated as well.

Make sure the text creation tool is switched off by right mouse clicking in the top viewport (it's an easy thing to forget, soon you'll find you've got five or six unwanted text objects in the scene and can't figure out how the hell they got there).


Making it 3D
Now we're going to make our text object 3D. Select our text object, and then click on the modify tool panel. The modify tool panel is the tab NEXT TO the create panel.



Click on the EXTRUDE modifier. This will stretch our text into 3D space, and make it solid instead of outlined. Enter a value of 1 where it says 'amount'.
Leave the other options, their settings are fine for now.




Conforming to the Path (cont.)




Okay. First of all, we need to pick (select) the path we want the text to deform to. To do that, we press the PICK PATH button, and click on the circle. Top viewport, Perspective viewport, doesn't matter. You'll see some instant results - the text has bent around and done some weird things. To get it to behave, click the 'move to path' button at the bottom, and constrain the 'path deform axis' by selecting the X axis radio button at the very bottom of the toolbar (see the above picture if that doesn't make any sense).

Once we've done that, we need to put the text where we want it. Adjust the rotation parameters to -90 degrees. The text should now be sitting on top of the line, and is bending around, following our circle.
Animate the text around the circle from 0 - 100% over 100 frames.


Animating the Text
Okay, now we bring it to life. Press the ANIMATE BUTTON, move to frame 100, and in the PERCENT area of the path-deform modifier we've just been playing around with, enter 100. Switch off the animate button, and press the PLAY button on our controls in the bottom right.
WOO HOO! Round she goes.




Stuff to Experiment With
Also bear in mind that the original path shape doesn't have to be just a 2D shape. Try experimenting with your circle by applying an EditSpline modifier, selecting SUB OBJECT, and VERTEX in the little drop box to the right of that. Once done, you can use the move tool to move the vertexes of the circle up, down, left, right, whatever. You'll notice the text moves around to follow wherever you place those vertexes.



If you want an object to merely follow a path without bending and warping (say - a rocket ship flying on an obstacle course), you need use a different method - a controller (instead of a modifier), which we will go into in a different tutorial.