Bending The Text

[Jim Scott]

Hi Kedar,

If you want to fade in the opacity there are a few ways to do that. One would be to add a display tag to the text (Tags > Cinema 4D Tags > Display), check the “Use” check box for Visibility and set keyframes for 0% and 100%. Another would be to add a Transparency channel to the text’s material and keyframe Brightness from 100% to 0% (this would remove transparency).

The title of your post was “Bending The Text.” Did you have a question about that as well? If so, look into using deformers.

[Kedar Raval]

Yes I actually had that too, I was looking if I could bend the text in the Z direction, like from the front view it would have a U shape, I tried using the bend deformer but somehow I couldn’t do it. Maybe I haven’t explored it much and for the opacity, it helped but I was looking on how could I give the text a fade in effect from left to right.

[Brian Jones]

if you use a Bend it will distort the letters (which could be what you want) – if you want no distortion on the letters, just want them following a curve use a spline to describe the curve and use either 1. MoText or 2. put your text in a Fracture then use a Spline Effector to stick the text to the spline

Another way to do opacity would be a black/white gradient in the Alpha channel… how do you want the text to fade in? One letter at a time or across multiple letters?

[Steve Bentley]

If you are using the Bend deformer, make sure to try the “Keep Y axis length” button in the attributes panel. The Bend deformer defaults this to off and tends to stretch the objects along the curve, so the text might take on an Extended Bold kind of look that you may not want. Clicking the button will snap the size back to its original length along the curve.