Clone alignment on Text Spline

[Brian Jones]

the ‘closed loop’ letters (the ones with holes – O and D) are the problems, because they both contain two segments to the spline making them up the normals are likely backward. Try Reverse Sequence on the splines for those letters.

[Ryan Kehn]

Brian,

Thanks for the reply, I haven’t been able to get back to that project for the last couple of days. I tried what you suggested, but no dice. All reverse sequence did was change the directio in which the object was cloned, but it’s still upside down. Also, it’s not just the closed loop letters, it’s happening to the T as well.

I was hoping to keep this as procedural as possible. The screenshot I sent you had everything mapped to the original text object spline (hadn’t made the spline editable yet) and used a mograph selection to blank out clones in the “holes” of text. It’s not a huge problem to just duplicate the spline and make editable if need be, but right now, netiher way is working correctly:/

Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Ryan Kehn
Senior Designer
VWBSN

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Try duplicating the text spline, offsetting it in Z, and using it as a rail spline in the cloner.

[Brian Jones]

Definitely, I’ve just been doing some simple tests with a cloned cone so I can see clearly which direction they point when cloned to a text spline. The direction they point on each letter segment depends on the font used, so the internal construction of the each font is going to dictate the direction the clones point. Making it work is much easier with a rail spline than trying to take the individual bits apart.