how to “mask” 3D objects

[Zach Gunter]

do you have sketch and toon? if you do here is what you do

1. In your Materials make a Sketch material (
2. Make a text spline of your text
2a. In the text attributes under object, you’ll see separate letters, click it.
2b. Make and copy enough extrude NURBS as your letters and drop each letter on each extrude

3. Double click on your Sketch Material ( In main on control level make it advanced)
3a. Make your Material Lines how you want,(pen, Pencil, etc)
3b. go down to the animate option and click draw( and set up how you want in to draw in stroke order.
3c. On draw speed make your option End Frame

with me so far……

4. Now…Copy that sketch material the number of letter you have
4a. Drop a sketch material on each of the extruded NURBS in sequence.

(In your Materials)
5. Double Click on your first Material, in animate, set your beginning and end frame
5a. double click on your second material, in animate, set your start frame to 20
5b. ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” , set your start frame to 40

6. Do a preview render and enjoy.

[Zach Gunter]

here are two other ways, if you don’t have sketch and toon.

1. Make a quicktime of your Animation in After Effects.
1a. open C4d, make new material, in color on texture, to the right of texture you see the little dots.
1b. click the dots and select your video
1c. make a shape, plane, or whatever, and drop your material on that.
1d. if you want the text only, go back into your material, under alpha, select your quicktime again.

This one is harder, and more time consuming
2. Make a text spline and make a extrude nurb
2a. click c to make it editable
2b. go to object face mode. it’s on the left of you screen the 4 squares with 3 dots on them click it
2c. at the bottom of your screen, right below your timeline there is a grid of 9 dots. click it
2d. now you can key frame the letter building itself.

[Randy Johnson]

This one can be done a few more ways too…depending on how you made the text and how detailed it needs to be…
-first I would try using a text spline in a sweep nurbs and keyframing the “end growth” in the attributes.
This works well with some fonts but not all.

Or
the next thing I would try is animating the Alpha channel in the texture…this is not so bad with square fonts but can be boring to do since you are playing with a gradiant and it is very dependent on the texture…ect.

There are more ways but these are the two i would try first.

/Randy

[Josh Crews]

I’m glad I found this post. I’ve been researching crazy for ways to animate text like this.
Randy, you’re a genius. Animate the gradient on the alpha channel. Why didn’t I think of that?
Thank you.