Subtitles of the Movie

I mentioned before that you can create simple models within Animator. You can make 3D text from any font you have installed in your computer. Let's take a look at how to do this. Go up to the Menu Bar and click on Object, and then down to Add 3D Text. You'll see an Alert dialog informing you that Animator is reading the fonts from your Font Library. If you have a lot of fonts installed on your computer this may take several seconds. Once the fonts are read a new Window appears. This is where you type in the text you want to become a 3D model. I'm just going to type in an S and then I'll go down to the popup menu here and select the font I want to use. Notice that the Font Style changed when I changed it to a different font. Click OK, and a new dialog appears. This is where you define the 3D-ness of your text. Let's look down here to the Geometry fields. We already know what the Smooth Angle is, and the default 40 degrees is fine. Extrusion Size simply means how thick we want our text to be. Remember, thickness or depth is measured along our third dimension, or distance along the Z-axis. Also in Geometry is the Max Angle. This tells Animator how smooth you want the text to be by sampling the curves that make up the text shape. The larger the number the bigger the sampling area, and therefore the cruder the shape will be. Let's set this to 100. I'm also going to click on a radio button here to Group Whole Characters, then click OK. Animator asks me to save the model, I'll just overwrite this one, and now we have our 3D S in our scene. But our S looks pretty rough with its shape made up of all these hard angles. I'm going to zoom in a little closer in our Front View. This probably isn't good enough for any close-up animation. Let's re-do the 3D Text. I'll move this one over, go back up to the Menu Bar, Object, Add 3D Text, back into our Options, and this time I'm going to change the Max Angle to 10. Click OK, Save it As a New Model. Now let's compare the two models we made. Our new S looks smoother and usable. I'm going to switch the Wireframe View and you can see that our new model has a much denser mesh, and that's why the outline is smoother. I'm going to delete these models and create a new one, this time with Bevels. Object, 3D Text, and here are the Bevel Options. The Bevel Size is the width of the bevel in relation to the rest of the 3D text. I recommend making it a fraction of your extrude size and the Bevel Angle is the angle of the bevel's cut. Let's enter 5 into the Bevel Size and leave the Bevel Angle at 45 degrees, click OK. Save it again, as a new model, and here's our new model with a bevel. Let's change the Front View back to Phong Shaded. Bevels are great for catching highlights and glints which add a lot to the look of your animation. I'm going to move this model over and do it again. Object, 3D Text, and this time we're going to add a Fillet value of 5 and see what that does. OK, our new model has a rounded bevel. Let's zoom out here in the Side View and move this new model back so we can compare. So now we have a version of our S with a rounded bevel, so if you want this look for your text enter a Fillet value. If you want a straight cut to your bevel, like this first one, leave the Fillet value at zero. Let's get rid of these two models, and once more back up into the 3D Text. This time in our Text Options I'll turn on the Grouping to be Similar Sides, and I'll give it a Back Bevel. Now, we'll click OK. Now we have our 3D Text broken up into different model groups: Faces, Extrusions, and Bevels. I'll turn them on one by one. Faces; the Extrusion; and the Bevels. This grouping method lets you texture the different pieces of your text separately, and of course, the default Colors Animator signs can be changed at any time.