How To Add Text In Blender

In this article we will take a deep swoop into the text object, what options and features we have as well as some common 3D effects that we may want to use our text for in Blender.

To create 3D text, go to the add card in the 3D viewport and cull text. Press tab, erase the text and type what you want. Next, go to the geometry section in the object data tab and increment the extrude value. Printing tab to go to object manner and right click and choose catechumen to mesh.

Let's continue to explore.

Introduction to text in Blender

When we talk about text in Blender, we may refer to multiple things.

We may refer to text in Blenders text editor where we write scripts. It tin can also be text for the video sequence editor in the form of text on screen or mayhap subtitles just to name a few examples.

Here, we focus on the text object, as role of our 3D scene. Whenever I refer to text, it is in the context of the text object if nothing else is mentioned.

We volition start with some nuts.

How to add together or alter text in Blender

To add a text object, we press Shift+A in the 3D viewport and choose text. To alter the text we and then press Tab to go into edit mode. We can now erase the default text and write annihilation nosotros desire.

Something important to understand, is that text objects are based on bend objects. Therefore, many settings are inherited from curve objects. Each letter is made up of 1 or more than curves. But keep this in heed as we keep to learn more about text.

We but have 2 modes available with a text object. Object mode and edit mode. In object mode we take our regular transformations available. Motion, rotate and calibration. We can use these transformations to make basic changes.

Note though that just like with whatsoever other kind of object, if we scale or rotate we may have to use the scale and rotation. This is if our tools and modifiers don't work every bit expected.

Related article: How and why do we use scale in Blender?

When a text object is scaled, applying the scale will readjust the text size to whatever size that fits the scale of the object. Any compatible scaling will exist lost and the font will regain its default ratio.

We can also modify the text size directly. Find the object data properties in the properties panel, represented by a light-green lower instance "a" icon. Hither you will observe the text settings.

In the font department we will find the transform subsection. The get-go belongings here is the size. This is the value Blender will adjust after we apply a scaled text object.

In this department we too have a shear slider to angle the letters.

Writing text in edit mode

When we press tab and enter edit manner, creating text is just like any other text based application. We can write and move the cursor with the arrow keys.

To select text, we tin can hold shift while pressing the arrow keys to select more letters forrard or backwards.

While in edit mode nosotros too get 4 extra buttons in the font section.

Assuming
Italic
Underline
Minor caps

To utilise any of these features on our text, we first need to select the text in edit way. Hold shift and an pointer fundamental to select.

But clicking any of these buttons, even with selected text, will have no upshot on the text though. This is because by default, the assuming and italic fonts are the same equally the regular.

How fonts work in Blender

Yous take probably already seen where we modify the font, right in the font section. In that location are iv input widgets.

Regular
Bold
Italic
Bold & Italic

By default, all is set to Bfont, Blenders default font. This is why nothing happens when we tried to make role of our text bold or italic.

Whenever we change a font from regular to assuming, italic or both, we actually change font for the selected portion of the text. Near fonts we apply have multiple versions to account for these different styles.

In Blender, we have to scan for these fonts and input them for each text object. This besides ways that nosotros can input any font we desire for the italic or bold version. So if we employ multiple fonts in the same text object and know that we don't need a bold or italic version, we can just insert any font nosotros want and use bold and italic to switch betwixt them.

Press the folder icon in either of the font slots and scan for your font file. You tin can also click the "F" to choose whatever font that is already loaded into the blend file.

On Windows, the browser will automatically open to "c:\windows\fonts". You lot can change this folder in the preferences. Go to "Edit→Preferences" and find the "file path" section. At the summit is the font binder setting.

While using the browser, if you know the name of a font you can search for it in the tiptop right corner. Searching for a font will filter the view in existent-time and generally, you will find all versions bachelor with slightly unlike names. A trailing "B" frequently represents the bold version and a abaft "I" the italic.

I will input the Arial font into the assuming slot to test. Nevertheless, the buttons to change style all the same don't work. Currently, there seems to be a bug in Blender where pressing these buttons don't work. But if you are still having bug with the current Blender version as you read this, you can employ the shortcut keys.

Ctrl+B, Bold
Ctrl+I, Italic
Ctrl+U, Underline
Ctrl+P, Small caps

You tin can change these shortcuts by going into Edit→Preferences and find keymap. Select name and search for "toggle manner" and you will filter to only these four keymaps.

The underline and minor caps styles don't accept defended fonts. These are just manner changes. In the transform subsection we also find three related settings. The underline position will raise or lower the underline while underline thickness, increases or decrease the thickness.

The small caps calibration changes the size of text with this consequence. We can alter the slider from 0 to i, simply any number can be typed in. Even negative.

Allow's move on to explore the Paragraph section. Here nosotros will find settings for text alignment. The alignment is in relation to the object origin, and we tin can change both the horizontal and vertical alignment.

In the spacing subsection we have options to adjust spacing between messages, words and lines. There is also an outset for Ten and Y. The offsets here probably have more than to do with alignment than spacing since it merely moves the text in these directions.

Next we take the Text boxes section. For longer texts we can use this to layout our text into different boxes. Text that is and then long that it spans multiple boxes will overflow into the next box.

In edit style we can encounter an outline of each box making it a chip easier to understand.

The overflow setting will decide what happens to text that does not fit in the boxes. We can take it overflow in the vertical direction of the last box, truncate it, just removing text or size the text to fit inside.

How to make 3D text in Blender

So far, all our text is still 2D. To convert our text into 3D there are 2 sections in the object data backdrop that we need. The shape section and the geometry section.

The easiest way to become started is to go direct to the geometry department and increase the extrude slider. As we increase the slider, geometry volition be added equally in the local positive and negative Z direction of the text.

You may think that the kickoff slider will first the text in the Z direction but this is non the case. Instead, it is start in the local X and Y direction for each letter. Be careful with this setting as it may rapidly create overlapping geometry.

Taper

The taper is a bit odd. My agreement of tapering is that nosotros take one bend, add together geometry to it and apply some other curve to tell the thickness along the first curve.

Blenders text object is based on curves behind the scenes, just we can't decide where each curve that make up a letter start or end. Therefore, each curve making up the letter gets a taper from start to cease according to the taper object. Just we tin can't control the outcome very much.

If yous desire some cartoon looking text, try it out. In all other cases, I can't find a use for this currently. But it helps to deepen the agreement of how letters are built, and that is interesting I think.

Bevel

The bevel settings are pretty direct frontward. The depth parameter decides the thickness of our bevel. Careful here, it is piece of cake to go overlapping geometry with too high values.

The resolution tells Blender how many loop cuts to put along each bevel, making it smoother with college numbers. Only going beyond five or half dozen is probably overkill.

Next we have an object slot. This takes a curve object as input. We can use this to shape the profile of the bevel. Just not in the way you might remember. This is an example of what we tin create with a bevel object and a closed curve.

You can switch the curve object from cyclic to non-circadian with Alt+C in edit mode.

In this case we also take to get to the shape section and modify the fill style to none.

In this case when we apply information technology together with a curve object we have to exist careful with artifacts though. This can be pretty hard to deal with depending on the shape and scenario.

Shape

In the shape department nosotros also have the resolution setting. The resolution preview u parameter will increase the amount of geometry in the messages. For instance this is a text with a resolution of 2 compared to a resolution of 12.

We can change the return U resolution, but with a value of 0 it will inherit the resolution from the preview.

The fast editing will hide the text in edit way in order to speed up the typing experience. This is generally non needed in my experience.

Nosotros already touched on the make full style. It essentially decides if we want to fill up the forepart, back, both or no office of the surface. In the curve example to a higher place we choose to merely permit the edges remain, and so we created the geometry through the bevel lonely.

Catechumen text to mesh object

To catechumen a text object to mesh we select the text object in object mode, right click and choose Convert to mesh.

This is a mutual do because most times nosotros want to take control over the mesh. A few examples are that we may want to use a dissimilar set of modifiers that isn't available for text object. We may as well desire to simulate the text. For instance, have the messages fall in a pile with rigid body simulation.

Ofttimes, the best style to create and modify the text may be to merely write it in a text object, then immediately converting it to mesh just because of the large variety of tools and precise control nosotros become access to.

For example, we tin can use the bevel modifier and get much more than control compared to the bevel characteristic on the text object.

Earlier we can start to utilize all mesh tools, nosotros generally have to create a better topology on our text.

How to create even mesh for a converted text object

In my article on 30 Blender modeling tools I suggested a combination of "adorn faces" followed by a "tris to quads" operation. You can find it in this article.

Related content: More than xxx Blender modeling tools explained

This is a fairly quick fashion to get a more fifty-fifty geometry in many cases without increasing the amount of geometry. However, if this does not piece of work in our case. For instance, we could have a very circuitous font to work with. We may try another method. Most likely remeshing or transmission retopology. Nosotros will expect into remeshing here since information technology will be the way to become in almost always case, where the higher up does not work.

In Blender, we take ii ways of remeshing. There is a remesh modifier and the remesh tools nosotros observe in the object data tab.

In this case I find the remesh modifier easier to work. That is considering nosotros get much meliorate feedback on our changes, and so we will look into that.

Keep in mind that in order for this method to work we demand some depth to our text. We can create it with the extrude setting while our object is nonetheless a text object. Merely if nosotros already converted we tin can utilise the extrude tool in edit mode or add a solidify modifier higher up the remesh in the modifier stack.

Alter the mode to sharp and deselect remove disconnected pieces. In my case an Octree depth of six worked well and and so I adapt the scale.

Here is an example where I breathing the calibration value between 0.2 and 0.990.

From here we take a much better starting point. Simply think to not add more geometry than you demand for your text to be fifty-fifty. If you lot need denser geometry you tin can always add a subdivision surface modifier ready to either simple, or catmull-clark if you lot desire the curvature.

Blender text effects

At that place is an endless variation of text effects and animations that we can create in Blender. I will show a few simpler ones here that you can use to go your mind spinning.

When doing this we are quite dependent on modifiers and if you are unfamiliar with them you can read more most them here:

Related content: How modifiers work in Blender, an overview

You tin can too learn some of the most mutual modifiers here:

Related content: Top 10 Blender modifiers and how they work

Blocks

Let's kickoff by looking at some cake text. Hither is an example:

We tin can achieve this style with a few modifiers.

We will beginning with an object that has some thickness and is converted to a mesh object. Then we volition start by calculation modifiers to this object. First nosotros add together the remesh modifier to get a workable mesh as described above.

Later on that nosotros add a bevel modifier. Brand sure that clamp overlap is deselected. At this point information technology does non matter if our topology is a flake overlapping. I changed the width to almost 0.05 and set the limit method to "bending".

Next I add another remesh. This time I set information technology to the blocks method. In my case an octree depth of 8 and a scale of 0.35 worked well.

Boolean

Another type of result we can create is boolean. This is when we make a text cleave into another object. This is the example:

Every bit you can meet I used the block text from the example above to cleave into a cube object. Another fairly simple just common effect.

In this case we intersect the text with the cube. So we add a boolean modifier set to difference to the cube object. In my base I used the bool tool addition to automatically change the draw mode of the text to bounding box. This allow me to see the effect.

Find out more near add-ons here.

Related content: xxx Blender addons (install, manage, gratuitous and paid)

You tin change the draw mode manually if yous get to the object backdrop tab in the backdrop panel. That is the yellow icon. Go to viewport display and find "brandish as" and ready information technology to bounds.

Next I added a bevel modifier to go some improve lighting. I likewise had to check "harden normals" on the bevel modifier and actuate auto smooth in the object data properties.

Follow curve

To have an object follow a curve we don't demand to catechumen the text to mesh.

Add together a curve with the origin exactly on acme of your text objects origin.
- You tin select the text object, printing Shift+South and set cursor to selection, this mode the curve will be added to the exact aforementioned origin every bit the text object.
Go into edit manner for the curve and adjust it to your liking
Go to object mode and select your text object.
Become to the font department and find "text on curve", select your bend object here.
You may have to adjust your spacing. Go to the Paragraph department and notice the Spacing subsection. Here you volition see Character, Word and line spacing. You likely have to suit character spacing.

Add text to a surface of another object

The last effect we volition look at is how we can take a text and projection information technology onto the surface of another object. Here is the instance.

To create this consequence, I created a flat text object and converted it to mesh. Then I used the "beautify faces" and "tris to quad" tools in edit style to even out the geometry.

Next I positioned the text in front of the sphere so that It covered the area I wanted the text to be from an orthographic view.

And then I added a shrinkwrap modifier to the text and set the sphere every bit the target. And so I set the mode to "target normal projection".

From hither we add a solidify modifier and increase the depth of the text.

Annotation that the text is prone to getting skewed a bit when projected on a sphere. If you have a very long text to project such as in my instance, the start and end will be visibly smaller when viewed from certain angles.

Another way to practice this is to accept a cord of edges from the sphere and copy those to its own object and convert it to a curve. And so use that as a curve object for the text to follow. Information technology is a bit more involved though.

Create your own font in Blender

Nosotros tin create our own font in Blender, or at least kind of. The font we create won't be usable in another application. There are other workflows to reach that. But if we want to type out our ain objects we tin do that.

Create a text object and get to the text object backdrop console. Observe the font section and expand the transform subsection.

Here yous will notice a setting chosen "object font". Hither you tin type the proper name of your font. I will go with "font-".

Create a new mesh object and telephone call it "font-a".

Select your text object again, get to the object data properties and notice the instancing section. Hither, select verts and deselect display instancer.

At present enter edit mode and type "a". Note how your object is displayed instead of the letter "A". Nosotros tin can proceed to create the whole alphabet.

If you go along the display instancer setting on, you will get both the letter from the font, and your object. This way we can create kind of an extension to the letters.

If the objects yous create are too big, you can increase the spacing between letters. Become to the object information properties and find the paragraph department. In the spacing subsection you will find "character spacing". Increase it to infinite the objects farther apart.

Final thoughts

By at present you should accept a solid agreement of how to utilise text objects in Blender. A central to mixing text and 3D is to take a good topology equally nosotros convert text to mesh. Only agreement how the text object works and what different tools nosotros have available as we move from text object to mesh object is too central.

Thanks for your time.