T U T O R I A L

3D-Text objects

· One of the highlights in POVLAB is the »Make 3D-fonts«-function, which you can find in the »Tools«- menu. The respective dialogbox offers some options, we now will discuss in detail.

· The first control (»Font File Name«) lets you browse your harddisk to specify a TTF-font-file (TTF: TrueType- Font). This TTF-file can be located anywhere on your PC and must not be installed under Windows.


· In the next field you can enter the text, that you want to be inserted as a 3D-object. Note that spaces are not allowed. So if you want to create a long sentence, you have to create every single word as seperate 3D-text- object. NOTE: to assure, that the words in a sentence have the same size, you should click on »cancel« when POVLAB asks you, if the 3D-text should be sized to a »unit-box«.


· The field »Object name« explains itself so we move along to the option-switches. The first one - »depth faces« - determines, if the characters are 3D- objects with front-, back-faces and a solid body (compare upper and middle text-object in the picture). The next switch, »front faces«, toggles the generation of the characters front- side.
· This switch is useful when you want to create hollow (open) characters (see string at the bottom).

· Finally we've got a switch for beveled edges. This option can improve the looks of 3D- text-objects, since beveled characters do not look as »monolithic« as characters withoud beveled edges (check out difference in the picture to the left).

· Combined with this switch is an input-field, where you can set the size of the beveled edges. By default POVLAB inserts the value [0.0120], which should fit in most cases.


Things to know about 3D-text objects

· After you have inserted all values in the text-dialog you will notice, that POVLAB has to perform quite some computations. The reason for this is, that the TTF-file has to be scanned for the curve-data of the characters. After this POVLAB generates a mesh of triangles, which is representing the string you have entered. Depending on the length of the string, this process can take a few seconds. In the next step this triangle-mesh is imported and displayed. As you will mention, 3D-text-objects do not really accelerate the display, as long as you do not set them to »cubic-display« via the »display«-button.

· Since 3D-text is inserted as a triangle-mesh, they also affect the maximum number of triangles, a scene can hold. In the current version POVLAB can handle 20.000 triangles, which is absolutley no problem to reach for a long string. Furthermore will the creation of 3D-text dramatically affect the size of the scene file; 1-2 MB are nor rarity.

· And last but not least: triangle-meshes do not have a »body« - it's just a surface, that you get. Therefore no CSG-operation can be performed with 3D-text.
Chapter B/Page 14
Mail to webmaster:
support@povlab.org

This page was last modified on: 1996-08-06 		Mail to the author of the POVLAB-Tutorial:
lepschi@source.co.at