Placing Text Around a Sphere

This tutorial requires the user to have a basic knowledge of the interface for trueSpace 3. I beleive that these steps will work in tS2 as well. I have been told that tS1 doesn't have all of these tools.

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Step 1

Make a sphere and put some text in front of it.

 

Step 2

Choose the  "Move Down in Hierarchy" icon (in the "Navigation Group") to allow you to isolate each letter. Chose the  "Unglue" icon (in the "Edit Group") on each letter to detach it from the word.

 

Step 3

Choose the "Show Axes" icon (in the "Utilities Group") to display the axis of the first letter.  You will notice that the axis is at the lower left of the letter.

 

Step 4

Select the  "Move Axes to Center of Object" icon to move the letter's axis to a more manageable position then it was born with.

 

Step 5

Choose  "Normalize Rotation" to align the axis to the XYZ coordinates of tS's world.

 

Step 6

Right click on the  "Object Tool" (the arrow in the "Navigation Group") to display the  "Object Info" dialog box.
Input a location value for the "X" field that approximates the location of the center of your sphere.

 

Step 7

Choose "Show Axes" button again to hide the letter's axis.

 

Step 8

Repeat steps 3 - 7 for each letter.

 

Step 9

Select the first letter and input an location value in the "Y" field of the "Object Info" box that matches the "Y" location of your sphere. The letter will move over to overlap some of your other letters, don't panic.

 

Step 10

Using the "Object Info" box again, enter a "Z" rotation value that moves your letter to a nice position around the sphere (this is subjective and probably will need to be tweaked for manual kerning later).

 

Step 11

Repeat steps 9 & 10 for each letter.

 

Step 12

Tweak rotation values until spacing is nice.

 

Step 13

Apply some textures and render it!!!

 

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Last Modified February 11, 2014 Return to Lunadude