Doc:Manual/Modelling/Text

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[edit] Text

[edit] Description

Text is considered a special Curve type that is completely separate from any of the other Curve types. Not only does the Font system have its own built-in font but it can use external fonts too, including PostScript Type 1, OpenType and TrueType fonts.

[edit] Options

Creating a Text object is simple, use Add → Text. Once the text is created you are placed in Edit mode with the word “Text” inserted as a default placeholder, see (Created text). The Black block is the cursor.

[edit] Examples

(Text Examples) shows some examples of various fonts in action including the “blue” font that has been applied to a curve path.

[edit] Hints

A maximum of 50000 characters is allowed per text object, however, be forewarned that the more characters a single text object has, the slower the object will respond interactively.

[edit] Editing Text

[edit] Description

Editing Text is similar to using a standard text editor but is not as full featured and is slightly different.

[edit] Options

Exit Edit mode

⇆ Tab doesn’t insert a tab character in the text, but rather enters and exits Edit mode, as with other object types.

Copy

To copy text to the buffer use CtrlC.

Cut and Copy

To cut and copy text to the buffer use CtrlX.

Paste

To paste text from the buffer use CtrlV.

Delete all text

To completely erase or delete all text use Ctrl← Backspace.

Home/End

Home and End move the cursor to the beginning and end of a line respectively.

Next/Previous word

To move the cursor on a word’s boundary use Ctrl← or Ctrl→.

The text buffer does not communicate with the desktop. It only works from within Blender. To insert text from outside Blender see Inserting text.

Selecting text consists of holding down the ⇧ Shift while using the Arrow keys (→/↓/←/↑) or Page Up / Page Down keys. The selection is remembered even in Object mode.

[edit] Inserting Text

You can insert text in three different ways: from the internal text buffer (Editing Text), with the “Lorem” button (used to insert at current position a piece of “Lorem Ipsum” Latin text – yes, the same thing used by web developers!), or from a text file.

To load text from a text file click the Insert Text button on the Font panel. This will bring up a File Browser window for navigating to a valid UTF-8 file. As usual, be careful that the file doesn’t have too many characters as interactive response will slow down.

[edit] Changing Fonts

[edit] Description

Blender comes with a built-in font by default and is displayed in the drop-down list next to the Load button on the Font panel. The built-in font is always present and shows in this list as “<builtin>”.

[edit] Options

To use a different Font you need to load it first by clicking the Load button in the Font panel and navigating to a valid font. The File Browser window will highlight any valid fonts by placing a small purplish rectangle next to each valid entry as shown in (Loading a Type 1 font file). The white circle highlights an example of a valid font.

Unix note Fonts are typically located under /usr/lib/fonts, or some variant like /usr/lib/X11/fonts, but not always. They may be in other locations as well, such as /usr/share/local or /usr/local/share, and possibly related sub-trees.

If you select a font that Blender can’t understand, you will get the error “Not a valid font”.

A separate font is required for each style. For example, you will need to load an Italics font in order to make characters or words italic. Once the font is loaded you can apply that font “Style” to the selected characters or the whole object. In all, you would need to load a minimum of four different types of fonts to represent each style (Normal, Italics, Bold, Bold-Italics).

[edit] Typography

[edit] Description

Blender has a number of typographic controls for changing the style and layout of text.

[edit] Options

[edit] Bold, Italics and Underline

Italics

Toggled with CtrlI, font set with the I button.

Bold

Toggled with CtrlB, font set with the B button.

Underline

Toggled with CtrlU or by using the U button.

Blender’s B and I buttons don’t work the same way as other applications. They serve as placeholders for you to load up certain fonts manually, which get applied when you use CtrlB or CtrlI when editing text.

To apply the Bold/Italics/Underline attribute to a set of characters you either turn on Bold/Italics/Underline prior to typing characters, or highlight first and then toggle Bold/Italics/Underline with a hotkey. Bold/Italics are applied based on a loaded font. For example, some characters may have one font representing normal characters and the <builtin> font representing Bold; see (Bold text).

Basically each font style is represented by a loaded font. One font may represents Bold while another font represents Italics (i.e. one font per style).

[edit] Alignment

Left

Aligns text to left of frames when using them, else uses the centre point of the Text object as the starting point of the text (which grows to the right).

Center

Centres text in the frames when using them, else uses the centre point of the Text object as the mid-point of the text (which grows equally to the left and right).

Right

Aligns text to right of frames when using them, else uses the centre point of the Text object as the ending point of the text (which grows to the left).

Justify

Only flushes a line when it is terminated by a wordwrap (not by ↵ Enter), it uses whitespace instead of character spacing (kerning) to fill lines.

Flush

Always flushes the line, even when it’s still being entered, it uses character spacing (kerning) to fill lines.

Both Justify and Flush only work within frames.

Word spacing

A factor by which whitespace is scaled in width.

Spacing (kerning)

Manual kerning, between all pairs of characters. You can also control it, independently for each pair, by pressing Alt← or Alt→ to decrease/increase kerning by steps of 0.1.

[edit] Examples

In (Bold text), one font is used for “Te” and a different font for “xt”.

[edit] Text Frames

[edit] Description

Text “Frames” allow you to distribute the text amongst rectangular areas within a single text object. An arbitrary number of freely positionable and re-sizable text frames are allowed per text object.

Text flows continuously from the lowest-numbered Frame to the highest-numbered Frame with text inside each frame word-wrapped. Text flows between Frames when a lower-numbered frame can’t fit anymore text. If the last Frame is reached text overflows out of it.

[edit] Options

Frames are controlled from the upper right corner of the Font panel; see (Text Frame).

[edit] Frame size

By default the first Frame for a new text object, and any additional Frames, has a size of Zero for both Width and Height, which means the Frame is initially not visible.

Frames with a width of 0.0 are ignored completely during text flow (no wordwrap happens) and Frames with a height of 0.0 flow forever (no flowing to the next text frame).

In order for the frame to become visible the Frame’s Width must be greater than 0.0.

Note Technically the height is never actually 0.0 because the font itself always contributes height.

(Frame width) is a text object with a width of 5.0. And because the frame width is greater than 0.0 it is now visible and is drawn in the active theme colour as a dashed rectangle. The text has overflowed because the text has reached the end of the last frame, the default frame.

[edit] Adding/Deleting a Frame

To add a Frame click the Insert button on the Font panel. A new frame is added with a default Width and Height of 0.0 which means it is not visible, nor will text flow from it into another frame. Be sure to set an offset for the new frame in the X and Y fields. Just an X setting will create a new column.

To delete the current Frame click the Delete button on the Font panel. Any text in higher frames will be re-flowed downward into lower frames.

[edit] Examples

Text Frames are very similar to the concept of frames from a desktop publishing application, like Scribus. You use frames to control the placement and flow of text.

[edit] Text Flow

With two or more frames you can organize text to a finer degree. For example, create a text object and enter “Blender is super duper”; see (Text 1). This text object has a frame, it just isn’t visible because its Width is 0.0.

Set the width to 5.0. The frame is now visible and text is wrapping according to the new width, as shown in (Text 2). Notice that the text has overflowed out of the frame. This is because the text has reached the end of the last frame which just happens to be the default/initial frame.

When we add another frame and set its width and height the text will flow into the new frame.

Clicking on Insert will add a new frame, labelled “Frame 2” in (Text 3); with the same attributes as the previous frame (labelled “Default frame” in (Text 3)).

Notice that the text has not yet flowed into this new frame. That is because the previous, or lower numbered, frame has a Height of 0.0. Remember the height field may be 0.0 but the font itself contributes height. The font’s height does not count. This means the height field value is an addition to the font’s height.

To get text to flow into “Frame 2” we need to change the height of the default/initial frame. In (Text 4) the height of the initial frame – in pink – has been increased to 0.1.

Now the text flows from the initial frame into “Frame 2”. Notice that the text overflows out of “Frame 2”. Again this is because the text has reached the end of the last frame.

[edit] Multiple columns

To create two columns of text just create a text object and adjust the initial frame’s Width and Height to your requirements, then insert a new frame. The new frame will have the same size as the initial frame. Set the X position to something greater or less than the width of the initial frame; see (Text 5).

[edit] Multiple Materials

[edit] Description

Each character can have a different Material index in order to have different materials on different characters.

[edit] Options

You can assign indices either as you type, or after by selecting blocks of text and clicking on the Assign button in the Link and Materials panel.

[edit] Examples

For example to create (Red Green Blue) you would need to create three separate Materials and three separate Material indices. Each word would be assigned a Material index by selecting the characters for each word and clicking the Assign button. (Red Green Blue) is still one single Text object.

[edit] Curve and Surface attributes

[edit] Description

Text is very similar to 2D curves in that they have curve like properties. For example, you can change the Resolution from the Curve and Surface panel to have smooth or coarse text. Once the text is created you can extrude, bevel or even change the thickness.

[edit] Options

Because a Text object is similar to a curve it can be converted into a curve using AltC. Once this is performed the Text becomes a curve and can be manipulated just like a curve. This allows complete control over the shape of the characters beyond what a Text object provides.

The transform from Text to Curve is not reversible; consider saving prior to converting. Also, you can continue to convert the Curve into a Mesh for even further control.

[edit] Examples

In (Rough text) the Resolution has been set to the lowest setting to produce very blocky text. Almost as if the text was broken out of a rock mine. In addition, the text has been applied to a 2D Bezier circle curve.

The path the text has been applied to is labelled “Path”. To specify a Curve or Path enter the name of a 2D curve in the TextOnCurve field in the Font panel as shown in (TextOnCurve). In this example the “Path”’s name is “CurveCircle”.

[edit] See Also

• Modelling: Curves
• Modelling: Surfaces.

[edit] Special Characters

[edit] Description

There are a few special characters that are available using the Alt key or the Text menu on the 3D window header. These “Key” combinations are only available while in Edit mode.

[edit] Options

A summary of these characters follows; just remember you can access these characters from the Char panel as well:

AltC:	Copyright (©)	AltR:	Registered trademark (®)
AltG:	Degrees (°)	AltX:	Multiply symbol (×)
AltS:	German “ss” (ß)	AltF:	Currency sign (¤)
AltL:	British Pound (£)	AltY:	Japanese Yen (¥)
Alt1:	Superscript 1 (¹)	Alt2:	Superscript 2 (²)
Alt3:	Superscript 3 (³)
Alt?:	Spanish question mark (¿)	Alt!:	Spanish exclamation mark (¡)
Alt<:	Left double quotation mark («)	Alt>:	Right double quotation mark (»)

All the characters on your keyboard should work, including stressed vowels and so on. If you need special characters (such as accented letters, which are not there on a US keyboard) you can produce many of them using a combination of two other characters. To do so, type the main letter, press Alt← Backspace, and then press the desired “modifier” to produce the special character. Some examples are given below :

A, Alt← Backspace, ~:	ã	A, Alt← Backspace, ':	á	A, Alt← Backspace, `:	à
A, Alt← Backspace, O:	å	E, Alt← Backspace, ":	ë	O, Alt← Backspace, /:	ø

[edit] Unicode Characters

[edit] Description

The font system understands both ASCII and UNICODE character sets with a panel dedicated to assisting in the selection of extended characters.

Since Blender does not support Unicode text input via the keyboard, not all characters are easily accessible from the keyboard. For those difficult characters the Char panel is provided. This panel simply exposes the entire Unicode character set, by default. The character set can be quite large so paging buttons are provided, U and D. You can also select a subset of Unicode with the Unicode Table button, and jump directly to a known character by typing its decimal code in the num field just to the right of this button.

When you find the character you are looking for, just click on it in the grid.

[edit] Technical Details

For optimum resource usage only characters that are being used consume memory rather than the entire character set.