I was reading some books in the library the other day and stumbled upon this 2011 publication titled "The 3D Type": http://3d-type.com/
That book is really worth reading and I absolutely recommend it. It is full of great 3D typography examples that you may have or have not imagined, for examples:
- Alphabet made by juxtapositions of book on the shelf
- Alphabet made by balloon.
- Alphabet made by hair.
- Alphabet made by arrangement of cup on a gate
- Alphabet made by ink.
- Alphabet projected on 3D environment
- Alphabet of found stones that are shaped like one
- Alphabet created by clever arrangement of sandwich
- Alphabet created by melted cheese
- And so on...
ABOUT 3D TYPOGRAPHY
So, what is really 3D TYPOGRAPHY? In my own words, 3D typography is an arrangement and composition of text/alphabet in 3D space that we considered aesthetically beautiful, when properly designed can give extra impact to the message.
The typeface (the type of font) that is chosen can also influence the final look of typography design. True for 2D typography, even more in 3D typography, thus we have 3D TYPE topic.
Combine both 3D TYPE and 3D TYPOGRAPHY, then you have this huge design topic to explore. This is where you think FONT as character.
What would that topic has anything to do with Blender? Blender is actually a perfect tool for conceptualizing 3D TYPE design and TYPOGRAPHY arrangement in 3D.
Blender Text Object is pretty good starter. There is a limitation in term of control if you want to the details such as kerning, etc. It is not so important if your text is for TITLE/HEADING. You will not be doing novel inside Blender anyway. Surely, it could be interesting to think how to setup 3D TYPOGRAPHY for motion graphics animation, like how After Effects or MoGraph. Save that for later.
Alternative to Blender Text Object, we can always use NodeBox2 to prepare the Text Shape as Curves to pass on to Blender. This is perfectly recommended. NodeBox2 allows curve resampling and some easy 2D procedural curves.
3D TYPE(FACE) + 3D TYPOGRAPHY
Like great examples shown on that book (shown at a glance on the video above), you can actually re-create most of them in CG.
Okey, purist artists might prefer to have a hands on 3D TYPE such as those made of grass or balloon, etc, that is all fine and dandy. Surely there are a lot more unexplored 3D TYPE concepts that are only possible to be done in CG, or at least create proof of concept, and maybe do 3D print. --- 3D print will get cheaper, so take notice! Home 3D printer is in my wishlist.
I remember some years ago, one of my college major projects was also to create 3D TYPE, Alphabet Set that is totally creative, made by juxtaposition of real everyday objects and to serve a purpose (for example: if the alphabet design is for furniture company, then you maybe design the alphabet using furniture). My design was this alphabet set created from liquid. Back then, we dont have Blender :) I created all the works using Photoshop. I kind of fake the liquid using halftone effect. This liquid text can be made a lot better if I were to do it again today.
THE BASIC STUFF
So, lets think further about 3D type and typography together. 3D type in term of the design of the type (it should still readable as alphabet) and typography in term of the composition you will be creating.
Often time maybe we may just think: start with a Text object, choose a beautiful font, then extrude it and put it in 3D space, such as below:
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| Boring 3D type with perspective camera. |
How about like this, set the camera to Ortographic and re-render with just ambient occlusion. Notice how "ortographic camera" can be quite neat. Try rendering your scene this way.
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| Very design-ish, but still boring. |
These are very basic and will serve its purpose, sometimes you dont need any more than this. You could play around with the Bevel Object to create additional details. Similar to what you see at old signage design nicely carved edge and framed.
This beveled 3D TYPE alone, if you like to do further research and exploration can be interesting to study and explore.
BEVEL OBJECT EXAMPLE
- Create a Text Object, hit TAB and change the text to your liking, keep it one word for now.
- Under Text Object - Object Data panel, input Bevel Object with curve object.
NOTE: Be careful here, if your Bevel Object curve is too big, you might get an unwanted result. You basically just need to rescale the curve you use as Bevel Object, and revoke the Bevel Object again. This does not refresh automatically, unfortunately, maybe they can change this in the future version of Blender. Maybe its the way for text object to cook off the object and save memory. - For Bevel Object, an open curve and a close curve profile will give you different result.
Without bevel edge, we get this more modern type (actually more boring, but simple, hence modern) tend to have this simple smoother plastic/metal-ish edge.
You could then continue then by adjusting other parameters such as:
COLOR: (notice that multiple materials on a single live Blender Text Object is possible)
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| Good thing being Text Object is that things are still easily editable. I try to always keep Text Object as is. |
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| When you are in Text Object edit mode, you can easily assign multiple materials. |
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| If I am correct, Blender Internal Render has little issue rendering Text Object with Ambient Occlussion, the solution is to convert it to normal Poly object and re-render. Alternatively, Blender Cycles render Text Object without any issue. |
MATERIAL: (or surface property)
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| Blender Cycles is cool at creating this raytrace material: Chrome, Glass, but I think Blender Internal Render with Subsurface Scattering is still better at giving plastic/skin natural realistic look, similar to RenderMan. |
TEXTURE:
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Anything else I have not touched here? I think thats all the basic of what typically we do when doing 3D TYPE. Dont get me wrong, as designers, you can get really creative treating your 3D with just all above basic elements.
But of thats all about what we can do with 3D TYPE, it is still BORING, dont you think? I think so.
GET MORE INSPIRATION
For more inspirations and research study, take a look some examples of 3D TYPE on famous movie posters. Some of them are interesting, some are a little bit boring. For these examples, I will borrow some images from Google Images Search, I dont think anyone would mind:
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| Movie Poster Title Examples |
TAKE 3D TYPE FURTHER
How can we take 3D TYPE into the next level? I will take you to explore this in the next article post.
- DISTORTED TYPE (Particles, Displace Modifier)
- SMOKE TYPE (Particles Fluid)
- LIQUID TYPE (Volume Polygonizer)
- FURRY TYPE (Hair)
- BLOBBY TYPE (Particles)
- ABSTRACT TYPE (Particles)
- PROCEDURAL TYPE (Particles)
- FRACTURED TYPE
- ETC
Take a look at this awesome inspiration:
Hopefully this intro article on 3D TYPE can be useful for you, Try to take 3D TYPE further so that each text is totally unique and like a character in your scene!
UPDATE:
Check this video for extra 3D typography inspiration:
"Arkitypo: letter rotations" by Johnson Banks
http://vimeo.com/35943753
UPDATE 2013.03.03:
More 3D typography and lettering inspiration:
http://www.awwwards.com/playing-with-typo-creative-3d-lettering-examples.html
UPDATE 2013.03.09:
Motion Graphic Designer must love to see this: Sagmeister & Walsh Interview
Its quite fun to see how those 2 designers worked really hard to create 3D type in real life. There is an art in itself of course. Their idea and execution is very clever.
Our job as 3D artist is probably to observe and think how to recreate the 3D type more efficiently in 3D, or maybe what can we create in 3D that cannot be replicated in real life?
https://vimeo.com/58575990
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