writing text in lightwave

[rakennedy75]

I was wanted to create text that looks like it would be handwritten. I have a pretty good handle on on fx emitters and hypervoxels so I was going to attempt to make a motion path and leave a trail to acheive the effect. I am not sure if this is the most effiecient way to accomplish this.

Is there a better way to do this. I would in the future like to import illustrator art and have this traced some how. Is there any masking capabilities that can be used to accomplish this.

If anyone knows of any tutorials, books, examples, etc. on how to acomplish this or something similiar, I would appreciate it.

Thanks for your time.

[jeremyhardin]

for the particles...

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7814

for the text, make your text object with a mask revealing it from left to right.

then make line polygon's in the shape of the text (for the write-on effect) and use this plugin.

http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~fis_junk/

the plugin is called traceline. attach your emmiter to it.

that's how i did it, hope it helps.

[rakennedy75]

Thanks, This is the direction I was heading so at least I know I was thinking of doing this the right way. This gives me some direction and ideas to use. I appreciate the post, thanks alot.

Anyone else have any other ways they might of seen this done. Just looking for different options.

[adrian]

Well in the past I have done this the completely manual (ie dumb) way, ie I make several masks (sometimes for each letter depending on how realistic I wanted the "handwriting" to be), and then have a spotlight with lensflare following the same path as the masks.

So I guess it's the same procedure as above but much more time consuming and laborious.

You can also do handwriting in AE using masks as well which is slightly less labour intensive than doing it in LW.

Adrian.

[WizCraker]

You could also make a motion path then have a null follow the path. Have two particle emitters attached to the null and have the particles be Hypervoxels. The other emitter would be for smoke. Also have a point Light attached to the null and eveloped for skipping words crossing T's dotting I's. Depending on the look you could have a burn effect in paper, steel, concrete..., or you could just have the letters written out like mercury is forming the letters.