Adding Text, Extruding Text and Changing Text Style in Blender

In this post we are going to learn about adding the text in blender. There are some things that you have to keep in mind. I will tell you these on the way of adding text in blender, whenever its needed. So lets get started.

Setting default font folder in Blender

If you are going to add text in your scene in blender you would probably need to change the font of the text. For changing font of the text object in blender there is no easy way. To make it a little easier you have to set user preferences in the blender, cause you cannot directly choose font for text object in blender from a drop down list. You have to choose the font from the folder. So first set the font folder from the user preferences. To change the user preferences go to file menu and then click on user preferences, or just press Ctrl + Alt + U

Now in the user preferences go to the file tab. Here you can set the default folders. Set your default font folder here by browsing to it or directly entering the path. Usually default font folder for Windows is “C:\Windows\Fonts”. After setting the path click on Save User Settings.

Adding Text in Blender

Now you are all set, just press Shift + A inside the viewport and choose Text. A text object will be added to your scene. See! that is so easy, but you don't want that, you will live happily ever after if you see your name written there instead of Text.

Editing Text in Blender

To edit the text in blender you just follow the same method as for other objects, just press Tab. Just like the other text editors a cursor will appear in the viewport with the text. You can press backspace to delete the Text and type whatever you want. After typing just press Tab to return to the object mode.

There are two more things that you probably want to know

• How to make text thick in Blender
• How to change font of Text object in Blender

You have noticed that the Text you have added has no thickness at all, its just like plane. May be this is not what you wanted. So to add thickness to the text, you have to increase the amount of extrude property of the text object. To do that just open the Text properties tab, its just right beside the Add modifiers tab. Now in the geometry section increase the amount of extrude.

Changing font of the Text in Blender

To change the font of the text go to the Font section of Text properties. Now you have to brows to the font file you want to apply. By default the Bfont is applied.

If you have already set the User Preferences and saved the default font folder then clicking on open will open the font folder.

And one more thing, You have to open all file of a font if you want to use all styles for example Font Arial's Regular in Regular, Bold in Bold, Italic in Italic etc. But its not necessary to open all file, if you want to use only Bold style then only open bold style file. By default the regular style is applied.

After opening the files you can access them from drop down list.

Now After opening text file press Tab in the viwport to go to edit mode while the text object is selected. Now select the written text by pressing Sift + Right/Left Arrow depend on the position of your text cursor.

Now choose the style from tools menu.

That's it. Now you know how to Add Text in Blender, Adding thickness to Text in blender and changing font and font style of text object in blender. And here is a tip for you, you can bevel the text object's edges by increasing the bevel amount, which is placed side by side the extrude. Bye for now and Happy Blending :)  

Blender : 3D Cursor, Adding Objects In General and A little about Placing Them

What we will learn

In this post I am going to tell you about how to add objects in Blender. In previous post I have gave you a teaser of adding objects in blender. But here we will talk about the different methods to add objects and a little about placing them in 3D space. If we talk about placing the objects the 3D cursor have a very important role to play, and we will talk about that also. Placing the objects in depth will come in the following posts. So without wasting time lets get started.

3D Cursor

First we should know about the 3D cursor. Peoples switching from other 3D development softwares like 3Ds Max or Maya will found themselves dealing with something new. Yes its very unique feature the blender has. At start it will feel awkward how your left click places the 3D cursor rather than doing a predictable action like selecting an object. Well you can change this behavior from user preferences, but I will suggest not to do so. The following image is showing the 3D cursor in viewport :

3D cursor and Object's Position

Whenever you are adding a new object it will be added at the position where the 3D Cursor is. The 3D cursor mainly deals with placing the objects. You can snap any object to cursor, the cursor to any selected object or sub object like vertex. Different snapping options are available for 3D cursor and objects. You can access these options by pressing Shift+S inside the viewport.The following image is showing the options that will open after pressing Shift+S :

Changing the 3D Cursor Position

By default the 3D cursor is placed at the center (0,0,0) of the viewport. If by mistake you have left clicked somewhere else in the viewport, the cursor would have been misplaced by now. To place the cursor at the center (0,0,0) again press Shift+S and then choose 'Cursor to Center'.

Another way to change 3D cursor's position is from properties. Press N key to toggle Properties in viewport, and then go to 3D cursor segment to enter the position. The following image is showing the position of 3D cursor segment in Properties:

As we will keep talking about the 3D cursor wherever its needed, lets focus on adding objects in detail.

Adding Objects in blender 3D

Adding different kind of objects to the scene in blender is pretty easy. There are two methods by which you can add objects, and these methods are

• From menu bar
• By using shortcut

Adding objects from menu bar

To add objects from menu bar just click on Add menu and choose the object from there respective categories. For example if you want to add Cube you have to choose it from Mesh category. You can add different kind of objects like Mesh, Curve, Surface, Text, Armature(Bone in 3Ds Max), Empty (Helpers in 3Ds Max), Camera, Lamp ( Lights in 3Ds Max) etc.

Adding objects by using shortcut

The same list of objects can be opened for adding objects inside the viewport by using shortcut Sift +A while mouse pointer is inside the viewport. From this list you can add all these objects which you can add from Add menu.

Precautions for adding objects

There are two things that you should know before adding an object into blender.

The first thing is that new object is always added at the position of 3D cursor. 3D cursor's position can be changed by left clicking anywhere in the scene. Wherever you left click somewhere, the 3D cursor will be placed there. So if you have by mistake placed the 3D cursor somewhere else or outside the view the object will be placed there, if you want to add the object at the center, place the 3D cursor at the center, read the 3D cursor section of this post to do so.

The second thing is the properties of the objects you added like radius of sphere, size and radius of cylinder etc. You can tweak these properties for one time only when you added the object. These properties are tend to lost as soon as you transform the object or add another object. So you should tweak these properties immediately after adding the object before doing anything else. You can change these properties from bellow the toolbar.

The name of some of these properties are a little different in blender. Cube always have similar sided so rather giving it height, width and depth they gave it only one property Radius. Another thing is the sides of the objects like Cylinder and Cone became the vertices, means if you want 8 sides in the cylinders then you have to enter 8 vertices in the properties. The place from where you can change the properties is shown in the image bellow:

These are some general information about 3D cursor and adding objects in blender. We will talk about the methods of adding some specific objects like Text and Curves in the following posts.

And now hear is a tip for you, you can press F12 to take render of your scene, and after render press Esc to return to the 3D view.

Well I think its enough for now, see you in the next post and Happy Blending :)

Blender : Installing, Viewport Navigation and Adding Objects

Introduction

Blender is a free software that allow you to create 3D contents just like Autodesk's 3Ds Max and Maya. When I was using 3Ds Max and Maya, I thought Blender is a very poor application and one cannot do everything that he/she can do with blender. Yes my fellow blender users, there are still so many users who don't even know about Blender, or think its to hard to switch to. So for all these Max and Maya users, who wants to do some professional work but don't have enough money to buy 3Ds Max or Maya, I am suggesting you to use Blender.

Don't worry, its not that hard, Yes I accept that the UI of Blender and workflow is a little different, but for dealing with that worth it. And I am here to help you cut through the process of switching. I am again telling you that its so easy. I have switched from 3Ds Max and Maya to just only Blender. And believe me you also can easily switch.

So if you have made your mind to give it a try, follow me along and never hesitate to ask anything you dont understand, I am always here to help you.

Installing Blender

First thing is that you need to download the blender. Use the following link to download your free copy of blender. Use 32bit or 64bit version, whichever version your operating system is :

http://www.blender.org/download/

Choose the installer or zip file to download. If you have downloaded the installer then you need to double click the installer to install the Blender. And if you have downloaded the zip file then you need to extract it to a safe location and you are ready to use blender.

Now open the blender and you will see something like this:

Viewport Navigation

Click anywhere out of splash screen to hide it. Unlike Max or Maya the Blender by default contains some objects into its scene which are a cube, a camera and a point light. The Blender uses the camera for rendering and the light to illuminate the scene, unlike Max or Maya it doesn't uses the view to render the scene. So if you will delete the light the objects in the scene will be rendered as black, and if you will delete the camera there will be no rendering, the blender will prompt you that scene has no camera. So never delete the camera or light unless its intended to.

Now here is something for you to start with :

• Right click on any object to select that object
• After selecting an object press x and enter to delete that object 
• Middle click drag to rotate the view 
• Ctrl+Middle Click drag to zoom in or out
• Sift+Middle Click drag to pan the view

Adding Objects

First delete the default cube. To delete right click on the cube to select it. Now press x and then enter to delete it. Now press sift+A in viwport to add a object. Click on Mesh and then choose cube or sphere or any other object you want to add. 

See, Its so easy. More will come in the next post. Feel free to ask if anything in this post is confusing. And at last here is a quick tip for you to experiment, you can press Tab while your newly added object is selected to toggle the edit mode and you can modify the shape of the object.

Good Bye for now, and Happy Blending :)