Currently I have a character that I need to write a word on a piece of paper. Right now the finger bones are placed holding the pen and the pen is parented to one of the finger bones… or maybe a hand bone (can’t remember right now)
My first question is how do you think it would be best to animate the pen to write the word. I tried manual key framing with limited success. But would it be better to use some kind of follow path modifier or some other method? If so, what would be the best way to set it up?
The next question is getting the ink on to the paper… would dynamic paint work… I may just try and do it in After Effects, but if there is relatively easy set up in Blender, I wouldn’t mind giving it a try
This is an effect I made some time ago using dynamic paint, which could probably be adapted to fit your needs. Have a look at the video and the blend if you like. Its small, under 2 mb, with the map of africa. Groovy Google music not included.
Sometimes I can’t replay an embedded vid in BA, so here’s the youtube link too:
I’m so sorry to reply back to you so late on this Blenderallday… I saw your post right after you put it on…I downloaded the file… and then got distracted and forgot to reply back.
You’d probably save yourself a lot of time creating a hand rig that automatically follows the pencil, and making the tip track to an empty that follows a bezier path in the shape of the words you want written. Then you could use dynamic painting to get the actual texture. In any case, there will likely need to be lots of keyframing and cleanup work, that’s a tough shot to get.