Hi. First of all, I’m a total n00b, but I have had a look around at various sites and can’t find a solution to my problem. Here goes…
What I’m trying to achieve is to get text to wrap around and sit on the surface of a sphere, so that the actual text bumps up from the sphere’s surface.
I’ve tried converting text to a bezier curve then to a mesh, then moving points by hand onto the surface of the sphere, but this is too complicated to do vertice by vertice without making a horrible, unrecoverable mess of the whole thing.
I’d be most grateful if someone could point me in the right direction
Well your problem is one of the rare occasions where blender’s wrap function comes into play. (also see the blender guide)
Write your text.
Set it up with the Ext1, Ext2, Bevresol, Size, Spaceing, Lindist Buttons (EditButtons window of the text)
Convert text to curve (Alt+C),
convert the curve object to mesh (Alt+C)
Center new (EditButtons)
Change the view to see the text from the top.
Move the text to the right distance to your sphere.
Place the 3D Cursor to the center of the sphere (best, select sphere, shift+S–>curs to sel)
Select text
Enter Edit Mode (TAB)
Select all vertices (A-key)
Wrap with Shift+S (wraping starts with 90°, by moving the cursor up and down you can increase or decrease the angle)
Confirm with LMB.
(also see the blender guide)