You can use Ctrl-click to place individual vertices;place these on the corners of your letters and then fill them up with f after you’ve got the outline. Your current problem is simply that you’ve got way too many vertices and that you need only one per corner.
Brilliant! thank you that works, 2 questions, I practiced this and pressed, ‘F,’ I got the, “incorrect number of vertices needed to make a face.” For the sake of simplicity I made a simple box, I brought the last line over to enclose it so that it would be a complete object, still no luck. I put the last little square overlapping the origin square. Missing something?
Also, where do I go to get the bezier option to curve my stuff? Thanks again.
F fills the area between vertices, so you select three or four of them, press f and get a face. Between two vertices, it creates an edge.
Which reminds me of a simpler method - if your letters are closed, you can simply select all the vertices and press Shift+F, which fills them up automatically.
I come from an After Effects background as well, so I know what you mean, Drawing points with Blender is not as efficient as with After Effects. But here is my workflow.
Create a Beziere Curve.
Put the curve in edit mode (TAB-Key)
Select one of the vertices. (Right-Click On it)
Press DELETE key to delete the vertex.
Select the other vertex and press V-Key. (This means new extruded points will be created as Vector/ Linear instead of curved.)
Press the E-Key and you will begin extruding from the original point. Hold down the CTRL-Key while you extrude to snap-to-grid any new points you make.
Once you like where your point is located press the mouse button to lock it in.
Repeat extrude key process for every point you want to add (this is why After Effects has better workflow, in After Effects you don’t have to press the E-Key to add another point, you just click.)
Make your last point land on top of, or close to the original starting point.
Press the C-Key. This closes the curve and will give you a nice form that you can extrude and bevel.
One final thing you will want to do is to “Remove Doubles” on the curve. Because the last point and first point are on top of one another.
Hey Atom, thank you for in depth instructions, I will try that method as well. Still though, does anybody know why shift + f isn’t instantly filling up the whole letter?
Just asking, but did you actually close it up by either pressing F for the final vertices or merging them with Alt+M? You phrased it like you just placed the two ends really close together, which won’t do.
@Zwebbie: Nope, I just pressed the C-Key to close the curve. I can see what you mean by saying it won’t do. It certainly won’t do if your vertices are not Vector, but if you use all vector points (the reason for my inital convert in the above description), the C-Key to close, makes a perfectly valid extrudable/bevelable objects that will convert to mesh just fine.
Also a slower way to do it if you only want to use standard meshes is to just put the verts on the corners so you get the outline. Then use the knife tool (hotkey: k and use the ‘exact’ in the dropdown menu) to cut the edges. Last, connect the edges so you have the right faces in the right places to create quads and tris with the ‘F’ hotkey.
Hey two more questions and I think you guys will have solved everything,
When I fill the letter up so that it’s a solid, I notice little triangle lines within it, when I add like a shiny texture, the solid lettering looks fractured because of this triangle fill lines, is there to eliminate this so that the faces come across as uniform looking?
Let’s say for letters like A, D, and so forth, how to I cut out the spaces with those letters
Thanks again, this thread has made me so much more knowledgeable!
For letters with holes in the center, simply draw the outer line part, then draw the inner line part so you have two closed curves. Then Select them both and press CTRL-J to join the curves together. If you did it right, the inner curve will cut a hole out of the outer curve after the CTRL-J.
You don’t need to use the E-key to extrude points.
Add a bezier curve.
In the Curve Tools select Convert to Poly. Delete all put one point
Select point then just use the Ctrl+LMB to add additional points where you want them, at grid points if you want to.
Use C to close shape
Select all points and Shift+S Selection -> Grid to ensure all points are on grid points
@Richard: Thanks for the tip, you don’t even have to convert to poly. Just make sure your control points are set to Vertex. This is much quicker than pressing the E-Key every time.
Hi Atom, You don’t have to change it to a poly but I prefer to do that so you don’t have the additional bezier handles, only the points themselves (easier to see what you’re doing even if they are set to vector). You can then change any point to have handles if you want to make it curved.
