Deforming Text to Spline Shape in cinema 4d

This is a simple exercise but a very crucial one. Often, in 3D modelling, the things
appearing pretty simple defy solution and make you feel like banging your head
against the wall!
It happened with me when I was trying to design a camera. Final part was to put
the text on the front of lens barrel, which is round in shape. Problem was how to
make the text round. It had me struggling for quite sometime until I found it in a
simple command called Spline wrap, nested in MoGraph menu. I felt like
sharing it with the readers because they too could be struggling with such a
thing.
In inorganic modelling, deforming text is very important because often you have
to paste the text on different and unusual shapes.
MoGraph module is necessary to follow this tutorial.

This is the original model I wanted to design.

And this is my attempt that I am still trying to refine.

For the text to be pasted on the lens barrel, first I tried to use “arrange” command
from the Function menu. It didn’t work. Then after searching for the solution,
which I was sure the guys at Cinema 4D would have put it somewhere, I
stumbled upon the Spline wrap command in MoGraph menu.
Ok, let’s start. We will not take entire camera for our exercise. To check the
progress of our work, we have to render the object repeatedly and this we cannot
do with a complex model as it requires more rendering time. Instead, we will
design a rough model of lens and then place on it the text in a circular shape.

1. Go to primitive objects and select disc.

2. In the object properties in Attibutes Manager in the lower right hand

corner of the interface, enter the following parameters:
Inner radius – 0
Outer radius – 100
Disc segments – 4
Height segments – 100
Orientation - +Z Axis

3. Rotate the camera to bring the object to the front and zoom it a bit. The
screenshot will look like this:
4. Select the disc in the Object Manager in the upper right hand corner of the
interface, double click it and rename it as Lens barrel.

5. With Lens selected in Object Manager, hit C on keyboard to make it

editable.
6. Click polygon tool icon in the left vertical menu. From the main menu,
click selection and select Ring Selection.

7. Select the outer ring of the lens as shown below

8. Click structure in the main menu and select extrude. Enter value of 5m in
the offset field in the object properties in attributes manager and click
apply. You should get the following screenshot
9. Go to the selection menu and select the command, set selection. An orange
triangle will appear before the lens in the object manager. In the attributes
manager you’ll get basic properties of the object. Rename the polygon
selection as Lens border. In the selection menu, click ‘deselect all’ to
deselect the object.
10. Now we have to select the second ring of the lens barrel by same method
we followed earlier. Name it second ring.

11. Again go to the last ring select it and name it as lens.

12. Finally, it is time to texture them. Click on the orange triangle, named lens
border in object manager. It will select the border.

13. Go to material manager, click on file>new material. Click on the material

dialog to open material editor, click on white colour icon and make it full
white by dragging the RGB sliders to 255. Close the editor.

14. Drag and drop the new material to the border selection and the border of
lens barrel will become white.

15. Repeat the procedure with inner ring making it black. Finally, select the
lens and make it green.

16. Render the view. Your screenshot should be something like this:
 17. The screenshot given here doesn’t match yours, right? But don’t panic. My
image appears different because, first, I have used the custom made
materials which you might not have. Second, the shape of my lens here is
slightly rectangular. Yours is rounded. I have edited the geometry of the
inner portion of the lens barrel to give it a bit rectangular lens-like look. Of
course, I am not showing you how to do it here. I will show that in a later
tutorial on how to make a camera.
In the meanwhile, you can work on your image. Remember, we are after
changing the shape of the text to fit it on the lens barrel. Let’s focus on that.
Shape of lens barrel doesn’t matter so much.

18. Go the main menu, click MoGraph and select text object.
19. In the Attributes Manager, change the coordinates of the text to set it
straight. Type 180 in R.H. field. The text will rotate to front.
20. In the object properties of the text in the Attributes Manager, enter the
following parameters:

Depth – 0
Height – 11
Intermediate Points – select ‘subdivided’ from the drop-down menu

21. Leave the rest of the parameters untouched. Your screenshot on rendering
should be like this:
22. Select text in object manager. In Attributes manager, click the tab called
object and write, 10X ZOOM, in the field called text.
23. We are at a crucial point now. We have to stick this text on the border of
lens barrel and text has to be in rounded shape.

24. First, make the colour of the text black so that it contrasts with the white
colour of the lens border. Drag and drop the black colour you made for
the lens barrel into the text object in object manager. The text colour will
turn black.

25. From the spline objects, select circle and in the Attributes Manager, in
radius field, enter 88 and if the axis is not XY already, make it so.

26. Double click circle in the object manager to rename it as ‘path for 10x
zoom’. Go to the front viewport to see your results.
 27. We will now modify text along the path we have created, that is, Circle.
Go to the perspective viewport, click MoGraph and select Spline Wrap.
28. Since spline wrap is a deformer of sorts, it will only if it’s made a child of
the object to be modified. Make spline wrap a child of text object by
dragging it in object manager into the text.

29. In Attributes Manager, you will get several parameters for spline wrap.
The first field is entitled spline. Drag and drop the ‘path for 10x zoom’
from object manager into the spline field in Attributes Manager. The text
will wrap around the path.

30. With spline wrap selected, click coordinates tab in the attributes manager
and type 90 in R.P. field. Your screenshot should look like this:
31. We have to do some tweaking in the attributes manager with spline wrap
parameters to the get the dimensions of the text right.

32. Click tab and in the field entitled “from”, drag the slider to the get the
value of 90% or type directly 90 in the field.
33. You can play with offset slider to place the text wherever you want it on
the lens barrel.

34. Make the offset 50% and change the axis to –X and you’ll get this result.
 35. You have now plenty of options to play with the text. Click text object in
the object manager to change the font, size or the spacing of the text. You
can also click the path and using move tool move it as per your liking.

That’s how cinema 4D gives you total control over your creations. Hats off to this
software!!!

36. A final word. Be careful about snapping of the path onto the lens barrel.
You should check it in perspective mode and if you find there is a distance
between object and path, use move tool to snap the path properly onto the
object.

37. To create more than one text, you don’t have to start from the beginning.
Just control-click the text object to duplicate it in the object manager. I
have done it to create multiple texts. Here is my result.
Hope you enjoyed it. My next tutorial will detail the modelling of the entire
camera, which will be submitted to scribd.com in due course.

Have fun with C4D

Shuja Shakir
shujashakir@rediffmail.com