Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 15-39
Complete character logic
Creating Special Effects with Textures
There are several useful techniques for creating special effects with textures that are not at all obvious to a
casual user of Blender. This section describes two of the main ones: the use of textures to create dynamic text,
and animated textures.
Creating Dynamic Text
You can use 3D text in the Blender game engine, but you have to convert it to a mesh in advance with Alt+C
in Object mode. If you do this, be sure that the normals are pointing in the correct direction. Otherwise, your
text, like any mesh face, will not be visible in the game engine by default. This may be a reasonable way to add
text to your game. However, if you need your text to be dynamic, that is, if you want to be able to assign string
values to the text on the fly as the game is played, mesh text will not work. For this, you need to use a texture.
To use texture-based text, you must have the font you want to use in a correctly formatted image texture.
You can use the file
arialbd.tga
on the website for this topic. Alternately, you can use any TrueType font
to create your own texture file via the FTBlender application that can also be found on the website.
