3d Text

Not earthshakingly exciting, but POV-Ray can create text in any True Type font placed in its include directory. One can adjust scale, color, location, lighting, etc., all the goodies you've come to expect, and produce whatever kind of verbage you need for any use you can dream up.

A long time ago, in search of a heading creation tool for webpages, a trial version of Xara 3D found its way onto the hard drive. It produced all kinds of 3d text, and could extrude, then light and shadow any font of your choice, even generate animated gifs of your title spinning, bouncing, or performing various other canned activities. The only drawback, an obnoxious "Trial Version" emblazoned across anything it created, or $39.


No thanks, there's always POV-Ray.

Objects in POV-Ray are exactly that, objects, and behave sensibly, acting how one would expect, that is, they make shadows. They make real shadows on surfaces when the light shines onto them, the light here is above and in front of the text, the shadow is behind on the "table" and rather huge.

Of course one can "fake" an old school drop shadow by simply placing a second similar text object behind the first, and coloring it differently.

back to 3d gallery

©01.20.10 ABCdzyne