KIERANTAYLOR.NET

www.kierantaylor.net/vids/l1vltest1.avi

OK, this short animation was done in Blender 3d for the crew over at www.level-1.org.uk. I was experimenting with text and volumetric lighting to achieve the effect that can be seen.

Firstly in Blender you can access all your true type fonts and convert them into three dimensional mesh objects with relative ease.

I selected the typeface i wanted to use, then extruded the rear faces of the array of letters so that they become actual 3d objects. After that phase I then created a black shadeless plane mesh for the foreground.

I then positioned the text so that it was sitting in the middle of the plane intersecting it and used the difference tool. The difference tool kind of stamps one object into another creating new faces on the target object, this made a dent of the text mesh into plane mesh. 

With the newly dented plane mesh I began to delete these new faces on the plane so that it looks like a paper cut out, a square bit of paper with “level-1.org.uk” cut out of it.

With the plane in its new state, I wanted to use the cut out bits as portals for which light could flow through, so I put a volumetric spotlight behind the plane mesh and the proceeded to animate the light moving behind the plane from left to right.