Ok, I'm a production manager at a TV station, and I often have clients whose message would benefit from the write-on-text effect. This effect gives the impression that text is being written onto the screen, rather than simply being faded or cut into view. There is a much more difficult and time consuming way to do this within Vegas, involving event masking, but this is a method I've developed using additional FREE open source software called Blender 3D, which gives good results without all of the headache.
I will try to make my instructions for blender as detailed as possible to help those who don't have any knowledge of it all.
Download blender from http://www.blender3d.org
Install the software
Start Blender
NOW THE FUN PART
With the mouse hovering over the wide open work space, press the SPACEBAR. SELECT Add>Text from the pop-up menu.
You are in 'EDIT' mode automatically. Enter the desired text using back space, space, enter and the characters on your qwerty keyboard. Once you are happy with your text, press 'TAB' to exit edit mode, and enter 'OBJECT' mode. Once in 'OBJECT' mode you cannot change the text, but you can manipulate the entire word.
You should see a pink outline around the entire word or phrase you typed, and the letters themselves should be grey. This means that the 'TEXT OBJECT' is selected and does not mean that the text will render with a pink outline when you're ready to output. (see bottom of this page for info of changing the color or font of your text. This is a fully functional 3D program, so there are many 3D options for the text that are beyond the scope of this tutorial. However, there is a plethora of information on the blender website, and through there forums which can be found here http://blenderartists.org/forum/)
The text is currently a 'TEXT OBJECT', but we need it to be a 'MESH OBJECT'. We accomplish this by converting the TEXT to a CURVE, and then converting the CURVE to a MESH. We do this by pressing ALT+C, selecting CURVE, and then pressing ALT+C again and selecting MESH. Your 'TEXT OBJECT' should now be a 'MESH OBJECT".
Press F9, and you should see the 'BUTTON PANEL' at the bottom of the page change to reveal a button labled 'Add Modifier'. Pressing this button will drop down a list of 'MODIFIERS'. Select the 'BUILD' modifier and observe the following settings:
Start: Dictates which frame to start building the MESH OBJECT
Length: Dictates how many frames it will take to BUILD the MESH OBJECT
Randomize: won't be used for this tutorial
Seed: won't be used for this tutorial
Set the START frame to 2 (You don't have to, but it gives one frame where nothing will be visible. Your text may vanish at this point. Don't worry I'll cover this shortly.)
Set the LENGTH to something between 3 and 7. (Depends on how many frames you want it to take to BUILD or 'WRITE-ON' each letter.
Hover the mouse over your text and press TAB (if your text vanished before, it should be back.) You have just entered edit mode, but now you have a MESH OBJECT instead of a TEXT OBJECT. This will show you the many points or VERTECES that make up your text. We will now select the points that make up each letter and SEPARATE them from the word or phrase so they can be individually BUILT.
Press 'B' then press 'B' again, this should change the cursor into a circle which can be used for selecting verteces. Use the mouse wheel to adjust the size of the circle. Press the left mouse button and drag the circle over the verteces of the first letter and they will change from pink to yellow. If you mess up, just press ESC, followed by 'A' and start over.
Once you've got the first letter selected press ESC to exit the selection tool, then 'P' and select 'SELECTED' from the pop-up menu. This will SEPARATE the SELECTED letter from the rest of the word or phrase. Repeat this process for each letter.
When you are finished separating all of the letters, press TAB to return to exit EDIT MODE and return to OBJECT mode.
Your text will probably vanish because you are at frame 1 in the 'ANIMATION TIMELINE' and nothing is set to start building until frame 2. Pressing the RIGHT and LEFT AAROW KEYS will change the current frame. You can see your current frame toward the top of the current button panel. Advance the current frame to around 100. You can also click in the FRAME box, and type in a value followed by ENTER to advance to that position on the ANIMATION TIMELINE.
Each of the letters will already have the BUILD MODIFIER applied, because it was applied to the entire word or phrase. You can select each individual letter by right clicking it, you will see it outlined in pink, indicating that it is selected.
Select the second letter in the word or phrase, and change it's BUILD MODIFIER 'START' setting to be whatever the original START value was plus the original LENGTH. This will cause the second letter to START building when the first letter has finished. For example, if the original START frame was 2 as I suggested earlier, and you used a LENGTH of 3, you would simply add 2+3=5, and the START frame for the second letter would be 5. Repeat this process for each of the letters, adding the LENGTH to the START of the previous letter. Using the current example, The first letter would have a START frame of 2, 2nd letter START of 5, 3rd letter START of 8, and 4th letter START of 11, etc.
At this point the animation of the write-on effect is complete. All that remains is to RENDER out your image sequence for Vegas.
SETUP RENDER.
PRESS F10 and you will be taken to the render options.
Under OUTPUT
Press the top folder icon to change the output directory for your picture sequence. You can either type this in using DOS format, like c:\pics\3d\animation\write-on.
Under Render
Set OSA to 16
Deselect Ray if it is selected. (this is a renderign option that shouldn't be necessary)
Where you see Sky|Premul|Key select 'Premul', this is so Vegas can import the images without a background.
Under Anim
Set End to the number of frames you want to output. This should be set to at least the frame that the last letter will be built by. For the example from earlier, this would be frame 14, because the last letter starts building at frame 11, and it takes 3 frames to finish. 11+3=14. O_o
Under Format
Press NTSC or PAL, depending on your vegas project settings. ( You can also adjust your frame rate using the Frs/sec if you're doing 24p NTSC. This value can be set to whatever you like.)
Press the button above Quality and select 'Targa Raw', this will allow the images to include an alpha channel, which will allow Vegas to display them with no background.
Select RGBA, this will make the images 32 bit instead of 24 bit. Each of the three color channels, Red, Green, and Blue, in an ordinary image uses 8 bits, an additional 8 bits is used for the Alpha channel. 3X8=24...4x8=32. No alpha channel, no transparent background.
With Your rendering options setup. I would suggest saving your project by using FILE>SAVE AS.
Beause this is a 3D program you have to setup a camera to see what you're rendering. Blender will give you one light and one camera by default. You can use the numpad to show different views of the work space.
NumPAd Keys:
7-Top View-or birds-eye
3-Side View
1-Front View
The Camera will look like a triangular object, and the light will look conical with a dashed line pointing toward the center of the workspace.
The idea here is to place the camera so that it is facing and parallel to the text and far enough away that the entire message can be read.
Select the Camera using a RIGHT CLICK, and press 'G' you will be able you move the camera around freely using the mouse, pressing ESC will return it to it's original position, Left Clicking will place the Camera where you have moved it to.
You will also have to use 'R' to rotate the camera to get the desired perspective.
Use the TOP, SIDE, and FRONT, views to help Rotate, and move the camera in each of the three planes until you get the desired result.
Another handy trick is to use Camera View, which is achieved by selecting the camera, and them pressing CTRL+0 on the NUMPAD. This will allow you to see what the camera is currently looking at. In cam view the using the mouse wheel will zoom in and out. If you zoom out far enough you will see a boxed and dashed box, this is similar to the safe title area in vegas. zoom in too far and you will not see these at all. Since you're dealing with text, these guides will come in handy as you try to line the camera up for final output.
Selecting the camera from side view (NUMPAD-3) you can press 'G' to move it until it is pretty much level with the text, and move it in front of it. Then press ALT-R to remove any rotation. Then press 'R' and type in -90, and hit enter, which will flip the camera up so that it's pointing toward the text. Then you can go to TOP VIEW-NUMPAD 7 and line up the camera with the center of the text. Then press CTRL+NUMPAD 0 to go into CAMERA VIEW, and press 'G', followed by an ALT+LEFT MOUSE CLICK to lock camera movement to one plane, the y-plane. Now, moving the mouse up and down will move the camera toward and away from the text, allowing you to exactly position the cam so that all of the text can be read.
Admittedly, this is the trickiest part of the tut, but once you get a handle on 3D views and object manipulation, it's a breeze.
Once you're happy with the position of the camera relative tot he text you can just press the ANIM button. This will start blender to rendering out the image sequence. A render window will pop-up and the frame will advance in the upper left hand corner.
When this is finished Open up vegas
Select Import>Media and browse to the directory where you saved your image sequence. Select the first picture in the sequence, and check the box in the bottom left hand corner of the import dialogue to open as a STILL IMAGE SEQUENCE, and vegas will automatically select the frist to last frames as the sequence. Press ok, and eneter:
Tape name-Whatever you want it to be
Change Frame Rate to whatever you used from blender
Change Aspect ratio to .909 or whatever you used from blender.
Change Field order to Progressive
Change the alpha channel to premultiplied
Press ok
You should have a new file in your project media bin that contains the image sequence from blender, just drop it on the timeline and you should be able to work with it like any other media in Vegas. Keep in mind that if the color of the text was black you'll need a non-black background to see it in the preview monitor.
Writing this ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, and as I wrote it, I began to realize that it sounds much more complicated than it actually is. However, I must admit that my intermediate knowledge of Blender is what makes this method simpler than others I have tried. Regardless, I highly reccomend using this method, and Blender in general, it is an intuitive and versatile tool for creating 3D elements and animations for use in Vegas.
I will be adding short revisions on how to change the color of the text and the font, shortly, but right now I have to get back to work. I suggest visiting the blender forums I mentioned earlier ( http://blenderartists.org/forum/ ). If you need immediate assistance with this. There's also a blender wiki, which should have answers ( http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Materials ) and an irc channel which I found very helpful when I was learning my way around Blender. ( http://www.blender.org/community/chat/ )
Feel free to post with any questions or suggestions.
List of search tags: (for those who may be looking for this info.
write-on-text
write-on
type-on text
type on
type text
written text effect
writing effect
typing effect
I will try to make my instructions for blender as detailed as possible to help those who don't have any knowledge of it all.
Download blender from http://www.blender3d.org
Install the software
Start Blender
NOW THE FUN PART
With the mouse hovering over the wide open work space, press the SPACEBAR. SELECT Add>Text from the pop-up menu.
You are in 'EDIT' mode automatically. Enter the desired text using back space, space, enter and the characters on your qwerty keyboard. Once you are happy with your text, press 'TAB' to exit edit mode, and enter 'OBJECT' mode. Once in 'OBJECT' mode you cannot change the text, but you can manipulate the entire word.
You should see a pink outline around the entire word or phrase you typed, and the letters themselves should be grey. This means that the 'TEXT OBJECT' is selected and does not mean that the text will render with a pink outline when you're ready to output. (see bottom of this page for info of changing the color or font of your text. This is a fully functional 3D program, so there are many 3D options for the text that are beyond the scope of this tutorial. However, there is a plethora of information on the blender website, and through there forums which can be found here http://blenderartists.org/forum/)
The text is currently a 'TEXT OBJECT', but we need it to be a 'MESH OBJECT'. We accomplish this by converting the TEXT to a CURVE, and then converting the CURVE to a MESH. We do this by pressing ALT+C, selecting CURVE, and then pressing ALT+C again and selecting MESH. Your 'TEXT OBJECT' should now be a 'MESH OBJECT".
Press F9, and you should see the 'BUTTON PANEL' at the bottom of the page change to reveal a button labled 'Add Modifier'. Pressing this button will drop down a list of 'MODIFIERS'. Select the 'BUILD' modifier and observe the following settings:
Start: Dictates which frame to start building the MESH OBJECT
Length: Dictates how many frames it will take to BUILD the MESH OBJECT
Randomize: won't be used for this tutorial
Seed: won't be used for this tutorial
Set the START frame to 2 (You don't have to, but it gives one frame where nothing will be visible. Your text may vanish at this point. Don't worry I'll cover this shortly.)
Set the LENGTH to something between 3 and 7. (Depends on how many frames you want it to take to BUILD or 'WRITE-ON' each letter.
Hover the mouse over your text and press TAB (if your text vanished before, it should be back.) You have just entered edit mode, but now you have a MESH OBJECT instead of a TEXT OBJECT. This will show you the many points or VERTECES that make up your text. We will now select the points that make up each letter and SEPARATE them from the word or phrase so they can be individually BUILT.
Press 'B' then press 'B' again, this should change the cursor into a circle which can be used for selecting verteces. Use the mouse wheel to adjust the size of the circle. Press the left mouse button and drag the circle over the verteces of the first letter and they will change from pink to yellow. If you mess up, just press ESC, followed by 'A' and start over.
Once you've got the first letter selected press ESC to exit the selection tool, then 'P' and select 'SELECTED' from the pop-up menu. This will SEPARATE the SELECTED letter from the rest of the word or phrase. Repeat this process for each letter.
When you are finished separating all of the letters, press TAB to return to exit EDIT MODE and return to OBJECT mode.
Your text will probably vanish because you are at frame 1 in the 'ANIMATION TIMELINE' and nothing is set to start building until frame 2. Pressing the RIGHT and LEFT AAROW KEYS will change the current frame. You can see your current frame toward the top of the current button panel. Advance the current frame to around 100. You can also click in the FRAME box, and type in a value followed by ENTER to advance to that position on the ANIMATION TIMELINE.
Each of the letters will already have the BUILD MODIFIER applied, because it was applied to the entire word or phrase. You can select each individual letter by right clicking it, you will see it outlined in pink, indicating that it is selected.
Select the second letter in the word or phrase, and change it's BUILD MODIFIER 'START' setting to be whatever the original START value was plus the original LENGTH. This will cause the second letter to START building when the first letter has finished. For example, if the original START frame was 2 as I suggested earlier, and you used a LENGTH of 3, you would simply add 2+3=5, and the START frame for the second letter would be 5. Repeat this process for each of the letters, adding the LENGTH to the START of the previous letter. Using the current example, The first letter would have a START frame of 2, 2nd letter START of 5, 3rd letter START of 8, and 4th letter START of 11, etc.
At this point the animation of the write-on effect is complete. All that remains is to RENDER out your image sequence for Vegas.
SETUP RENDER.
PRESS F10 and you will be taken to the render options.
Under OUTPUT
Press the top folder icon to change the output directory for your picture sequence. You can either type this in using DOS format, like c:\pics\3d\animation\write-on.
Under Render
Set OSA to 16
Deselect Ray if it is selected. (this is a renderign option that shouldn't be necessary)
Where you see Sky|Premul|Key select 'Premul', this is so Vegas can import the images without a background.
Under Anim
Set End to the number of frames you want to output. This should be set to at least the frame that the last letter will be built by. For the example from earlier, this would be frame 14, because the last letter starts building at frame 11, and it takes 3 frames to finish. 11+3=14. O_o
Under Format
Press NTSC or PAL, depending on your vegas project settings. ( You can also adjust your frame rate using the Frs/sec if you're doing 24p NTSC. This value can be set to whatever you like.)
Press the button above Quality and select 'Targa Raw', this will allow the images to include an alpha channel, which will allow Vegas to display them with no background.
Select RGBA, this will make the images 32 bit instead of 24 bit. Each of the three color channels, Red, Green, and Blue, in an ordinary image uses 8 bits, an additional 8 bits is used for the Alpha channel. 3X8=24...4x8=32. No alpha channel, no transparent background.
With Your rendering options setup. I would suggest saving your project by using FILE>SAVE AS.
Beause this is a 3D program you have to setup a camera to see what you're rendering. Blender will give you one light and one camera by default. You can use the numpad to show different views of the work space.
NumPAd Keys:
7-Top View-or birds-eye
3-Side View
1-Front View
The Camera will look like a triangular object, and the light will look conical with a dashed line pointing toward the center of the workspace.
The idea here is to place the camera so that it is facing and parallel to the text and far enough away that the entire message can be read.
Select the Camera using a RIGHT CLICK, and press 'G' you will be able you move the camera around freely using the mouse, pressing ESC will return it to it's original position, Left Clicking will place the Camera where you have moved it to.
You will also have to use 'R' to rotate the camera to get the desired perspective.
Use the TOP, SIDE, and FRONT, views to help Rotate, and move the camera in each of the three planes until you get the desired result.
Another handy trick is to use Camera View, which is achieved by selecting the camera, and them pressing CTRL+0 on the NUMPAD. This will allow you to see what the camera is currently looking at. In cam view the using the mouse wheel will zoom in and out. If you zoom out far enough you will see a boxed and dashed box, this is similar to the safe title area in vegas. zoom in too far and you will not see these at all. Since you're dealing with text, these guides will come in handy as you try to line the camera up for final output.
Selecting the camera from side view (NUMPAD-3) you can press 'G' to move it until it is pretty much level with the text, and move it in front of it. Then press ALT-R to remove any rotation. Then press 'R' and type in -90, and hit enter, which will flip the camera up so that it's pointing toward the text. Then you can go to TOP VIEW-NUMPAD 7 and line up the camera with the center of the text. Then press CTRL+NUMPAD 0 to go into CAMERA VIEW, and press 'G', followed by an ALT+LEFT MOUSE CLICK to lock camera movement to one plane, the y-plane. Now, moving the mouse up and down will move the camera toward and away from the text, allowing you to exactly position the cam so that all of the text can be read.
Admittedly, this is the trickiest part of the tut, but once you get a handle on 3D views and object manipulation, it's a breeze.
Once you're happy with the position of the camera relative tot he text you can just press the ANIM button. This will start blender to rendering out the image sequence. A render window will pop-up and the frame will advance in the upper left hand corner.
When this is finished Open up vegas
Select Import>Media and browse to the directory where you saved your image sequence. Select the first picture in the sequence, and check the box in the bottom left hand corner of the import dialogue to open as a STILL IMAGE SEQUENCE, and vegas will automatically select the frist to last frames as the sequence. Press ok, and eneter:
Tape name-Whatever you want it to be
Change Frame Rate to whatever you used from blender
Change Aspect ratio to .909 or whatever you used from blender.
Change Field order to Progressive
Change the alpha channel to premultiplied
Press ok
You should have a new file in your project media bin that contains the image sequence from blender, just drop it on the timeline and you should be able to work with it like any other media in Vegas. Keep in mind that if the color of the text was black you'll need a non-black background to see it in the preview monitor.
Writing this ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, and as I wrote it, I began to realize that it sounds much more complicated than it actually is. However, I must admit that my intermediate knowledge of Blender is what makes this method simpler than others I have tried. Regardless, I highly reccomend using this method, and Blender in general, it is an intuitive and versatile tool for creating 3D elements and animations for use in Vegas.
I will be adding short revisions on how to change the color of the text and the font, shortly, but right now I have to get back to work. I suggest visiting the blender forums I mentioned earlier ( http://blenderartists.org/forum/ ). If you need immediate assistance with this. There's also a blender wiki, which should have answers ( http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Materials ) and an irc channel which I found very helpful when I was learning my way around Blender. ( http://www.blender.org/community/chat/ )
Feel free to post with any questions or suggestions.
List of search tags: (for those who may be looking for this info.
write-on-text
write-on
type-on text
type on
type text
written text effect
writing effect
typing effect
