Cineversity

The new controls over Motext individual letters are great but it is unfortunate that there is not a Left AND Right justify option.

I have a long paragraph with a lot of line breaks.  I can split each line into its own object and set the Horz. Distance of each so they line up on both sides but this leaves me with about 25 Motext Objects.

I have gone into the original Motext paragraph and hand stretched each line but this is really tedious.

Is there a way to stretch an entire line out using the the 3D Kerning or is it one letter at a time.  I know if I start from the left I can push everything right but it still ends up being a word by word or even letter by peter process.

Thanks

Hi TAK,

If you like to have an option that creates a straight line on the right and on the left (text block), that is not a given in MoText.

You can only shift click on each letter to select a line, and then pull. (Shift click on the first and last letter, then pull.) But you wrote: this is really tedious.

You might use Illustrator or InDesign to get this kind of “Text-Representation”.

The way Ai or especially Id does it, is based on a prediction/calculation how a text would break down for this over many lines ahead. This was introduced when Id 1.0 (1999?) to get the lost marked from PageMaker against QuarkXpress. From my point this was the main feature that made it—for me at least—to an QuarkXpress killer.

To keep the “Kerning” and the letter size as much as possible intact and have that kind of flow in the text, was breath-taking at that time. When I learned Typography in the mid ‘90s, the key was always to get readability and a “gray” text block while squinting. The block is not just a block, it can be weighted or measured, which gives a different result. How the period or a comma is handled is key, is it before, centered or after the border. Which shows how sophisticated such an engine must be, to create a great flow.
The left and right idea (text block) was already at that time not favorite, as it lowers the readability. Something to think about. I like the right edge to be wild and leave it that way.

The MoText kerning options are exactly what they are supposed to be, to allow for fine adjustments among letter pairs. IF the lines get pulled this “fine-tuning” might be in danger. Hence—why I wrote a little bit about typography, and why this is only a good idea if the readability is secondary and the text as graphic the main target. For that—set this up in Ai or Id, and export the letter as ai v8 file.

Sorry, more is not possible. You might go ahead and suggest more functionality to MAXON as request.

All the best

Sassi

I kind of suspected it wasn’t possible.  I was hoping to keep things editable inside C4D but AI is certainly the better way to go I guess.

For this particular project my client wants Block justifying.  Gotta keep the clients happy!

Thanks!

TAK

You’re welcome, TAK. Yes, if the target is a “block”, then it has to be a block.

For the kerning I had a solution over the years, but for a “block” aesthetic, I have not. I wish I could give you a simple trick.

Good luck with the project

Sassi

P.S.: I checked as well XPresso. Not an option as far as I can tell.