Make sides of text object a different color?

Question

I have a text object and I want to change the inner color of it, so that it is black. How can this be achieved?

So the inside of the S is black, and the outside it still blue?

Like this:

I've already done it but there should be a faster way to do it.

Answer 1

Here's a shader which does as ideasman42 suggests:

_{The values of the empty sockets in the multiply nodes are all 0.}

This works by taking the dot product of 0,0,1 and 0,0,-1 in object space, and mixing two shaders based on the result.
In this case, parts of the surface facing in the +Z or -Z direction (in object space) will be black, while the rest of the surface will be blue.

Using a shader has the advantage of keeping the text editable as text.

Answer 2

Blender doesn't have a direct way to do this currently.

Your options are:

• Convert the text to a mesh, Then select faces and change their materials.
• Use a shader which colors the faces differently based on their object space normal.

Answer 3

Gandalf's answer is the cat's mewow, yet here's a simpler version that still works IF you don't need to rotate the text away from, in this example, the Y axis. If you rotate it, it breaks horribly.

Answer 4

Or you could make a World (or Object) space blend gradient ramp, play with the direction until it maps across the extrusion and then using Constant interpolation of the gradient ramp, adjust position of front face colour tab to be exactly on the edge of front face.

Answer 5

Currently, you can leave your text with 0 extrude width, add a Solidify Modifier and change the Material Index Offset for rim faces.

Answer 6

Copy and paste the text. Use one object as the extruded part and one as the surface part. Then just change the color of each one. Then, I found this way to group them: To group... "press ctrl+G, you will notice a green outline appear around them. Now in future, if you wish to manipulate the whole group: Select a member of the group and then press shift+G and press Group and it will select every other object in that group which you can now drag around, scale etc"