spiral made of words/text using bpy

Question

im looking for some help on using the code (already working blender 2.9.2) to trace/create a column using a .txt file providing a list of words. Around 100 words.

Ideally the words should create a spiral like this one:

No need to have a visible spiral structure, floating words suspended should be ideal.

So far I have this code:

import bpy

f = open("/Users/sust.txt", "r")

y=0
x=0
z=0

for line in f:

    t1 = bpy.data.curves.new("message", "FONT")
    o1 = bpy.data.objects.new("message", t1)
    bpy.context.collection.objects.link(o1)
    o1.location = (x,y,z)
    t1.body = line   
    t1.offset_x = 0.1
    t1.offset_y = -0.25
    t1.shear = -0.5

    t1.extrude = 0.4

    x = x - .05*t1.size
    y = y - -5*t1.size        
    z = z - .05*t1.size

The code above traces a slanted column of words taken from the sust.txt file

Any hints or help appreciated!

Answer 1

If you want your spiral object to look something like this:

You can use the code below.

It uses a built-in add-on, "Add Curve: Extra Objects", so be sure that's enabled.

Step by step, the code

• reads the text from the file, creating a single long string, replacing the new line characters from the file with spaces. (I didn't bother to remove the final trailing space, but that's easy enough to do.)

• creates a spiral curve. The arguments for this are not well documented, so to get the settings you want, I recommend creating a spiral curve by hand, playing with the last operate adjust panel to see what the parameters are and modifying my call to bpy.ops.curve.spirals with the arguments that suit your needs.

• hides the spiral curve from both the viewport and the render.

• creates the text curve, and effectively rotates it 180 degrees on the Y axis so it won't look like a mirror image.

• sets the text of the curve object to the string from the file.

• adds the modifier to the text object and sets it to follow the spiral curve.

• It sets the text of the text curve to the string read from the file.

import bpy

# Read the file into a string
file = PATH_TO_FILE_CONTAINING_TEXT

def file_to_text(filename):
    with open(filename, 'r') as f:
        contents = f.read().replace('\n', ' ')
        return contents
string = file_to_text(file)

# Create the spiral
bpy.ops.curve.spirals(turns=3, edit_mode=False, dif_radius=1.98, dif_z=1.4)
curve_object = bpy.data.objects['Spiral']

# Hide it
curve_object.hide_viewport = True
curve_object.hide_render = True

# Create the text object
bpy.ops.object.text_add()
text_object = bpy.data.objects['Text']
text_object.scale=(1,-1,1)

# Set the text to the string from the file
text_curve = text_object.data
text_curve.body = string

# Add the curve modifier and set it to use the spiral
text_object.modifiers.new('curve', 'CURVE')
curve_modifier = text_object.modifiers[-1]
curve_modifier.object = curve_object