After applying curve modifier to text, I lose my location keyframes animation

Question

I have a sphere that I am orbiting some text around. My goal is to export this as a .gltf model to use in a web browser.

Here are the steps I used to orbit the text around the sphere:

1. I created a circle curve that's a little bigger than the sphere.
2. I added some text.
3. I used a curve modifier on the text, using the bezier circle as the curve object.
4. I added location keyframes on the x-axis to the text object to create an animation that orbits the text around the sphere.

Everything works good in blender. However, when I export the model, (even with "apply modifiers" checked off), it doesn't maintain the curve modifier for the text. The animation exports just fine, but it no longer curves around the sphere. It just animates linearly along the x-axis instead of following the curve.

If I apply the modifier in blender, the same thing happens. It just moves linearly out from the x-axis.

Any idea how I can maintain the integrity of this modifier?

Answer 1

Okay, I figured out a solution for this issue. Instead of creating the animation around the circle curve, I set the origin of the text to the center of the sphere, and rotated the text around the origin.

The steps are as follows:

1. Create circle curve and expand scale slightly bigger than sphere.
2. Add some text. Add a curve modifier for the text, setting the curve object to the circle curve we created in step 1. Apply this modifier.
3. Now, set the origin of the text to the center of the sphere. In my case, the center of the sphere is the center of the world, where the cursor was. So I just set origin to cursor.
4. Create rotation animation keyframes around the z-axis.

This works better than having your animation rely on the circle curve with the curve modifier. We can now apply our modifier, and simply rotate around the origin.