Letter by Letter Animation

Question

I'm working in blender, to animate a piece of text for a game I am making. I intend on giving the text multiple animations. For example, one animation has each letter in the text rotate along it's x axis, from first letter, to last. As you can see, this involves rotating each letter individually. I have tried using each letter as a separate object, but this seems to generate an individual action for each letter...which would be cumbersome to implement into a game.

I have also tried rotating each letter, while keeping the word as a single object, but I can't find a way to add key frames, for changes to the mesh of the word.

I am new to blender, so I know i'm probably overlooking something...any help would be great!

Answer 1

You may achieve it adding a Copy Rotation Constraint to every single letter and setting an Empty as a target.

Set the separate origin point to every single letter and add an Empty.

Select a letter, go to the Constraints header, choose Copy Rotation and set an Empty as a target. Repeat the process with every other letter.

Change the pivot center type to Individual Origins. Select an Empty and rotate it. Every letter copies the rotation of an Empty now.

Of course you may add a rotation shapekey to the entire object, but as you can see below it may cause some letters' deformations so I don't recommend it.

Answer 2

Use an armature to animate your mesh.

Above image is a weight painted mesh. The red submesh (letter R shape) is controlled by the bone with a corresponding vertex group. The fine connection lines of the armature are hard to see.

Below is the mesh reshaped by the armature in pose mode.

Animation to follow. Perhaps you can show an animation for me.

Multiple meshes or single mesh. If an armature can animate a body mesh it can animate your mesh. Each letter can be assigned to single bone exclusively via vertex groups. All meshes can have vertex groups. The armature is a sequence of controllers for your sequence of mesh/submeshes.

Bones of the armature can be disconnected so they operate independently in terms of rotation and position, yet are a convenient collection of controllers.

We assume your 3d text type has been converted to a 3d mesh type. Thus I will only use the word mesh.

Bones can operate on an entire object, or an entire mesh, or parts of mesh, and share influence. Those features are intentional. The parts of the mesh can be designated with vertex groups. This often automatically happens with ... parent to armature. Then weight painting creates modifications.

Each mesh or submesh (visually looking like anything including a letter) can be in it own vertex group assigned to a single bone. Bones which control the head of a body mesh do not control the toes, there is independence.

I will submit a picture in a few minutes. You can submit one in addtion in your question.

You would edit position in pose mode of the armature, and have access to all armature features.