If
you have never seen the Universal studios intro (the one they play before
the movie) you can watch my version of
it. It is about 14 megs to download.Universal Studios Logo Tutorial
or
How to Make an Orbiting Logo
By: Jeremy Brooks
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If you have ever played with text in Blender then you probably know how to make it spin around or move across the screen. The Spinning Text Logo seems to be one of the first logo animations people try to do. There are lots of spinning text logos out there so here is how you can make a logo that is a little bit different; have the text orbit around an object instead! This looks really cool when you are done.
I was watching Happy Gilmore and thought that the Universal intro would be cool to make. So, to demonstrate this technique we will try to create in Blender one of the most famous orbiting text logos: the Universal Studios logo.
If
you have never seen the Universal studios intro (the one they play before
the movie) you can watch my version of
it. It is about 14 megs to download.
Note: This tutorial was written for version 2.12 of Blender. If you use 2.20 or later you may find that features are different or missing. You can find 2.12 in my Downloads section. Also, this can be a fairly difficult and time consuming tutorial if you are new to Blender. You need to already be pretty familiar with Blender's interface or you are going to have a tough time with this one. If you are brave, prepare to begin...
Start a new Blender project.
Press '7' on the num pad to go to top view.
Position the crosshair cursor 4 grids below the world origin (uh-oh new term). The world origin is where the pink and green lines meet. This is the exact center of your 3d world or 3d universe. If you don't see a green and pink line make sure you are in top view by pressing '7' on the num pad. If you still don't see them then make sure you are NOT in perspective view by pressing '5' on the num pad.
Hold 'Shift' and press 's' and click Curs->Grid. This will make sure the cursor is exactly on the grid line.
Press '1' to go to front view.
Press 'Space' and click Add->Text.
Type U N I V E R S A L (Notice there is a space between each letter).
Press 'F9' to open the vertex edit options.
Press 'Tab'. The text should be pink and you can't type any letters. If you want to type more letters or fix a typing mistake press 'Tab' again. There is a way to change the font (find where it reads Load Font in the vertex edit options, 'F9'). You can't use True Type fonts however, you have to use Post Script fonts. Since Blender was originally made for *nix machines, and True Type is typically a Windows style font, it won't work. You should be able to find lots of free Post Script fonts on the Internet. (We are using Blender's default font for this tutorial.)
Set Ext1 to 0.100. This gives a 3d look to the text.
Hold 'Alt' and press 'c'. Click the word 'Curve' when the dialog box pops up. Now the text (which is loaded as a vector originally) is a curve. This is not what we want though.
Hold 'Alt' again and press 'c' ,again. Click the word 'Mesh'. Now the text is a mesh (a bunch of triangles) the we can play with.
Name the text 'universal'.
Press 'F9' if you are not already in vertex edit mode and look for a button called 'centre' (that means center for all us uncultured types). Click the button. This will center the text directly over its own origin (the little purple dot, each object has its own origin and that is what you rotate and scale objects around).
Click Set Smooth to make the text smooth shaded.
Press '7' on the num pad to go back to top view.
Press 'Space' and click Add->Mesh->UVSphere (not ICOSphere). This will be our Earth that the text orbits around. Name it 'earth'.
Click Set Smooth to make the sphere smooth shaded.
Move the camera down 13, yes exactly 13, grids from the world origin. You might have to zoom out a bit by pressing '-' on the num pad. Hold 'Shift' and press 's' and click Curs->Grid.
Press '0' on the num pad to go to camera view. Now you can see what the camera will see when it renders the scene. What we want to do is make sure our objects are the correct scale. This might be a good time to pop in the Happy Gilmore DVD and watch the Universal intro. If you freeze frame at the end of it you can see the correct position of the letters against the globe. Or look at the picture below to see my best guess. The easiest thing is to scale the globe since the text is already in frame from side to side.
**SAVE YOUR FILE NOW**
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Last Update: 07/12/2002 09:33 PM