Text Spline

Enter the text into the Text box. You can enter up to multiple lines of text — press Return to start a new line. The text appears in the Viewport as a spline primitive when click outside the text box.

Font

TrueType, OpenType and PostscriptFonts can all be used in Cinema 4D. However the following restrictions do apply:

• Macintosh (with an operating system prior to macOS X 10.5): OpenType fonts will only work if they contain TrueType applications. All characters within an installed font can be used (Euro characters, Japanese characters, etc.)

The font preview in the selection menu makes it easy to select the right font. You can also scroll up and down the list using the arrow keys or scroll wheel.

Align

Set the text’s alignment to left-aligned, centered or right-aligned.

Height[-∞..+∞m]

The height of the letters, in world coordinates.

Horizontal Spacing[-∞..+∞m]

With these command you can insert space between the characters.

Vertical Spacing[-∞..+∞m]

With these command you can insert space between the text lines.

Some fonts are poorly designed and will have noticeable overlapping edges. CINEMA 4D cannot improve these faults. Always use high quality fonts for best results.

You can get a good result with 3D fonts by using the Bevel command on a font object and restricting the angle limit to approx. 20°.

Separate Letters

Activate this option. Now call up the Mesh / Convert / Make Editable function. A new object is created that has separate spline sub-objects for each letter of the text.

The object axis of the individual letter splines is located on the baseline of the selected character set.

This option makes sense and is very useful if, for example, you want to arrange a text (i.e. the individual letters) on a spline.

Kerning

The Kerning settings let you define text size and spacing per letter. This should eliminate the need for external programs for making parametric modifications to text, e.g., if you want to adjust the spacing between the letters "A” and "V” (which is quite common). All modifications can be made interactively in the Viewport.

The following properties can be modified for a given letter (or for an entire text):

• Distance from previous letter
• Horizontal or vertical size, or overall scale
• Baseline Shift (vertical position)

In the end you can come up with parametric creations like the one on the right:

How it Works

Enabling the Show 3D GUI option will display the following handles in the Viewport:

Above each letter you will see a correspondingly marked square handle, which can be dragged (without Selection) to adjust the spacing to the left of the letter. Of course a Selection can also be used:

• Click on a letter handle to select it
• Shift+ click on a handle will additionally select all letters between this letter and the last selected letter (or deselect if you clicked on the wrong letter). The properties of the selected letters (Tracking, Scale and Baseline Shift) can then be modified simultaneously (each to the same absolute value) when one of the handles marked in the image above is moved.

Letter selections can be made independent of the text itself and affect only those letters, i.e., if you select letters 5-9 and enter a different text, only letters 5-9 will be affected.

Dragging a handle – and pressing the following keys - will have the following effect:

• Shift: Corresponding parameters will be modified in steps of 10.
• Ctrl/Cmd: Corresponding parameters will be modified interactively and very slowly (which makes fine-tuning easier; if the Shift key is pressed simultaneously, parameters will be modified in steps of 1).

Settings

3D Handles

Use this option to define whether or not the interactive 3D handles should be displayed in the Viewport. This option should be disabled as soon as you have finished fine-tuning the kerning of the text to avoid inadvertently modifying text properties at a later point.

The following parameters can also be adjusted interactively in the Viewport by using the corresponding handles (see above).

Start/End

These settings are numeric selections that you can normally define interactively in the Viewport (see above). However, it can be easier to modify these values in the Attribute Manager if, for example, the letter handles overlap. If you want to select the 2nd letter, enter 1 for Start and 2 for End. To select letters 3 to 6, enter 2 and 6, respectively.

Kerning / Tracking

Both settings basically have the same function in Cinema 4D with the exception that Tracking can be modified at any time in the Viewport without making a selection using the handles positioned above each letter. The Kerning setting – which is displayed as a single handle when multiple letters are selected – can be applied to multiple letters simultaneously.

Both settings are used to adjust the spacing to the left of each letter.

Horizontal / Vertical Scale

Use these settings to individually adjust letters’ horizontal and vertical scale.

Scale

This value defines the overall scaling of letters (taking the aforementioned values into consideration).

Baseline Shift

Use this setting to shift the position of letters up or down.

Reset All

Clicking this button will set all values back to their default values.

Reset Selected

Clicking this button will reset the values of all selected letters back to their default values.

Select All

Clicking this button will select all letters in the Attribute Manager’s Text field.

Plane

Here you can define the layer on which the spline should come to rest.

Reverse

Enabling this option will reverse the point order of the spline (see also Spline Primitives.

Max Length[0..+∞m]

This parameter, which is only effective in Subdivided Interpolation mode, controls the maximum spline segment length without an intermediate point (see above for Subdivided) must be inserted.