Leaderboard

Recently there has been some interest in creating text circling an objext such as the Earth rotating, etc. I have created a "template" to help people understand this and to allow anyone to add their own text up to a total of 23 letters and/or spaces to create text circling the rotating and zooming planet Jupiter on an animated starfield background. Doing circular text is really not completely amenable to a "style" although it "can" be done and I will eventually produce a style which will allow the user to add their own text similar to what Dave Gould did, except more complex. This "Template" allows anyone to very quickly put their own text in and create a nice animated zooming planet on an animated starfield. It only takes about three minutes to produce your own text on this and I have a video also linked here which explains the procedure. Essentially, you download the zipped PTE file, extract to a folder and open. Then you can quickly run a preview and see an "X" circling the zooming and rotating planet Jupiter. You simply substitute your own text beginning at the bottom of the series of "frames" with "text" - set each letter's opacity from zero to 100 and save your work. Set the opacity of the "X" to zero and you will have your own animated text circling the planet. With a little care you can change the font, color, closeness of text to the planet, shadow of text on the planet, etc., but this is not designed as a complete tutorial on how to create the effect, only a quick and convenient way for you to create your own example and use it as you please - all necessary components are in the zipped PTE file. Once you get comfortable with this, you can substitute a video of a rotating Earth, Mars, the Moon, etc., or even some PNG object of your choice - or perhaps a "cube." There are plenty of possibilities and I've taken the work out of it for you. http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/circulartexttutor.zip (video tutorial) 50 meg http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/experimentalforcirclingtext.zip (zipped PTE files) 12 meg Continuation - Manuel demonstrated another option below which got a little ahead of my tutorial so I produced a second tutorial and an additional template linked below. My first template allows the user to quickly create their own text circling an object - in this case the rotating planet Jupiter. It's quick and easy to do but there is a small downside. The rotating text is perfect if the text is very close to a completely round object such as a planet. On the other hand, if the object is not round or if the user wants to have the text circle larger, the back side of the letters are not visible. In order to have the back side of the letters visible but not crossing the "front" of the object when they reverse, it's necessary to duplicate the child letters of the frames and place them on the back layer behind the masked object being circled, and to turn off the front view of the letters and turn on the back view. I have created a second tutorial video explaining this and a second template for the user in which it's necessary to modify the text on both the upper series and on the lower series. On the upper series of child text of frames, the front of the circling letters are shown. On the lower series of duplicated child text of frames, the back of the circling letters are revealed whenever the text is not hidden by the rotating planet... http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/backandfronttext.zip (tutorial) http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/circleletterstemplate2.zip (template) Have fun, Lin