Introducing Maya® 2011

Animating Flying Text

It’s inevitable. Sooner or later, someone will ask you to animate a flying logo or flying text for something or other. As late-1980s as that may sound, animating flying text—at least, the way you’ll do it here—can teach you a thing or two about path animation and lattice deformers. You can use the following steps to animate pretty much anything that has to twist, wind, and bend along a path; this technique isn’t just for text.

First, you’ll need to create the text. To do so, follow these steps:

1. In a new scene, select Create ⇒ Text ❒. In the option box, enter your text, and select a font to use (see Figure 8-32). In this case, stick with Times New Roman. Set the Type to Bevel.

Setting the Type attribute to Poly for your ...