Common Problems With Font Objects When Modeling Text As Curves In Blender

Retaining Editability

One of the main benefits of using text objects in Blender is that they remain fully editable. You can easily change the font, size, alignment, text content and styling even after creation. However, when you convert text to curves, you lose this flexible editability. The curved text takes on fixed visual appearance based on the font and text settings at the moment of conversion.

While curved text cannot adjust these text properties after conversion, there are modifiers such as curve modifiers that provide a non-destructive workflow. Using modifiers, you can retain adjustability of the visual curve geometry without needing to edit the original text object.

You also lose the ability to uniformly update multiple text objects when converting to curves. With text objects using the same font and sizes, you can quickly batch edit content, sizing, styling and so on. Curved text objects become independent of each other, requiring manual updates to each curve object.

When batch editing curved text is essential, you have a couple options. Parent the curve objects to an empty or lattice object. By deforming the parent object, you can uniformly transform child curve objects. Converting text to mesh instead of curve also unlocks different modifier and scripting solutions for batch edits.

Loss of Font Information

Converting text objects to curves causes them to lose all font style information – font type, size, styling effects, alignment and so on are discarded.

This limits the ability to uniformly edit or animate stylistic properties. For example, you may want to animate text size changes over time while retaining consistent appearance of other attributes like font type or boldness.

With curves, each object becomes independently defined by its converted geometry. To make broad styled changes, you need to manually reset or override settings on every curvified text object.

An alternative workflow is to convert text to mesh instead of curve. This retains ability to use modifiers for batch resizing and transforms. You can also assign mesh text objects a common material to control broad shading and texture changes.

Inconsistent Geometry

Converting complex text from fonts with high detail can often lead to curve geometry problems like self-intersections, sparse density in parts causing artifacts.

Font objects rely procedural definitions that dynamically adjust geometric complexity to render text at different sizes and styling. This can translate poorly to static curve representations.

Dense portions of text like serifs, small font sizes and bold styled letters tend to over-complicate geometry. Large font sizes or geometrically simple letterforms often result in unsmooth curves with poor resolution.

Manually editing curve geometry before and after conversion can improve quality. Adjust bevel depth settings, increase preview or render subdivision levels to smooth out issues. Consider baking curves to mesh for further precision control when needed.

Fixing Mesh Errors

Converting very dense fonts with lots of overlapping geometric detail can often generate non-manifold and self-intersecting geometry.

Text objects themselves may have geometry errors causing such issues when converted. Overlapping letters positioned too close, or extreme font effects like intense boldness on small text can be problematic.

As a precaution, visually inspect font objects before converting and adjust spacing or font settings as needed. Also try converting to mesh instead of curves for more robust geometry.

Once curve errors occur, you’ll have to manually fix the geometry. Enter edit mode and remove excess vertices at self-intersections. Adjust bevel controls to prevent overlaps. Consider reducing subdivisions for simpler geometry.

Maintaining Render Performance

Font objects benefit from procedural definitions that adapt geometric complexity to appearance needs. But excessive converted geometry from large or dense fonts can strain real-time and rendered performance in Blender.

Curve objects also handle smoothing and subdivision very differently than text or mesh. More subdivisions quickly increase render times with lots of micropolygons, unlike text using texture tricks or meshes with normal maps faking details.

Try optimizing curve geometry for reduced vertex and face density without destroying appearance. Lower curve subdivisions and bevel depths a few levels at a time until finding an optimal balance. Or convert them to mesh and utilize materials, modifiers and normal maps instead.

Example Workflow

When font conversion is unavoidable or the desired end result, follow these steps for optimizing text to curves:

1. Inspect text objects before conversion – resolve spacing issues, reduce subdivisions on demands geometry
2. Convert to curves, preview results
3. Check for and remove geometry errors like intersections
4. Apply curve specific optimizations – reduce extraneous control points, simplify fills
5. If needed, convert curves to standard mesh and utilize materials, smoothing mods for better performance

Converting fonts inevitably surrenders editability compared to dynamic text objects. But with care for geometry quality andrender optimization, you can achieve great quality results modeling your textual branding and designs as curves in Blender.