Around the World: A Boris Graffiti Tutorial

Putting 2D text in orbit with Boris shapes

It doesn't take much playing with Boris Graffiti to discover that it's far more than a simple text generator.

Among the first things that people discover as they start to poke around are the various shapes that Graffiti offers. 3D text has obvious uses, and maybe Page turns, but why do you need those other shapes in a title tool?

One answer recently presented itself as the solution to a problem that Mike Hoffman was having with Graffiti. (Yes, he's a real guy, and he really wrote to me about this.)

"I want to create a 3D title similar to the Universal Pictures image: a globe with text circling it," he wrote. "I created a sphere (nothing special... I'll eventually map an earth image onto it...). I also created a cylinder and mapped my text onto it.

"Here's the hard part (for me, anyway): I want that cylinder to effectively place itself around the sphere, so my text disappears behind the 'planet' while each element rotates." Mike was definitely on the right track, but a few steps short of his goal.

The specific technique to finish solving the problem is one that I learned from BorisFX Product Specialist Dirk DeJong, and I'm delighted to pass it along. The entire effect makes clever use of Boris Graffiti shapes, as well as a few other features I'll show you, using Graffiti's 2D text. Here's a screen grab of the finished effect, and you can click on the image to see a QuickTime movie of it in motion, about 560K. Carry on to page 2 while it loads.

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