PV3D Text Primitive

Click Here to view the example

I'd never tried to use 3D Text from within Papervision until recently. Suprisingly it was a little more difficult than I expected. One hurdle was that I wanted to use my own custom font. Little did I know I had to download a seperate swf that builds a 'motif' ActionScript file. On top of that, not all characters are supported within the motif so you have to program in which characters to are allowed (FYI, I skipped that for the most part).

In the example below I added a KeyboardEvent Listener to the stage and passed in the key (that was typed) into the 3D Text object. I set up the font 'Eurostile' to be used as my custom font. When you type, it shows your message in 3D.

To make custom font motif's:
Download the file FIVe3D_make_typograph_v2.0.zip from here: http://code.google.com/p/five3d/downloads/list

Extract the file 'Make a new typography file.swf' out of the zip and copy it to this location on your PC computer (not sure where it goes on a mac):

Settings\{USERNAME}\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Flash CS3\en\Configuration\WindowSWF

Once you have it installed, restart or open Flash. Make a new AS3 Fla File and save it somewhere. Then, from the menus select Window > Other Panels > Make new typography file.

Follow the instructions from the window that opens and when you're done hit the "Generate the typography file". It will then place an ActionScript file in the same location as where your .FLA resides.

Open the new ActionScript file and make sure that the class declaration 'extends Font3D'. So it should read:
public class MyCustomFontName extends Font3D

Paste in these additional functions:

override public function get motifs():Object{if(!__initialized)initialize();return __motifs;}override public function get widths():Object{if(!__initialized)initialize();return __widths;}override public function get height():Number{if(!__initialized)initialize();return __heightS;}

To use custom font motif's:
To use them is pretty simple. When you instantiate your Text3D object you'll need to simply create a new instance of your motif ActionScript class and pass it into the second parameter for the Text3D object, for example:

private var text:Text3D = new Text3D("Type Something...", new MyCustomFontMotif, myText3DMaterial);

Hopefully that will help you get through it. If you have troubles jump into the forum, make a post and I'll help ya troubleshoot any problems.

Example: Click Here

Flex Source: Click Here

Flash Source: Click Here //Note: You'll need to test the published .swf file for the code to function correctly (it won't work correctly if you do a 'control+enter' in flash).