Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:

> On an easy path, the short answer is No.
>
> The long answer: each glyph of the text is made of connected 2D curves
> (that the ttf definition) which are extended in the z axis (inside
> povray). That extension is simple, it's a straight line..
>
> Your image is showing a mesh made from letters, with rounded corners and
> displacement based on curvature of the surface.

Yes, I thought about this one for a while.

The part that makes it difficult is that it's not all convex hull, so to speak.
The holes and concave curves make creating an offset surface challenging, and
also involves a lot of detailed work.

See Dave Blandston's excellent Bordered Chars include files to see how much work
he's done to make a single set of characters.

If you don't need _much_ rounding / bulging, you might be able to smooth-union /
blob together a letter and a thinner, slightly scaled up version of the letter
(so it's like a sandwich)  then you might get that bubble effect if you use the
right sign.

Otherwise, you may have to see about creating a mesh, or coming up with some
sort of clever addition / adjustment of the outer surface of the text based on
the surface normal.

Perhaps there's nonlinear scaling matrix transform that could be applied (make
sure the center-line crosses at z=0 or z=1) on the object or an isosurface, or
perhaps some clever fun-house mirror optical illusion that would fake such a
distorted effect.

What you see on the screen is not always what's "there" or actually "happening".

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