Real 3D Sphere... again

Every character you do will mean there will be differences in the setup. (See below)

This is a single character. Front Edge Size > Width is slightly larger than the Depth (390 vs 323 in this specific instance; Font Size is 651. The font is custom and the circle shape used fills the character shape; descender = ascender; is zero-width with equal side-bearings.

What to pay attention to:

1, the image you use as the Generic substance source must be inside a 2D Fixed Resolution group.

2) Side placement must be Stretch From Edge

3) Scale with Font Size should be turned off until you find the appropriate scale value -- then you can turn it back on if you want (if you plan to be changing the font size of the character you used.)

4) You cannot animate the character -- ONLY the "texture" (Image). The character should face forward (or the camera). Use Lights to make it look more 3D.

The animated world has a Ramp behavior on the Position > X parameter in the Substance section.

HTH

The "spinning" globe is 3D Text. You cannot rotate the shape, you perform the animation by animating the "texture" (Substance > Generic > Image). It works with Lights (I used a Spot on it). It's a pretty decent deception.

The way I did that video was take a circle character repeated 90 times. Added a Sequence Text behavior to Rotate on Y. I also had a ramp on the text to turn it on the Y axis to give that angle on the "assembly".

BTW - when it comes to 3D Text, don't limit yourself to the stupid sliders. Grab hold of those number values and drag them up!

Font Size over 1000. Really push it. Motion can handle it (up to a point). Front Edge > Size and Widths -- in the 100s! Turn the character 90º on Y with the camera to try to "balance" the shape.

An easier way is to replicate the character. The replicator should automatically set itself to 3D if the text is already 3D Text.

Set the Angle End > X or Y depending on how you want it built. You still need to painstakingly adjust the Width/Size of the Round front so that you get a smooth surface (much easier said than done!)

Shininess of the Metal substance set to 100% will have a mirror finish.

Motion is limited by the Environments you get with 3D Text -- a very limited set (field, parking lot, woods, etc...

These environments are the only thing that work completely around a character.

There is a way around this limitation... you can add an image to a Generic substance, or you can add a Custom Specular > Shininess Image > Specular Color Image. Either way, you will fake animating the image around the shape by animating the Placement > Position > Y (or X) angle [just over the Scale].

In *every* case, you will have to go into the image > Placement > Scale parameter, dial down the disclosure triangle and uncheck Scale with Font size. Reset the percentage until the image looks right, then you can turn the Scale with Font Size back on. [Stick with Generic - Image to start, everything else is very difficult to navigate.] If you need to increase the Brightness, boost that value up (even over 100).

3D text in Motion is really kind of weird. The algorithm used to place textures is not what you would expect. Front and Back and edges work like you'd expect, but sides are designed to blend patterns, not images, and the arrangement is forward, backward, forward, backward around the 360 degrees (regardless of the true shape) and the two backwards texture/pattern orientations are offset from "square" -- it's all very difficult to work with (my Revolution generator was an unholy b**** to do! — there was a way around it... but I'm not spilling... yet.)

Apple only had a very few other things to add to 3D Text to make it an easy and powerful for creating 3D models. Fix the texture wrapping (or ADD the option to wrap around instead of blend), add Revolve (so we can create spheres and such), and not much more than that. Instead they decided to add a whole other 3D environment (and the two do NOT mix!) I'm not happy about the new development. I like using Motion, I like using 3D Text. I hate Blender and all the other 3D applications out there (I've tried most of them... not worth the time or trouble. I'm not young anymore.) I'm sure you can find a 3D model you can *buy* of the planet Earth from TurboSquid or some site like it.

Yes, it is a shame that the 3D text and the new 3D environment do not mix.

Blender seems to be incredibly powerful but with a dreadful learning curve, and does not feel like a mac program at all.

But although far less powerful, there is this little application called Reality Composer... it is free and comes with quite a few basic objects you can use. For a quick trick, it works fine.

Here's a free font with a full sized zero-width circle character:

https://fcpxtemplates.com/rogue-too-font-4fcpx-titles/

The character is ':'

You can look over the character set of the font here (it's the default installed):

https://fcpxtemplates.com/fcpxtemplates-font-inspector/

The important information is on the right side of the display at the bottom:

xMin = -3600

xMax = 3600

yMin = -3600

yMax = 3600

advanceWidth = 0

leftSideBearing = -3600

rightSideBearing = 3600

advanceWidth is the same as the character width. All the other values are "balanced". Using a character width of 0 makes is possible to have several characters always aligned at dead center (like the 90 characters to create a sphere that doesn't require adjustments to tracking, etc...)

The circle character in this font is not exactly the full character size (8000 em square [or "UPM"]) -- it's 7200 in size, but large enough (and it's free). If you check out some of the other characters, you'll see they are a bit larger than 8000 -- character space can be like that (ligatures, and other special characters need some allowances.)

When you study how Motion handles texture wrapping, you'll see how it's not possible to turn around the character. The Front and Back are the same part of the texture/image. The sides are turned by default. You can manually change the side orientation, but Stretch From Edge will work the best in this instance — and you'll see why you can't rotate the shape.

The option to correctly wrap images on a shape was very high on my wish list (along with revolving a shape and a very few other things that would have made 3D Text just about perfect.)

Ironically - Reality Composer requires Catalina. My font making application will no longer run in Catalina.... I haven't upgraded yet.