Create a Circular Text Animation in Blender

Looks like a glass donut.

Continuing my New Year's resolution to become proficient in Blender. I like going through Ducky 3D's tutorials on YouTube as that is the type of art I am interested in making, and he goes over them well enough to figure out what is going on.

Here is one of his latest tutorials that I ended up doing last night.

Skills Learned from this tutorial:

  • How to rotate text on a curve.
  • How to fix the text once on a curve [Remesh Modifier]
  • What IOR meant in the material settings [Index of Refraction]
  • How to give an object two rotations using empties
  • How to give a Glare and Lens Distortion to my renders in compositing.

One random skill learned:
How to reset the 3D cursor to (0,0,0). This always bugged me as I would accidently move it, then never get it back in place. I always thought there was a main menu for it, but it turns out it is hidden in the sidebar region.

Link to Blender Docs [3D cursor]:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/3d_cursor.html#d-cursor-panel

Final Render:

GIF

Have fun