Making Numerous Points
 

I am playing around with something and because of my "newbie" status, I can't think of an "elegant" way to perform the following:

Let's say I want a letter (extruded so it is "3D") made entirely out of "single-point polys". Assume the letter 'O'. I write the 'O', extrude it to give it depth, now I want the 'O' to turn into hundres of "single point polys" -- like it was filled with marbles.

Aside from fracturing, jittering, etc. is there an "elegant" way to do this? I can't "spray points" into the 'O' shape accurately, so is there any suggestions?

Thanks for listening.

Matt,

You could try the following methods:

(1) The modeller method:
Create your letter as normal. Then, in another layer, create a dense pointcloud that covers the letter how you want. Next, use the solid drill function to take out the points outside your letter's volume (not sure off the top of my head the settings for this - you'll need to play).

(2) The hypervoxels method:
Create the letter as normal. Load into layout and make it unseen by camera and rays (so it's totally invisible) - you can also do this with a 100% disolve. Now, place a particle emitter inside the object and set your particle motion settings so that the particles move aorund and fill the letter. (See Philip's excellent Lava Lamp tutorial for some pointers on how to do this).

Hope this helps...

Alright, here's how I did it:

1) Type the text.
2) Use Create -> Elements: RandPricks.
3) Set the number to like 1000.
4) Go into point mode and select all the points.
5) Paste them on a new layer.

If you need more points, copy all the points, then Jitter, then paste the points back in.