Use a Custom Shape for a 3D replicator

You can make a "random fill" path inside a regular path and use the "scribble" as the Geometry source. (Use a secondary regular shape as a guide.)

Geometry tends to use the shape's outline for the replicated objects whether the shape is filled or not.

You can use Bézier shapes that are filled as a source for the Image option (no need to export images and bring them back in). Using Image, you will have access to the Arrangement options of Tile, Outline and Random fills.

Whichever option you choose, there are drawbacks:

It's hard to create a "random fill path" and not have elements overlap each other — it generally means taking some time to edit the points of the path to get the replicated objects that overlap others to separate — or, you can lengthen the overall path to spread out the number of elements you've used — or, you can simply limit the number of replicated objects so that there is no overlap.

With Image, the only control you have with random fill is to keep randomizing the arrangement until all elements are separate.

I'm not exactly clear about what you want to accomplish, so it's hard to make more specific recommendations.

(Cheezy quick example offering:)

No attempt made to resemble reality... (makes a fairly decent illustration though, if I do say so myself!)

Snow ground is a rectangle character with Generic Substance + Distress and a Clouds generator used to create a landscape.

The "plateaus" are hexagon shaped characters (there are two) with Bevel edges and the same Clouds generator used for Distress. The corners are rounded by increasing the Width parameter and setting the Inside Corners to round. Distress Bump Map Gain is increased to around 1500%. (Gaussian blur added to Clouds to smooth out otherwise lo-res gradient.)

Trees are two circle characters in one text object (this is a slick trick because they have two separate sets of 3D attributes).

The "mound" in the back is just a flat bezier shape.

Overall optical effect is create mainly by "perspective" (landscape and trees arranged to appear *on* the mounds but they are in reality "before" the mounds (like I said: a *quick* offering). With more attention to detail, everything could be lined up more properly.

Not sure though what you mean with "two circle characters in one text object". Do you mean the text element contains two circles (one for the trunk, the other for the foliage ??), you move one upon the other with Format>Offset ? but don't you still have to make this "Face camera"?

Actually, the text is "0 0" and the two circle characters are edited separately by selecting the individual characters, then when finished setting up their textures, the inner spaces are deleted. The two shapes on the left are ONE text object and the one on the right is what they look like when the inner spaces are removed.

To clarify a little, the shapes fonts I use have Zero-Width characters (character centers are at the Baseline point and with Equal "Side-bearings" with no width). Zero Width characters will not advance the text cursor. In 3D modeling, it is extremely convenient to be able to line up characters at their common position point. There's no need to deal with trying to set or reset Anchor Points or using offsets to align shapes.

Using two different shape characters with zero width in one text object requires that spacing between the two are provided. It is impossible to individually select the characters while they are aligned on each other, but they can be individually selected with the spacing provided in between. (Selections must be made in the Canvas! The Text in the Format inspector does not make individual character selections.)

This technique is difficult to execute... you have to select the text in the canvas, use the arrow key to move the cursor to one end or the other then shift arrow (left on the right end or right on the left end) to select the individual shape character. Once selected, you can use all the 3D Text attribute parameters to create the substance/texture of the character. Also, if after you have removed the inner spaces and want to make further updates, you must add spaces back in between the shape characters again.

The **benefit** of this technique is that Sequence Replicator is applied to the single text object and so a compound model and these will not require duplicated Sequence Replicators for each part.

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In general, the 3D Text support in Motion is not overly burdonsome, although, as with just about everything else, generators like Emitters and Replicators will slow things down quite a bit depending on the numbers of emitted or replicated items there are. You may find better performance duplicating text objects and individually placing treating their variations manually may help speed things up a little. Keep model counts down until you're ready to publish to keep performance up, then populate scenes as needed. You can also turn off groups of items while developing.

If I understand correctly, you are trying to use a shape as a sort of "bounding box" to limit the expanse of a replicator.

I could be wrong, but I don't think there is an easy way to achieve that - it's a kind of Boolean combination of shapes, as one might find in a ray tracing program - a true 3D program. Motion has some nice 3D features, but is not a 3D modeler or tracer.

Perhaps I misunderstood your goal, or perhaps there is a nice and elegant solution. In the latter case, I am sure our great expert Fox M will share some more of his great wisdom, and we will learn some more.

Although geometry paths are flat, you *can* vary the vertical "distributions" of elements by applying a Sequence Replicator behavior.

Apply a Position parameter and set the Position Z to some elevation.

Set the Sequencing to Through (to apply the displacements through the "middle" of the replicated objects -- you can play with this setting more later -- read on...)

Set the Spread to some value (this will depend on how complicated you'd like to make this).

Set the Traversal to Custom and apply a Location to create the elevation effect to the elements. These will NOT animate!

To get more complicated or "sophisticated", you can continue to add MORE Sequence Replicators (or duplicate your first one) and change the Position > Z, Sequencing (to, from, through or even through inverted -- you might even experiment with keyframing elevations over the sequence), change the spread to a smaller amount (or 0 to control individual element elevations) and adjust the Locations to control a subrange of the original sequence.

You can use positive or negative Z values with subsequent Sequence Replicators because the values are **ADDITIVE**.

Rely on scene perspective for background placements to provide the illusion of "coherence". You might be able to build elevated sections with some basic shape characters and distort them with Text > Format > Advanced controls (irregular scales, offsets, rotations and slant).

HTH

As far as I can tell, there is no benefit to using multiple 3D shapes in one text object except when using a Replicator or Emitter for compound models (and for the sake of sanity, they should be as simple as possible!!). The problem of intersection trace lines is still there. As for using presets: try applying the preset to a standalone character, then copy and paste that character into another text object after adding a few spaces (I haven't tried this yet, myself, but it might help if the character is "prepped" before adding to the compound text object.)

Stuttering textures is typically due to dynamic changes in texture object size that will "bleed" past the boundaries of the object used (especially if blurs are used). If you're using "inline" (made in Motion) textures as I typically do, then the best method is to place the texture objects in a 2D Fixed Resolution group (of any size/dimension) and use the 2DFR Group as the texture. Imported images (with no filters or masks added) can be used directly as textures because their dimensions are "fixed".

You might be able to improve performance by exporting textures to JPG or PNG (and save the projects for future use) to be imported into your 3D Text projects.

It has been painfully obvious since its introduction that 3D Text was *not* intended for modelling. The 3D structure is relatively "low-poly" and there are some serious shortcuts that were taken. It was made even more painful when Apple added "3D Objects" support (and you still can't do anything serious with it, at least **inside** Motion) — that clarifies that they intended something completely different for text. No matter. I continue on... ;)