Bits, Please! Ep 6: How to remove offensive lettering from 3d prints

Hi! It's Ryan from Nights Around a Table.  What happens when you download a file to   3d print a board game insert and you don't  like the text that's on the object? Or what   if the object has no text and you want to put  text on it? Well i'm going to show you how to   deal with those two situations coming up right  now on this episode of Bits, Please!

All right,   so the game in question is On Mars which  i got for Christmas a couple of years ago   and then about half a year later Eagle-Gryphon  Games who publishes that game sent me a couple   of freebies — five other games — and i started  to notice a common thread among these games.   But first, here's a public domain picture  of a duck.

i downloaded this image for free,   and i'm showing it to you to remind you that  you can support this channel on Patreon for   not-free. How does it make sense that  i'm using free imagery to encourage you   to spend money on Nights Around a Table? Well,  that's something i like to call Duck Logic®.   Let's take a look inside: a box farto meter  five so these inserts the way that this game   is published and put together is gorgeous all  the flat stuff fits on top you got some catalogs   some extra boards there's the rule book there's  another rule book...

it's that kind of game... a   little player... i don't even know what that is,  but check this out: you've got this beautifully   cut piece of foam that fits in here nicely so that  your player boards fit and don't slide around when   you take that off. This is a common thing with  all like the Lacerda games.

They did this with   the Rococo Deluxe game. You take this sheet off  so it separates all the pieces that could slosh   around in there, and then look: oh you've got all  these lovely compartments! Some of them come out,   some of them don't, but they should. Like  this piece over here — this should come out.   It doesn't i'm a little bit burned i might  even cut that because you're kind of uh   fishing these anyway whatever uh but they go  look they've got this little things that these   don't slide around so it's like 95 of the  way there but the frustrating thing is that   you know it's 95 percent of the way there  then when you get to this part it's just like   just like i don't know let's just put a big  recess in here and you can throw all the other   crap in there look they got they got little  you can fit all these things in nicely these   things go here these are beautifully cut around  all the wood pieces going here and then yeah   you know figure it out so i don't know why but  it seems like with every eagle griffin game   with all the lucerta games and like i said rococo  deluxe it's 95 of the way there but then there's   that just that one little like uh i yeah we  gave up so i don't know what's up with that   but one of my patreon backers oberon recommended  this insert to me so let's go to thingiverse.com   this is a place one of many where you can get  free 3d files to print out on your 3d printer   so there are a bunch of great board game  inserts that are designed by people for   free and stock up here for free and you can  download them for free and print them for free   and the one in question is just a couple of  little trays that can fit inside that recess   designed by artes ardent thank you for your  service so i want to print this out but check it   out our taste arden has put the words on mars and  embedded them into the insert and you know what   i don't like it if you compare what this insert  designer has done with the actual logo of the game   the word mark of the game they don't look anything  alike for one thing the on mars word mark is all   caps and the designer of this insert has decided  to go with a mixture of uppercase and lowercase   i'm not sure why the font is not a good match and  there's a letting problem now letting is the space   between two lines of text and if you look at  the on mars logo there's like negative letting   right the words overlap each other so there's  negative under zero space between the two lines   and that's just enough to you gotta bug me and  if it bugs you like it bugs me you want a way to   be able to take that stl file that you download  and modify it the process of getting rid of text   like that is fairly straightforward so let me  show you how to do that using only free software   okay so here we are in blender 2.9.2 which  is the best free software money can buy   if you keep an eye down in the bottom left here  you'll be able to see the mouse buttons and the   keyboard keys that i use to do the stuff  i'm doing this is a cube we don't need it   you can click it and get rid of it by hitting  delete you want to go up to file import stl   and open that file we downloaded from thingiverse  if you can't see it maybe just scroll your mouse   wheel so you can yeah i was zoomed in too  much to be able to see it and there it is   we can select it deselect it and there is the  offensive writing that we want to get rid of   so one thing i want to point out is if you were  looking at this from top on it would look as   though the text disappeared the text is still  there it's still indented it's just the way the   lighting is falling on it we can't really see it  as soon as you tilt a little bit using your middle   mouse button you're able to see it again so that's  all that's going there but we will need to be in   the top mode in order to really cleanly get rid of  it next thing i want to point out is in order to   get rid of it we need to go into the edit mode so  that we can see all the vertices the edges and the   faces of the model and here it is right here you  can see very clearly if i were to just select that   text right now it would look like we got it all  right we got a little bit of that circle up there   so i'll just hit shift mouse button or select  everything to add to my selection there we've   got it all looks like we've got it all however i  don't actually have it all because what's going   on is what we call occlusion which is where  i'm selecting the vertices on the very top   but because it's indented embedded there  are vertices behind this on mars that that   describe the geometry of the indentation of  the text if that makes any sense and if i   tilt we can't see it because we can't see through  this wall it's all solid so what we actually have   to do is we have to change to wireframe mode and  when we do that i can tilt and look you can see   if we look underneath it we don't have all the  vertices selected that define the whole thing   all of the pieces of text so that's something to  really watch out for especially if you're new to   blender that can really trip you up so i'm going  to go back into excuse me top mode and now that   we have it on wireframe mode if i select all the  text again shift select to add to my selection now because we're seeing through  the model if we tilt like that   and go underneath look we can see that we got  all of the vertices that form those letters   a little snafu to watch out for now getting rid of  them is really simple there are a couple of ways   that you can try to do this and i'll show you why  they don't work so if i right click and hit merge   vertices at center well i guess that does kind of  work actually it gives this weird like a puckered   balloon knot kind of thing going on and i don't  really know so the reason why this isn't super   great is because what happened was it merged them  at the same position as one of the vertices on   the bottom of that text so you can't really see  it here but if i go back to solid mode you can   kind of see that it's like indented it goes down a  little bit because it's at the bottom of where the   text was so i don't know merge vertices is not  exactly what you want so i'm going to hit undo   control z to undo what you do want let me go  back to wireframe what you do want is to right   click oh another thing you don't want to do  definitely not is you'd think oh i'll just   i delete i'll delete the vertices and that'll  get rid of them and that looks okay until you   realize when you go back to solid mode well  you've totally gotten rid of that entire face   that describes that part of the model that's going  to print with a big hole in it and it's going to   confuse your printer and it's going to be what's  the word not non-euclidean but there's certain   when geometry is like this your 3d printer won't  won't print it because it gets confused it's like   what are you exactly trying to tell me here so  let's undo that that's not the way you want to go   what you do want to do is right  click and hit dissolve vertices   so that kind of makes it so  that they never existed but it   oh look at that beautiful and it tries to sort  of repair all the geometry around it in the most   sensible way just by doing that just by selecting  it in wireframe mode and hitting dissolve vertices   we've completely gotten rid of it now we can  print this it's just going to be a smooth top   pretty simple all right so the text is gone but  what if you really had your heart set on on mars   being stamped into that tray you just wanted  to make it look more like the game's word mark   well the steps you have to go through to do  that are a little bit more involved admittedly   than getting rid of the text but if you're at  least as smart as me and odds are pretty likely   you should be able to do it no problem i'm going  to show you the steps to go through to do that   we're going to start out in a little known  website called google a i'm going to type   on mars you go to a board game geek you can  do this if you want we'll hit image search   and we'll find a nice picture of the on  mars cover this one looks pretty good   and when i do copy image link  and then paste that there it is   so i'm going to save that to my desktop next  is you want this website called what the font   part of myfonts.com and what this lets you  do is it lets you upload an image so we're   going to pick that on mars image that we just  saved and then look it already knows where the   text is so this is a site the whole purpose of  the site is to identify a font from an image   and then try to sell you that font so check it out  it tries to match it and sell you that exact font   and it does it with varying degrees of success  so sometimes it finds the exact font that you're   looking for and sometimes it finds sort of  fonts that look like the one in the picture   i think this one here looks pretty darn close  to it doesn't it now this font costs 34.99   and that's for suckers so what we're going to  do is we're going to copy the font name right   here ctrl c and then back in google a i'll paste  the name of the font and i'll type alternative so this site what font is purports to give us  some alternatives to that let's check them out   so up here you can type in the text as you want it to appear  so that you can kind of compare   and look like this looks this looks pretty close  we talked about leading before the space between   the letters is called kerning and you can tell  the kerning on this font is a little wider   than the font that we were using but this  is adjustable on a lot of software so   i i suggest we grab this one and just see what  we can do with it in blender i won't go through   all the steps required to download a font in the  zip file and extract that and install it on your   operating system hopefully you know how to do  that if not there's tons of other videos to help   so here we are back in blender i'm going to hit  tab to get out of the edit mode for this object   i'm going into the top view you can add text  by hitting shift a and choosing text from this   resulting menu and it's added we can see it up  here in the scene collection but we can't really   see it here in the viewport where is it well if  you have something selected here and you can't see   it it's probably just because it's at a different  scale you want to zoom right into something like   that you hit the period key on your number  pad boom there it is so in order to actually   edit the text i would just hit tab like i would  with a larger mesh and i want to type on mars there it is and i hit g i can move it around  there it is we'll resize it in just a second   to change the font you go down here  there's a little a to the object properties and expand this that says font  and then you've got a folder here   so click on that folder and then you get  a whole list of all the fonts on your   machine and i think tomato was the name  of the font that we just grabbed tomato   okay that was a little bit annoying i had to  googly to figure out what was going on i didn't   want me to find the font in the windows fonts  folder i had to go to see users my name appdata   local microsoft windows fonts i don't know  why but here it is tomato round condensed thin   there we go now i mentioned kerning  in order to shrink that a little bit   so it looks a bit more like what's on  the cover of the box scroll down here go to character spacing look we  can just accordion it in and out   get it looking a little bit tighter like  it is on the box now the other thing that's   going on with this logo is that it's stacked  so mars is on the bottom and on is on the top   and then in zed depth or the other dimension  we're talking about on is behind the word mars   so we can get that going like so we'll go back  into tab we'll get rid of the word mars tab back   out shift a text tab into that type the word mars  tab out of that go up here pick the font oh man see users ryan here's the annoying  part app data the folder isn't   selectable from this list so you  actually have to type it up here data local microsoft windows fonts where are you tomato there we go i'm sure i could have copy pasted this and re-edit  it and that would have been a little bit faster   adjust the character spacing so it's a  little bit tighter looks good i'll hit g now i can hit s to scale it and a little bit more a little bit more yeah that looks quite a bit  like it does on the cover we go like this and we rotate it we can tell  our text is still very very flat which is   what we do not want so we want it to have  three dimensions and make an indent in our   tray so we need to extrude it to give it some  depth so you right click and hit extrude size   as you move the mouse back and forth  it lets you make it a certain thickness   let's go with it it really doesn't matter at this  point how thick it is and you'll see why in a bit   so i'll give it some things and then  we'll give the on some thickness what really matters is that if we go to the side  what really matters is that on i'm going to hit g   and i'm going to make it maybe that  deep and that's hard to say without   the scale being proper but what matters  is that the on goes deeper than the mars right because it's behind the mars so if we go  back to the top grab them both and scale them up   more to what they're going to be when we want to  stamp them into the model i'm going to hit rotate   said negative 90.

nope 90 nope negative  90 there we go third time lucky so that looks way more on brand  it's in the wrong position   grab it move it up constrain  it to the zed by tapping zed   and here is where we probably want to dive into  wireframe mode and just check the depth on that so make it go that deep and maybe the on  goes that deep and we can go a bit deeper sure let's do that now these are not  technically whoops i'm putting some z's on there these are not technically meshes and in order to  do the next step we need to make the meshes so   select the thing go up to object hit convert to  mesh and now it's a mesh now once you convert a   text thing to mesh you won't be able to tab into  it and change the text so don't do this until   you're really happy with the way the letters look  we'll do the same thing over here object convert   to mesh and if i hit shift click and select them  both and hit control j that joins them and now   they are the same object which is what we want for  the next bit which is where we click on the tray   go over here to a wrench hit add modifier  and we're going to choose boolean   and this little eyedropper here  we'll click it and click the text   we can't see that anything's happened  but we need to hide this text   so if you click on it and hit the eyeball we can  see something's happened but it's not a good thing so what may be happening is that there's just  not enough geometry or detail on this part of   the tray in order to make that text cut out nicely  booleans have always been you know what i've been   i used 3d software 20 years ago when i  was in college and boolean didn't work   very well back then and you know what 20  25 years later it still kind of stinks   so let me just get rid of this i'll go  in here inside here i'll select this face   uh triangulated faces there we go that  adds a bit more geometry now let's see   if we have any better luck select it  eyedropper text hide the text oh god still no good look at this nonsense this is what you get when you use free fonts folks well this is terrible news this is a if  this ever happens to you what i recommend   is that you go back and try a different  font because this one is clearly busted and we're back so i redone the whole thing with a  completely different font this one's called miso   let's see if we have more luck with it i wouldn't say that's more luck on looking good hey look at that so one at a time  did the trick and there you go   so you've got a much more sort of box accurate  font drilled down into your tray hallelujah okay and here they are the little trays designed  for on by artes ardent again thank you so much   i don't mean to impugn you too much by saying i  don't like the text that you did so i i just got   rid of the text i didn't uh print out one that  had the the smaller on mars in there because   i don't know that i'll ever open this box and  think to myself what game is this again i don't   see any reason to have that printed on there  however i will say that there was another insert   where i did actually use this method it was  on this absolutely awesome praga kaput regnier   insert designed by a designer called tv killi this  piece was too large for my print bed so i'm gonna   have to glue that together but look at this if you  played this game you know that it's kind of a pain   to stack the tiles up by the side of the board i  think it is anyway and so what tv kelly designed   is the level one tiles can go on this side of  this and then the level two tiles can go on that   side of that and i just kind of wanted one and two  stamped into it so i found a good font that worked   with the game and i stamped the roman numeral  2 and the roman numeral 1 on either side of it   and i think that looks pretty boss or embossed  anyway let's get that on mars thing put together and look at that everything fits really  beautifully it was a little tight here but that'll   loosen up a bit for those little square pieces and  the designer artie's arden has also left a little   spot for two eight-sided dice which he says he  uses for the solo mode really clever really well   designed thank you so much i really appreciate it  and if this insert was 95 percent of the way there   well now i think it's a hundred if you are into 3d  printing and board games and you want to join us   on the discord server we have a special channel  called 3d printing where it's kind of like an   emotional support group really if your printer  breaks down will will be a shoulder to cry on   and we'll pat your back if you want to show off  your prints or if you want to get ideas of what   to print next that's a great place to hang out  everybody there is super nice so if you're super   nice please join us thanks again to these insert  designers for putting forth the time and effort   to producing these for us for free rtas ardent  who designed the on mars trays and tv keeley who   did the program to put regna insert thanks to  oberon for the recommendation if you would like   to support this channel on patreon there's the  address below patreon.com nights around table   if you're interested in learning how to play on  mars please check out my how to play on mars video   it took me ever so long to make it that's it for  me catch you in the next episode of bits please Did you just watch that whole thing?

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