I was thinking about creating some "Posters" for a backdrop of my animation and quickly created a simple spline object to represent the poster shape.

However, I also need some text on my posters. I was looking through the shader options and noticed that there was no "text" option.

So this leaves me with 2 options as far as I can see it.

1 - Create a text object, flatten it and put it just in front of my poster.
2 - Create a bitmap of the words and apply it as a texture to the object.

The advantage of 1 is that it should look fine at any scale.
Is there any other advantages or disadvantages of these methods?
Are there any other options?

Any text, with a clear background. could be applied to a Billboard and sized/located to where it suits. Would that help as an idea?

bwtr

Option #2 should render much faster (even with a fairly large bitmap image), and is also more like the "real world". Posters you encounter in real life are not infinitely scalable.... Plus, you can control the quality of the poster (glossy, matte, edge damage, dirt, holes and bending) much better using a flat plane and a bitmap.

holly

Thanks, I'll use a series of texture mapped rectangles for the text, rendering time (as it's an animation) is probably most important here as the items in question are in the background.

I am attempting to produce a Victorian poster so it would scale differently to a bitmap. At higher resolutions I would expect a different kind of imperfection rather than the blockyness of a zoomed in bitmap. If the fonts were handmade then I would expect tooling marks to appear at higher resolutions. Luckily I don't need to zoom in on them or reproduce such effects....

Link to the British Libraries on Printing during the nineteenth century

You will be impressed if you are able to beg, borrow or steal, copies of "Penrose's Pictorial Annual"  Volume 1 was in 1895 and, I think, was still going fairly recently.

I have a 1906-7 copy and get shivvers up my spine at the beautifull craftsmanship in preparing these books.

bwtr