Text

Created Oct 16, 2026 · Updated Oct 16, 2026 · Shared with Sculpting

The Text tool sets type on the model. You choose the font, style, size, spacing and alignment, with the OpenType features the font has. Text can be a single line, a paragraph that wraps inside a box, or a line that runs along a curved path. In Paint it is painted onto textures or vertex colours. In Sculpt it is embossed into the surface, engraved into it, painted onto it, or made into a solid 3D mesh.

Like Shapes, the text stays live after you place it. You can retype it, restyle it, move it, size it and turn it, and nothing is painted or sculpted until you apply it.

The Paint sidebar with the Text accordion open: the word Vertexix in the text field, the Point / Box and On a path buttons, and the Character group with Inter Variable, Regular, Weight 400 and Size 190. On a checkered torus the live word Vertexix sits in red with a black outline, inside its frame of square handles, with the round turning handle above — Live text on a torus. The word is typed in the accordion's text field. The squares size it, the round handle turns it, and every setting in the accordion changes it until you apply it.

Picking the tool

Paint: Text is the icon under Shapes in the tool row beside the sidebar.
Sculpt: Text is the last button in the tool row under the viewport. It puts the sculpt brush away while it is on, and picking a brush turns it off again.

Either way, the Text accordion appears in the sidebar and opens by itself. With the tool picked, a plain press in the viewport never turns the view. Ctrl or Alt + drag, or the right mouse button, still do.

Placing text

The two buttons at the top of the accordion decide what kind of text your next click makes:

Frame	How to place it
Point / Box	Click to start point text: one line that grows from where you clicked, with a new line only where you press `Enter`. Drag instead to draw a box: the text wraps inside it and flows again whenever you size the box.
On a path	Lay the path first, then type: the text runs along it. See Text on a path.

New text starts empty, with the caret in the accordion's text field. Type, and the words appear on the model as you type them. Enter in the field starts a new line, and Ctrl+Enter applies the text.

Box text on the torus: a three-line paragraph reading Box text wraps inside its frame and flows again as you size the box, justified so the first two lines fill the width, with the word text selected and drawn in a blue band, inside a box frame with square handles — Box text, justified with the last line left-aligned. The word *text* is selected (the blue band), so Character changes now apply to it alone.

If a box is too small for its text, the lines that don't fit are left out. A red + appears at the box's corner, and a red note appears in the accordion, until the box is big enough or the text small enough.

The live text

Do this	To
Drag the text	Move it. While you are typing, a drag selects instead, so `Ctrl`+drag to move it then.
Drag a square handle (point text)	Scale it. On release, a corner's scale goes into Size and a side's into H Scale or V Scale, so the accordion always shows what you see.
Drag a square handle (box text)	Size the box. The letters keep their size and the lines flow again.
Drag the round handle above it	Turn it. `Shift` turns in steps of 15 degrees.
`Ctrl`+`Enter`, `Enter` (with the text field not in use) or Apply	Apply it. The tool and its accordion stay, ready for the next text.
Click beside the text (Paint)	Paint it and start new text where you clicked.
`Esc` or Drop	Throw it away. While you are typing, the first `Esc` undoes this round of typing, and a second one throws the text away.

Switching to another tool or tab also throws the live text away.

In Paint, the text goes into a new layer named Text, so one Ctrl+Z takes it back. You can also hide, fade or delete that layer later in the Layers window.

Preview

The Preview button beside Apply and Drop shows the text exactly as Apply will make it: the paint laid on the model, the letters embossed or engraved into it, or both. It isn't shown in Mesh mode, which has its own solid preview.

Updating: when you change the words, a setting, the text's place or the view, the preview is made again a moment after you stop.
What it keeps: nothing. Apply makes the real thing, and Drop, another tool or another tab take the preview away.
Undo: the preview is never a step of its own; Ctrl+Z goes to your last real step.
On a big mesh each update takes a moment.

While the preview is on, the letters are drawn as thin outlines over it.

Live text TORUS in Emboss mode with Preview on: the letters already raised out of a smooth grey torus, thin outlines and the frame's handles over them — Emboss with Preview on: the letters raised as Apply will raise them, while the text is still live.

Text styles

A text style is a saved look: the Character and Paragraph settings, the ink, and the Emboss and Mesh settings. It doesn't hold the words or where they are. The Styles row at the top of the accordion has:

The list: eight built-in styles, then your own below a line. Picking one lays it over the tool's defaults.
The disk button: saves the current settings as a style under a name you type. A style of the same name is replaced.
The bin: deletes the style you picked, after asking. Only your own styles can be deleted.

The built-in styles all use Inter Variable, which comes with Vertexix, so they look the same on any computer: Title, Heading, Body text, Caption, Outline only, Raised label (Emboss), Engraved plaque and Block letters (3D mesh). Your styles are kept in text_styles.json in your Vertexix user folder.

The tool also remembers its settings between sessions. When you pick it again, the font, sizes, ink, Emboss and Mesh settings and its switches are as you left them.

The top of the Text accordion with the Styles list open: the eight built-in styles from Title -- bold, centred to Block letters (3D mesh), a line, then the user's own style My label, picked; beside the list a disk button and a bin — The Styles list: the built-in styles, then your own.

Editing on the model

You can edit live text on the model itself as well as in the text field:

Caret: click on the text to put the caret there.
Selecting: drag to select; double-click a word to select it.
Moving the caret: Up and Down move it by the lines you see, wrapped lines included.
Kerning a pair: Alt+Left and Alt+Right move the two letters on either side of the caret closer together or further apart.

With a selection, every Character change applies to the selected letters only, and the accordion says how many are selected. A mixed selection keeps what it doesn't change: making it bold leaves each part's size as it was. With nothing selected, a change applies to the whole text. Text you type takes the style of the letter before it.

Text on a path

With On a path picked, presses in the viewport lay the path's points:

a click makes a corner;
a drag pulls out handles for a smooth curve;
Enter or a double-click finishes the path;
clicking the first point again closes the path into a loop;
Esc drops the path.

Then type, and the text runs along the path.

While the text is live, the path stays editable:

Points: drag any point to move it.
Handles: drag any handle to reshape the curve. Its partner turns with it, mirrored.
Start: the yellow marker is where the text starts. Drag it along the path, or set Start in the accordion.
Flip: puts the text on the other side of the path, running the other way.
Frame handles: the square handles scale the path itself, and the letters keep their size.

Alignment works along the path. You can edit path text on the model like any other text: click near the letters to put the caret there, drag to select, and the selection bends along the path. A click elsewhere in the path's frame moves the text instead. Path text can be painted, embossed or made into a mesh like any other text.

Text along a curved path on the mech: a blue arching curve with its points and handles, the words Text along a curved path in red following its left half, a small yellow start marker, and the frame's square handles round the whole path — Text on a path, live. The curve's points and handles are draggable, the yellow marker sets where the text starts, and the frame's squares scale the path.

The Text accordion

Sizes and distances are in pixels of the view at the moment you place the text, whatever the zoom; in the Image View they are in pixels of the Image View. The size you see is the size you get.

Character

Control	What it does	Range
Font	The font family. The list has a search box, and it holds the fonts that come with Vertexix plus the computer's own. The computer's fonts are found in the background the first time you pick the tool, then remembered. Each name in the list is drawn in its own font, and the live text stays on the model while the list is open. `Up` and `Down` step to the previous or next font, with the list open or with the closed Font box selected, and the text changes with each step; `Enter` keeps the font. The default is Inter Variable, which comes with Vertexix.
Style	The family's weights and italics.
Weight, Width, Slant, Italic	A variable font's own settings, between its named styles. Only the ones the font has are shown. A font's optical size follows Size by itself.	The font's own
Size	How big the letters are (the font's em).	4–400
Leading	How far apart the lines are, baseline to baseline. With Auto ticked, it is Auto Leading (in Paragraph) times the size.	1–800
Tracking	Space added between every letter, in thousandths of the size.	−200–1000
Kerning	Metrics: the font's own spacing for pairs like AV and To. Optical: each pair spaced by the shapes of its letters. This is an approximation, useful for fonts with poor kerning or for text that mixes fonts. Off: every letter at its plain width.
V Scale, H Scale	The letters' height and width, as a share of the size.	10–400%
Baseline	Raises the letters off the line, or lowers them below it.	−200–200
The six style buttons	Faux Bold (thickens the letters, for a font with no bold of its own); Faux Italic (slants them 12 degrees); All Caps; Small Caps (the font's own small capitals when it has them, otherwise smaller capitals); Underline; Strikethrough.
The eight OpenType buttons	Standard Ligatures (fi, fl as one letter), Contextual Alternates, Discretionary Ligatures, Swash, Stylistic Alternates, Titling Alternates, Ordinals (1st), Fractions (1/2). A button is greyed out when the font doesn't have the feature.

If the font lacks a letter you type, the letter is taken from another font that has it. Chinese, Japanese and Korean come from a font included with Vertexix.

Paragraph

Control	What it does	Range
The seven alignment buttons	Left, Center and Right, for any text. For box text only: Justify with the last line left, centred or right, and Justify All, which stretches the last line too.
Indent Left	Moves every line in from the left.	0–400
Indent Right	Keeps every line in from the right (box text).	0–400
First Line	Moves a paragraph's first line in, or out when below 0, past the left indent.	−200–400
Space Before, Space After	Space above each paragraph but the first, and below each but the last.	0–400
Auto Leading	With Leading on Auto: how far apart the lines are, as a share of the size.	50–300%

Where it goes, and what it paints with

Painted text uses the same three placements as Shapes:

Projected from the view
Laid along the surface, which wraps the text over the model's curves
On the texture (Image View), Paint only, where you place and edit the text flat on the image

It is painted with Shapes' ink controls. Fill and Outline each have a swatch, and the chevron opens each one's own channel values. Outline Width, Softness, Bevel Width (with the Normal Map ticked) and Opacity work as they do for a shape. So text can paint a coloured, rough, raised decal in one go, on textures or on vertex colours.

The Text tool keeps its own ink settings, apart from Shapes'. The swatches start as the brush colour the first time you pick the tool.

Also sculpt (Paint tab) embosses or engraves the letters into the mesh as well as painting them. The Emboss settings (Raise / Engrave, Height, Bevel Width, Profile) appear under the tick, with the detail check. The emboss goes onto a sculpt layer of its own, as in the Sculpt tab, and one Ctrl+Z takes back both. It is the same switch as Also paint in the Sculpt tab, named for where you are. It can't be used with On the texture, which has no surface to emboss.

Text in Sculpt

In the Sculpt tab, three buttons under Point / Box and On a path choose what the text does: Mesh, Emboss or Paint. Placing and editing the text work exactly as in Paint. Ctrl+Z in the Sculpt tab takes back any of the three.

Text made in Sculpt goes onto Sculpt Layers of its own:

Emboss or engrave: a new layer named Text: and the words, in the active Sculpt Layer. Fade, exaggerate, hide or delete the letters there later. The layer you had selected stays selected, so your next brush stroke goes where it went before.
A text mesh: a new Sculpt Layer of its own, named the same way, which becomes the active one.
Painted text: stays in its paint layer.

Ctrl+Z takes the layer away with the text.

Emboss and Engrave

Emboss raises the letters out of the surface, or, with Engrave, cuts them into it.

Control	What it does	Range
Raise / Engrave	Letters standing up out of the surface, or cut into it.
Height	How high the letters stand, or how deep they are cut, as a share of the text's size.	0.5–50%
Bevel Width	How far in from each letter's edge its slope climbs to the full height (Chamfer and Round).	0–30 px
Profile	The letters' edges. Flat: straight walls. Chamfer: a straight slope Bevel Width wide. Round: a rounded slope.
Projected from the view	The text as you see it: every part of the model it covers that faces you is raised, or cut, exactly where the letters are drawn.
Laid along the surface	The text laid round the surface from its middle, following the curves (even round a limb), so it keeps its size on a curved surface.
Mirror with Symmetry	Stamps the text again through the sculpt symmetry. It is off by default, because mirrored text reads backwards. When it is on, the text is stamped flat onto the surface under its middle, so on a curve it can sit a little off where it is drawn. Text laid along the surface is never mirrored.
Also paint	Paints the letters into the vertex colours as well, with the same ink as Paint (its controls appear under the tick). One `Ctrl`+`Z` takes back both the emboss and the paint. Turn on Show Vertex Colors (`V`) to see the paint.
Refine Edge and Refine under the text	Splits the edges under the live text down to Refine Edge, so the letters have points to be made from. The new points are placed on the smooth surface the coarse mesh's shading suggests, not on its flat facets. This uses dynamic topology and is one undo step of its own. Refine first, then emboss.	0.5–10 px

The word TORUS embossed into a smooth grey torus with rounded edges, the raised letters painted red with a dark outline exactly over them — Emboss with Also paint: the raised letters painted in the same step. One `Ctrl`+`Z` takes back both.

The word TORUS embossed into the front of a smooth grey torus, the letters standing out of the surface with rounded edges — TORUS embossed with the Round profile, on a torus subdivided four levels so it has the points to show the letters.

When the mesh is too coarse

The letters can only be as fine as the mesh. An emboss moves the surface's existing points, and vertex paint colours them, so a letter's stroke needs a couple of points across it. On a coarse mesh the letters come out jagged or not at all.

While Emboss or Paint text is live, the accordion checks this for you. It measures the mesh's edges under the text and a letter's stroke, both in pixels on screen, and shows the two numbers directly under the Mesh / Emboss / Paint buttons. If the edges are longer than half a stroke, the line turns amber and says what to do:

Subdivide (on the Generated Mesh): the button adds a subdivision level, four times the faces. Press it again until the warning clears.
Refine under the text (on the Loaded Mesh): adds points under the letters only.
Make the text bigger.

Two views of the top of the Text accordion in Sculpt with Emboss picked. Left, in amber: the mesh is too coarse for these letters, its edges about 78 px on screen and a letter's stroke about 11 px, with a Subdivide button. Right, after four subdivisions, in grey: the mesh is fine enough, its edges about 4.2 px — The detail check on a coarse torus (left) and after four Subdivides (right).

Refine works on the Loaded Mesh only. It cannot split edges that belong to a single face, so it has little to work with on a flat-shaded model or along UV seams.

Like Alpha Drag, an emboss changes only the connected piece of the model under the text's middle. On a model made of separate parts, text that spans several of them is cut into one.

3D text mesh

Mesh makes the letters into a solid: a new mesh in the sculpt, with its own entry in the Sculpt Tree (Text: …) and its own material. One Ctrl+Z removes it. Move, size or turn it afterwards like any other sculpt mesh.

Control	What it does	Range
Depth	How thick the letters are, as a share of the text's size.	1–200%
Bevel	The letters' front edges: None (square), Chamfer (cut at 45 degrees) or Round.
Bevel Size	How far the bevel reaches in from each edge.	0–30 px
Both faces	Bevel the back edges too.
Facing the view / Lying on the surface	The letters stand facing you as you see them now, or lie on the surface under the text's middle.
Sink	How far into the surface the letters are sunk, as a share of their depth. A little hides the seam where they meet it.	0–100%
Mesh Edge	How long the new mesh's edges are. Smaller keeps finer letters but makes more polygons.	0.25–10 px

The mesh is placed where the letters' middle meets the model. Over empty space, it is placed at the depth of the view's centre.

While the text is live, a solid preview of the letters is shown in the viewport, in the action colour. It is exactly where the mesh will be made, at its depth and sink, and it follows every change to the text, its place, the view and the settings. The 2D letters are drawn as thin outlines over it. The bevel isn't in the preview; it comes with the mesh.

Live box text reading 3D on a grey torus in Mesh mode: an orange solid preview of the letters lying on the surface and standing out of it, the 2D letters as thin outlines, and the box's frame with its handles — Mesh mode's live preview: the solid shows where Apply will make the mesh.

Two pieces of 3D text with a grey torus: the word TEXT standing in the air above it facing the view, and a small 3D lying on the torus's front, chamfered and sunk a little into its surface — Two text meshes. *TEXT* was placed over empty space, facing the view. 3D was placed on the torus, lying on its surface, chamfered and sunk 30% into it.

Paint

Paint paints the text into the model's vertex colours. It uses the same ink as in the Paint tab, either projected from the view or laid along the surface. The Paint the colour switch stands in for the Paint palette's Color / Albedo tick, which isn't on view in Sculpt. Turn on Show Vertex Colors (V) to see the paint on a textured model.

The font list

The Font dropdown open under the Character group: a Search fonts box, then the families in alphabetical order, each name drawn in its own font -- a dot-matrix font, a script, a futuristic display face, Adobe Caslon, Garamond, Gothic and others — The font list draws each family's name in its own font. Type in the search box to narrow it.

What it does not do

No vertical text or warp. There is no vertical text and no warped text, such as arcs or flags. Use a path for curved lines.
Simple line breaking. Lines break at spaces and hyphens, and between Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters. Text is never hyphenated.
Colour fonts. Colour emoji are drawn as outlines, in the ink's colours.
Text is applied once. Applied text is painted or sculpted in: it is not a text layer you can retype later. Undo it and set it again instead.

Tips

A label that wraps round a curve: pick Laid along the surface, so the letters keep their size and shape over the curve.
Lettering that reads on a busy texture: tick Outline as well as Fill, as on the torus above.
A badge with raised letters: in Paint, tick the Normal Map and give the fill a height in the channel columns. In Sculpt, emboss it after raising the subdivision level.
Large type in a mixed or poorly kerned font: switch Kerning to Optical.