How do I clean up text characters converted to mesh?

Question

I have found a time consuming way to create one mesh object per character.

Start with a text object: "abcdef ...etc..."

Alt+C -> Select object and convert text to mesh.
Tab -> Go to edit mode.
Z -> Enter wire frame view
B -> Select each character with box select one at a time.
Select bridge edge loops
P -> separate by selection

Repeat for each character.

Is there a way to bridge edge loops for all loose parts? A faster simpler way? Script?

Example of the problem with the mesh from text:

This is probably possible, but I'm not really understanding why you need to do this. Aren't mesh objects automatically filled with faces? I know that the topology of them is really bad, but I don't understand how bridging the edge loops fixes this. — TARDIS Maker, Dec 05 '15 at 20:25
All the faces are created but their edges are not joined. So it's a collection of faces. I then used limited dissolve to simplify the mesh, but the faces were still not joined. So selecting loose parts only selected a face. — Ricklon, Dec 05 '15 at 22:47
Press "W" remove doubles to get rid of all the vertices that are in the same place. This should make all the letters one piece also. Is this what you where looking for? Or where you also trying to clean up the actual topology? In that case, I would retopologize I don't believe that blender has a good automatic way of cleaning up the topology. — TARDIS Maker, Dec 06 '15 at 02:13
That did it. It works great. Thank You. My "bridge edge loop" really didn't work. Removing doubles does! — Ricklon, Dec 06 '15 at 02:18
Yeah, kind of what I thought. Bridge Edge Loops didn't really make much sense to me. I'll throw together a quick answer for you to accept. — TARDIS Maker, Dec 06 '15 at 02:34
For more homogeneous geometry you need to Remesh. See this answer: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/42573/47 — zeffii, Dec 06 '15 at 15:54

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 06 '15 at 14:08

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Instead of using Bridge Edge Loops, use Remove Doubles.

W > Remove Doubles.

edited Dec 06 '15 at 14:08

p2or

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answered Dec 06 '15 at 02:36

TARDIS Maker

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every time I use 3D text I get caught by this. Any reason why the default output from converting text to Mesh does not do this automatically? Is there a use case for the separate faces? – rob Apr 27 '18 at 11:57
Yeah, this is pretty broken, I don't understand it neither. Considering that you pretty much always have to convert to a mesh, why have a function if it is so badly broken? – Markus Bawidamann Jun 26 '21 at 10:00

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 26 '21 at 10:07

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Referring to the answer Remove Doubles: This function has been renamed in Blender 2.80 and onward:

It is now called MERGE BY DISTANCE.

answered Jun 26 '21 at 10:07

Markus Bawidamann

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 28 '16 at 10:34

For easy conversion to mesh or to separate the characters you can use

In the example i use Animation nodes:

The main deal is a node called separate text object, that converts to mesh and separates per character. (it alo works as curves or txt obj per character). Note that it preserves the original object and may later update.
It also has other text tools or mesh/curve tools to further get what you need (like removing doubles or having all in one mesh or animating separate etc etc)

In the picture, the separate text object node is the key. The rest, the pink nodes is just an example to further process the mesh data into one single obj and remove doubles (can do other processes as needed)

How do I clean up text characters converted to mesh?

3 Answers3