OK Guys... I have been told that Corel Paint/Draw can convert an outline of an object into a font which can then be brought into Carrara and beveled. (Currently Carrara can bevel fonts but cant bevel an Illustrator outline and that is why I am pursuing this circuitous method...) So, how do you make an outline/shape into a font? Never having used Corel Paint, I dont have a clue.

I have no idea, myself, but would be interested to hear how this works. Here's an idea, though. You could get a font creation program (there are a bunch out there, even a pretty decent share-ware program the name of which eludes me) and create your fonts there. That might do the job. Dex

It is not too hard. You have to do it in the vector side of CorelDraw not in PhotoPaint. A quick one, two, three (ok, 1 to 10) goes like this: 1. Set up a new file in Draw with the units set to points. 2. set up 4 guide lines so they form a box that is 720 points wide by 720 points tall. 3. turn on snap to guide lines and snap the 0,0 base point down to the lower left intersection of the guide lines. 4. draw or import your outline, scale it so that it fits within the guide lines (does not have to touch all 4 guides, can be 720 high or wide). 5. make sure your drawing is made up of closed paths that do not intersect, remove all grouping and combine all the paths into one curve. 6. Call up the export dialog and find the ttf export filter, you have to name your font 2 times. First is the font file name and second is the one that will show up in your font lists. Call it something easy to find. 7. design size stays at 720, grid size should be at 4096(or what ever the higher number is). 8. assign your outline to a keystroke by pressing the key you want it to be. 9. that's it, find your new font and install it, then open up Carrara and it will be available in the text modeler. 10. you can add more outlines to the same font file by repeating these steps and assigning a different keystroke to each object. Note: you can have more than one outline open in your work file but you have to export them one at a time by checking the "export selected only" box during export and making sure your object is set inside the guides and as close to baseline 0,0 as it can get. gear font made this way mdc

MDC, Thanks very much for your informative reply. I will try your instructions and let you know how I make out. (Sure would be nice if Carrara just had a bevel command, wouldnt it?) Sincerely, Thomas

And Dex, Are these font creation shareware apps PC or Mac platform? (Im on a Mac) I've searched Version Tracker and found nothing.