Dynamically Drivable Text Objects
Currently, many properties of text objects can be linked to drivers - except the actual string of the text itself. In other proposals, people have asked for more fonts to be made available to the Text Strips of the VSE. I would propose, rather, that a text-input box be added to the properties of the Text-Object, so that text can be dynamically changed, over frame-time, as is possible with the text-strip in the VSE.
Additionally, it would be helpful if the text-input of a text-strip in the VSE could be linked to such a text-input on a text-object. It is my understanding that, currently, the driver system does not allow for string-data to be used in driver formulas/equations.
These mods to Blender would make it possible to overlay subtitling text (of many already existing font types) to video. By driving text-objects with information from text-strips in the VSE, the generated text can be added back into a scene (VSE:add->scene->"some other driven scene").
Should this functionality be part of the text object, of of the Font Properties? I'm not sure.
4 Comments
But you can do this with Animation Nodes Addon. In 2.8 you will be able to define OpenGL as the render type and have 3D elements render as fast as the viewport allows.
@David McSween: Animation Nodes should be integrated into Blender as a default, and any of it's nodes animation be able to be seen in the dopesheet.
@ondraise15: Well the animation nodes developer is actually working on 2.8 now so fingers crossed ;-)
To be fair, this is already easily done using Python scripting. There could be a non-script approach as well, but for that, I think the proposal would need to explain how you would want the user interface for that to be, with mock-ups.