How do I change the text in a Text Shape dynamically?

Normally, the text of a Text shape is not animatable. The resulting mesh will be evaluated once at the beginning of the rendering and will not change as it is considered static (not changing over time). A workaround is to assign a script controller to a property of the text shape which will do two things: tell the renderer that the text shape is animated and thus requires reevaluation on each frame, and set the actual text in the text property.

EXAMPLE

   --Create a box and a text shape
   b=box name: "ControlBox" wirecolor:blue
   t=text name: "ControlledText" wirecolor:red
   t.baseobject.renderable=true --set the shape to renderable
   theCtrl = float_script() --create a float script controller
   theCtrl.addNode "TheText" t --add a variable, connect to theText node
   theCtrl.addNode "TheBox" b --add a variable, connect to the Box node
   --Set the expression to assign the height of the box as string to the
   --.text property of the text shape, then return 0 on the next line:
   theCtrl.SetExpression "TheText.text = TheBox.height as string\n0"
   t.kerning.controller=theCtrl --assign the controller to the kerning
   animate on at time 100 b.height*=2 --animate the height of the box
   max tool zoomextents all --zoom into the two objects
   playAnimation() --play back the animation

   --You should be able to render the scene without any problems
   --and the text will show the height of the box in generic units.