@Richard Lesser Here you go! I don't know if this'll teach you anything new, but this is how I take SVGs and bevel/extrude them. Text is an almost identical workflow. Also attached a screenshot of where we end up.

@Richard Lesser let me know if you have any questions about it- hope it helps!

@Martin Kelly very cool! Glad you got it sorted. I've done it in a game engine but not in Blender. But you can cheat more in a game engine. lol. And yeah, I'd love to see the result if that's allowed here.

@Martin Kelly looks great! Good job.

If you're using physics, that could mess it up because it's having to calculate the samples for the frame and breaking physics in the process. In that case, you could get the animation right and then bake it and then you can render however you'd like.

@Martin Kelly it's been a WHILE since I've done it, but I'm 99% sure you can still bake the physics. I think it was like Blender 2.8 or something... but you can bake the physics and then play them back realtime, but you can rebake as desired til you get the right result, and then it's "locked in" til you clear the cache. Might be a good option for a future thing!

I'd love to learn more about uv unwrapping/mapping. I am TERRIBLE at it. I always kludge it around until I finally get it (usually) but that's an area I'd really like to learn more about.