3-d text…how do i do that eh??

[Steve Roberts]

Use the shatter effect. Search for Shatter tutorials on the COW.

Basically, you’d shatter away the layer around the text, and the remaining pieces would have thickness. It’s not perfect, but it works for many people.

[Mike Clasby]

1) Shatter for 3D depth tut here:

Click on Roland Kahlenberg’s head above and scroll down to, Adding Z-Depth to Your Logo.

2) You can do it pretty well with just dupping the layers and separating them in 3D z space. Pretty good refers to not lingering in the dead edge-on because the edge is a little fuzzy there, it’s not as bad as it sounds and can be made Really Pretty Good by tinting the middle layers Black or another solid color , easy to do, quick to see if you like.

Or you can try dupping thr text layers and seperating them in Z-space, below is a way to do that with a simple expression, seperating the dups 1 pixel in Z from the one above.

Make your layer 3D.

Add this expression to the position of your Text layer:

position+[0,0,(index-1)*1]

This just tell the layer to separate itself 1 pixel in the z direction from the layer above, so when we dup them they arrange themselves like a real thick sandwich.

Dup it three times.

If you want a different color for the side of the text, the extrude, to the middle layer, apply the Render > Tint(choose your color).

Now dup that middle layer as many times as you want it to be thick (in pixels).

So 10 total layers = 10 pixels thick.

Add a camera (at the bottom) and fly around or rotate your letter in 3D, just don’t linger too long on the edge as it gets a little fuzzy within1 degree of edge-on, not as big a problem as it sounds.

If you want to get fancy you can tie the “1” (last one in the expression) to a slider and bunch them up closer than 1 pixel or farther apart.

[Apollack]

I liked the turn-out of the shatter effect. It was definately good enough for what i needed. That tutorial was really helpful. I’ll play with the lighting and see how it turns out. thank you

[Rhett Robinson]

I’d suggest that you use “color”, or one of the other choices for the sides under the “texture” section of the plug. I’ve had pretty good luck using shatter, linking the shatter camera to the comp camera, and using the perspective “bevel”. With a little lighting, it looks pretty good.

There are a number of FREE 3D programs out there that are very capable for making 3D text as well…

nothing like the level of 3DS, Maya, or even what Zaxwerks offers, but you can certainly do a lot without spending a penny.

Now the question!

I recently ran in to a problem where I was trying to use the “number” effect, and using shatter, but had no luck… it seems to look at the custom shatter layer on the first frame, and that’s it. It’s only 40 numbers, so it won’t kill me to make them manually, but wondered if anyone knew something I didn’t (okay, so that’s not so unlikely!)