Creating a neon sign in After Effects

[Mylenium]

Create your outlines as a mask on a solid, apply the Stroke effect and in addition to that the Glow effect. Yes, you can turn your llayer also into a 3D layer in which case I suggest you apply the Glow to an adjustment layer on top of your other layers for a more realistic look.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Dino Muhic]

With “3D Stroke” from Trapcode Plug-Ins you can make a…what else…3D Stroke as an outline of a layermask.
This gives an even more realistic look because you can also use the 3D camera.
I would prefer this, together with a glow effect and some lightsources for realistic reflactions on the wall.

But first try to find a sutable font and use this for the 3D Stroke or make an own sign.

I hope i could help

[Ebarfield]

The other 3D alternative is to use Zaxwerks Invigorator, which comes (or used to, anyway) with After Effects as a plug-in. Trick is, the one that comes with AE is the version which requires Adobe Illustrator to create the text characters/vectors, which you then import into AE’s Zaxwerks plug-in for 3D letters. If you upgrade to the Pro version, which is pricey, you create your own 3D text right inside the plugin. It has camera, light effects, many textures and material types you can apply. You could also then apply shine, glow effects, etc., as mentioned by other responses. You can get glass and chrome look, among many others. Look on the Zaxwerks forum here for more info. Also, there are several tutorials on Invigorator.

I bought the pro version and have used it a number of times. Works quite well.

“deja vu all over again” — Yogi Berra

[Mark]

To help sell the effect, animate the opacity really quickly (I use the wiggler for this) so as to get a flicker on the sign.