Text is an important component of our multimedia projects, and finding new creative ways to display texts in our videos is a great way to level up our projects. Similar to photoshop and Premiere Pro, in Adobe After effects, you can draw a text field right on top of your composition. However, Adobe After Effects has a fancy trickle pit sleeve that teachs your text to that next level. In this video, we will go over how to give standard text a three D effect. We will walk through how to use the geometry tools like the extrusion settings, selection tool, and lighting options to add and accentuate the depth of the text. Lastly, we will finish up by animating the movement of the text using key frames. Let's get started with the basics though and go over how to add text your composition with a type tool. Once you've imported your footage by double clicking in the project paint and selecting your media, Drag your imported footage onto the timeline. For the purpose of this video, I will create a title screen for a podcast. To start off, to add a new text layer, right click on the layer pane to the left of the timeline and navigate to new text. This will create a red layer on top of your footage. Double click on this new layer and you can begin typing your desired text. Before we can move on, we must change the three D render that After Effect is using. The software comes installed with a classic three D render enabled by default. If you click on the little box titled three D layer on your text, you may notice that some of the options are grad out. To access the geometry options, we must first switch the render to Cinema four D. To do this, navigate to composition composition settings, three D rendver, and change the render in the dropdown menu to Cinema four D. Be sure that Cinema four D is installed with your after effects in the Adobe Creative Cloud app. Once you switched the rendver, click and return to your text layer. Now when you enable the three D layer button, the geometry settings will become available. To continue, expand the dropdown and begin to increase the extrusion depth of your text layer. It may not be immediately obvious what this option is doing. To get a better idea of the depth, switch back to the selection tool and you will see a three dimensional transform rotation interface. The red lines indicate the x axis, the green line indicates the y axis, and the blue line indicates the z axis. You can begin rotating the text around to better visualize the depth of your three d text. You may notice that it is still difficult to see the three D effect, since your text is a flat color. There's still one last step that is integral to completing the three D effect. Return to the layer pane and right click, this time navigating to new light. This will add another layer to your timeline that will cast the light on your text in three D space. The color of the light is set to white by default. You will notice that the three D effect of your text is now much more apparent. Using the selection tool, you can begin moving the light around, which will affect the direction at which the light illuminates and cast shadows on your text. You can further customize your texts by adjusting the settings of the font, colors of both of the text and the light as well as the directionality of the text and light in three D space. I encourage you to toy around with these settings until you find a combination that you are happy with. Once you are satisfied with the look and position of your text, you can begin to animate the movement or lighting. Since I am working on a title screen, I'm going to have the text rotate down from the top. To do this, we first begin by moving the three D axis interface to the top center of the viewport just out of view. Then navigate through the text layer until reaching the transformed drop down. Inside, adjust the anchor point until the outline of the text is in the center of the screen again. We can begin placing keyframes to animate the movement. Click the little stopwatch next to the orientation option to place the first keyframe. Rotate the text up and off the screen using the red x axis line. Then scrub through the timeline for several seconds and click the little diamond at the far left of the layer pane on the orientation line. This will create a second key frame. While on this keyframe, you can rotate the text back down with the same rotational axis until the text is in the center of the screen again. Now, return to the first keyframe on your timeline and play your animation or hit the spacebar. Now you've learned how to create and animate three D texts using Adobe After Effects. I hope that these skills assist you in all of your future after effect endeavors. Thanks for watching.
Creating 3D Text in Adobe After Effects
From Jonathan Famiglietti August 22, 2024
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Text and video by Jonathan Famiglietti, Student Multimedia Design Center
Text is an important component of our multimedia projects, and finding new and creative ways to display text in videos is a great way to level up our projects. Adobe After Effects has a trick up its sleeve that will allow you to take your text to that next level.
In this video, discover how to give standard text a 3D effect using the geometry tools built into After Effects, and learn how to animate the 3D text using keyframes.
If you’re interested in using Adobe After Effects to create and animate 3D text, stop by the Student Multimedia Design Center in Morris Library where you can book time in our studio spaces or use our Mac classroom equipped with the full Adobe Creative Cloud Suite.
This video is part of the weekly series “Multimedia Tips and Tricks,” which shares content in response to frequently asked questions from the Student Multimedia Design Center. We’d love to hear from you. Please share your feedback with us by filling out our survey.
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