Hey everyone,
Kelsey here,
and welcome back to Gal.
Today, I'm showing you how to create
3-D animating text from scratch
without any plug ins in after effects.
A lot of you have requested this.
And finally, I'm getting around to it,
so I'm excited to show you how it works.
So first in the tutorial,
I'll show you how to set up your text.
Have 3D enabled add some cool depth?
And then how to add some cool,
creative texture
and lighting on top of it,
because that's how you get it to look 3D.
And of course, you'll
learn how to animate
a 3D camera layer as well,
so you can start below your text in orbit
around it in 3D, which is really cool.
And also right behind me
here, I have the Dell 40 inch curved,
ultra sharp, wide ultra HD monitor.
I recently started
using it with my editing,
and it's been a game changer.
There is so much space
to tell you more about how awesome it is.
Later in the video.
But thanks to Dell for sponsoring
and the chapters are just down below
to skip around in this tutorial.
Let's go ahead and jump on it
first.
Let's click on the comp icon
to make a new composition.
We will keep it at
the default 1920 by 10 80,
and I'll make the frame rate
30 frames per second.
Now, since we are working in 3D,
select the 3D renderer tab
and here, let's make sure
to set it to Cinema 4D.
We won't be using
the Cinema 4D app in this tutorial,
but we will be using its engine
and then also click on options.
And let's move this slider
to a quality of one for Draut speed
so we can get better playback
rendering while we build the 3D text.
And of course, you can increase
the quality at the end.
Before we export.
But for now, just hit, OK?
And you can always go back into the comp
setting by clicking on
this hamburger menu
and go to comp settings
to make adjustments later on.
And now let's create the text,
click on the type tool
and let's type out the text 3D
from our character panel.
We can select a cool,
thick sans serif font.
I'm using a font called Monument,
and I've linked to this font below.
If you'd like to use it,
it's completely free.
Once you get to the sizing rate,
we can then go down and make the text
3D enabled to do that.
Check the box underneath
the 3D cube icon in our comp.
And now it's 3D enabled.
It doesn't look 3D, but
we can move it in 3D.
So if you open up this layer now,
you will see that
there are position and scale controls
that we see normally on a regular layer.
But we also have 3D controls.
You can use the X rotation
to rotate the text along our X axis,
which is the horizontal axis.
And you can use the Y rotation
to move it along the Y axis,
which is the vertical axis,
and the zero notation
which rotates around the center
intersecting points of X and Y.
For now, let's leave
these controls as is.
And later on, I will show you
how to create cameleer
where you can move the text in 3D space.
But before we create a camera layer,
I first want to show you
how to add some more depth
to your 3D text.
So let's toggle open the text and let's
open up geometry options.
And let's increase the extrusion depth.
Now, you can see that as we move
the Y rotation, you can see more depth.
But it's lacking
some texture and lighting,
which we will get to in a moment.
But first, let's create a camera
which will enable us
to control 3D space easier
and allow us to animate later on.
So let's right click here in the comp
and create a new camera.
I'll use the default
lens of 35 millimeters.
And now with the camera layer selected
and our preview, you can press the key
as a shortcut for the orbit tool.
And if you click and move this around,
you'll be able to change
the orbit of the text.
You can move it around.
If you press see again,
you'll get the camera pan tool
and you can move it left,
right or up or down.
And then you can press again
to get the dolly control,
to zoom in closer
or zoom out further away.
So you can use these
C shortcuts to quickly move the text
in the orientation that you want
using the camera controls.
And I'll show you how to animate
using the C keys later on.
And now on to the creative part,
the lighting and the shading of the text.
Let's right click on the comm space
and create a new light for this light.
We're going to use a spotlight.
So we're going to keep
the intensity at 100.
And you can play around
with the angle controls.
It simply just controls
the width of the light.
I'll keep it at around 90,
but we can always change this later.
The feather at 50 is fine,
will also enable cast shadows.
And I have my shadow darkness
at one hundred and diffusion at 30.
And now we'll hit, OK?
And immediately you can see that
the light is starting
to give the text more shape.
Next, we can use the transform controls
to move.
A light into the correct place,
you can use the point
of interest controls
to change where the light is hitting.
Also, the position controls
to move your light into place.
You can rotate the light
with X, Y and Z controls.
And as you start to move it, I recommend
going to The View dropdown
to show two views or four views.
So you can see exactly where the light is
from an overhead view
from the front and from the right side.
You can use these views because it helps
you see where the light is and position
it in the right place.
So for this particular light,
I just want it to nicely illuminate
the face of the 3D text
from the left kind of above.
So I'll situate the spotlight up there,
and we can always adjust it later on.
You can also go into the light options
from the comp and change the color.
So I'll set this
first light to a blue color.
Next, I'll make a second light.
This one, I'll also
make it a purple color.
And for this one, I'm
going to move the camera.
So it's off to the right from the bottom
to cast a purple shadow upwards
towards the extrusion
on the side of the text.
And this is giving it
more texture and dimension.
Next, I'll create a third spotlight.
And this time
I'll make it a yellow color.
And now I'm going to use the position,
orientation and rotation
controls to quickly
move the light behind the text,
to illuminate the backside
of it, to give it more shape.
And remember, to turn on the view options
to help you position
the light in the right place.
And lastly, I'll add in a fourth light
this time does an ambient light
just to bring in some more natural
light to the space.
And once it's created,
you'll see that it looks way too bright.
And what we need to do is go into it
and actually reduce the intensity down.
So around 10 or 15 or so is just fine,
just enough to make it
look a little bit brighter.
And you can turn off
this visibility of this light
to show you the before and after.
And you can just see it's
looking a lot better,
a little bit more bright.
So next, I'm going to show you
how to add more detail into the 3D text,
such as how to cast shadows on a text
and at some bubbling.
But before I do that,
I want to tell you more about this
awesome new monitor I have behind me.
So Delery shot to me
and they were like, hey,
do you want to try out this new 40
inch curv monitor?
And I was like, why not?
Let's see how it goes.
I hadn't tried a curved monitor before.
It was something new and I wasn't sure
if it was going to be the right fit.
But man, when I took it out
and use it, I was super impressed.
It's huge.
There's so much space in the monitor
and it's super sleek, really nice design.
It comes with all of the necessary parts.
And when I have my Premiere Pro
timeline or after effects comp,
there's so much space
so I can literally
have my whole timeline open.
That's one of the struggles
of editing on a smaller monitor.
Is that your timeline?
You constantly have to
expand it and reduce it.
So that's one huge benefit.
The resolution of this thing
getting into the tech specs,
it's a five K resolution.
So there's so much color in here.
It's super bright.
They include a whole sheet that details
all of the color calibration.
It's impressive.
And the speakers, it comes with speakers.
I usually edit with headphones,
but if I need to quickly just unplug
my headphones and hear it in
my space is really nice
to have a nice pair of dual
integrated speakers.
Another huge benefit
is with my precision laptop.
I can have the thunderbolt
connected to my laptop
as the display cable,
and it simultaneously charges it.
So it reduces the amount
of cables that you need.
And obviously, because it's so long,
if you don't want the full program
to take up the full space of the screen,
you can always shrink
your program that you're working in
and then have another program open
at the same time.
So if you need to
reference another program
while you're at it in such as a script,
you can have multiple
applications open at once.
There's really so many benefits of it.
If you want to check out more specs
to see if it's something
that you would want to try.
I'll put a link just down below.
But thank you so much to
for sponsoring today's video.
And yeah, let's go ahead and jump
back into the 3D text.
Let's open up our tech settings,
go to Cast Shadows and let's turn it on.
And now you can see the text has shadows
that are reacting to the lights.
We can also go to Bevill Depth
and increase this to around five.
And then from Bevill style
select Angular to see how it looks.
And it's looking pretty good.
But let's try a concave
and then you can see how convex looks.
I think I like convex the mouse.
I'm going to go with
this one for this style.
So now we can move on
to the camera animation.
One thing to note is that you can apply
some of the 3D text presets
to this layer.
For example,
you can go to effects and presets,
then to animation presets, then to text,
then to the 3D text section.
And you can see there's
a lot of different 3D text presets.
You can drag and drop these
onto your text layer.
And you can preview how they look.
And you can play around with it.
But, you know,
I'm not going to use these.
Animations for this particular effect.
But I just wanted to let you know
that they are there in case
you might find them useful.
So now let's do the camera animation.
First, let's move our text into the angle
we want as our starting point.
So I'll move the camera
using an orbit tool by pressing
and see to make it
like work completely beneath the text.
Looking up at it.
And then we can use the pan
and the zoom tools to make sure it's
at the right distance and location.
So once we have our starting place,
create a key frame
by pressing the stopwatch
next to the position.
Now let's move ahead
to around four seconds
to where we want the animation to end
and then press the see keys again
to use the orbit tool,
the dolly tool in the PAN tool
to get it into a new location.
So I'll move it more
directly onto the text
and then for faster
playback to preview it.
Turn on the draft 3D.
And when it's blue, it means it's on.
And you'll have a faster
preview of your result.
Now we need to render out the preview.
So press and to set the work area
to just this four seconds.
And then we can press the spacebar
to render this out.
It will take longer
if it's at full resolution.
But you can always lower it to a half
or a fourth for faster playback.
But it will have a lower quality render.
And here is our final result.
So that's all for this video tutorial,
I hope it was a great introduction
into 3D text in animation
inside of after effects
after effects can be kind
of intimidating at first,
but once you start using
the camera tools over and over again,
it literally was a game changer for me.
And now I just feel
so much more comfortable
using cameras to create
really dynamic scenes
inside of after effects.
And don't forget to give this video
a big thumbs up,
as well as hit that subscribe button.
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when I publish new content.
And as always, keep creating
better video with Gal.