In this Photoshop tutorial I’m going to show you how to create a 3D Chrome Text Effect
and how to make it into a rotating animated GIF.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Photoshop Training Channel.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to easily create a 3D text chrome effect using
Photoshop’s 3D features.
Which means that you’ll only need at least Photoshop CS6 Extended to follow along with
this tutorial.
And stick around to the end of the video because I will also show you how to use Photoshop’s
timeline to animate the text and export it as an animated GIF.
Okay, let’s get started.
I’m working with a document, it’s 1920x1080.
And the first thing that I’m going to do is create a New Solid Color and this is going
to be a dark grey.
I’m going to press OK.
You don’t have to delete the Layer Mask.
But I’m going to, I just don’t like having it there if I’m not going to need it.
I’m going to click on the Background and drag it into the trash icon to delete it.
Next, I’m going to click on the Horizontal Type Tool and I’m just going to type PTC
and you can type whatever you like.
I’m going to use a font called Proxima Nova and use the Light version of it.
And I’m just going to type PTC and I’m using black as my text color.
Then I’m going to click on the 3D icon to create a 3D layer from this text.
And I’m just going to click and drag on this Orbit Camera Tool just to see the text,
there it is.
If I hover over the center cube, when it turns yellow, I can click and drag and scale uniformly.
And in the Properties Panel, under Coordinates, I can click on Move to Ground.
What I’m going to do now is rotate it 90° in the X axis.
So I’m going to type in 90, hit Enter.
And I have my 3D text selected here in the 3D Panel and I’m going to click on this
icon here, which is the Mesh.
And there are shape presets that I can use.
I’m going to click on the 5th one, which is this one, right here.
Then I’m going to into my Current View and select Front, so I can see the front of the
text.
I’m going to click on the text.
Hover over the cube, in the blue handle which is the Scale Along Z axis, click and drag
to scale it down.
I don’t want it to be very thick at all, maybe something like that.
Also, when I rotate it in the Y axis, I don’t want it hitting the ground plane.
So I’m going to make sure that I’m in 90° and then push it up.
So I’m going to go to Coordinates, type in 90° here.
Then hover over the red point, when it turns yellow, click and drag up and just make sure
it’s above the ground plane.
Because the ground plane catches shadows and when this is rotating I don’t want it to
go into the ground plane.
It will just look weird.
Then I’m going to go back into the Properties Panel and change the Z rotation to 0.
So now when it rotates it won’t hit the ground plane.
Then I’m going to go into the Current View, click on the Camera icon and select Top.
Also, make sure you’re looking at this in Perspective View, not Orthographic.
You can see the shadow there on the ground plane.
What I’m going to do now is click on the Infinite Light and click and drag on this
handle to place the light right there, right in the center.
I’m also going to increase the Softness so that we have a soft shadow.
Now it’s time to work on the chrome effect.
So I’m going to click on Environment and under IBL, Image Base Light, I’m going to
select New Texture and just press OK.
Now that we’ve created our New IBL, Image Base Light, I’m going to click on this icon
and select Edit Texture.
Then, I’m going to press Ctrl I/ Command I on the Mac to Invert.
I’m going to go into Layers Panel, Create a New Layer, select the Rectangular Marquee
Tool, make white, my Foreground color.
And I’m going to start making rectangles of different widths and lengths and fill that
with white.
Alt backspace/Option Delete on the Mac to fill with the Foreground color and this is
going to create the lighting in my scene.
Then I’m going to Deselect by pressing Ctrl D/Command D. I’m going to switch over into
the Elliptical Marquee Tool and I’m going to click and drag while holding Shift to create
a perfect circle.
I can move it around and place it accordingly.
Then I’m going to fill with the Foreground, which is white.
So I’m going to press Alt Backspace/ Option Backspace on the Mac.
I’m going to right click on the selection, select Transform Selection.
Hold Shift Alt/ Shift Option on the Mac and scale that selection down.
Then hit Enter/Return and hit the Backspace key/ Delete key on the Mac and now we have
this white ring.
I’m going to press Ctrl D/Command D to Deselect.
And I’m going to make just a few more rectangular marquee selections and fill them with white.
Alt Backspace is how you fill with the Foreground color once again.
And I’m just making all these random shapes so your shapes could look different, it really
doesn’t matter.
I’m going to close this tab, Tap Yes to Save, then press OK.
And you’ll notice the effect here.
We can actually start seeing some of the chrome effect.
But we got to enhance it.
So I’m going to double click on this 3D layer to go into the 3D Panel, then I can
select the top Material, hold Shift and click on the bottom most Material then increase
the Reflection pretty high.
And you can see the reflection we have here.
I can click on the Move Tool and we can click and orbit around the text so that we could
see what it looks like and it’s looking pretty good.
I’m going to go back into the Top View.
And once again, make sure that we’re on Perspective, not Orthographic.
At this point we’re going to leave the text as is, we can come in and adjust it later.
Let’s now work on the animation so that we can see what it’s looking like and then
we can make better refinements.
So I’m going to go into Window + Timeline.
Then I’m going to click on Create Video Timeline.
If you don’t see it, click on this icon and make sure that Create Video Timeline is
checked.
And we have these video layers.
I’m going to click an arrow for this layer that reads PTC which is my text.
And if you type something else, the video layers will be named something else, of course.
I’m going to select 3D Meshes and click on the stopwatch to create the first key frame.
And I’m going to go into the very end of this animation.
Then I’m going to select my 3D Text from the 3D Panel, click on Coordinates and under
the Z axis, I’m going to type in the number that gives me a full circle.
Of course, 360 will be a full circle but if we enter that, it’s going to go back to
0 because it didn’t really move.
So we got to go one step backward and that would be 359.
But Photoshop is going to read it as -1, so once I hit Enter, it would turn it into -1°
and that’s okay.
Now if you scroll through the Timeline, your animation may start or it may not.
In my case, it doesn’t.
So what I need to do is go right into the middle of the animation and force it to start
spinning.
And I’m going to do that by entering a different number.
So I’m going to go in here and just type in 180 which is flipping the 3D text halfway.
Now, if I scroll through the Timeline you can see that our text is, in fact, spinning.
I can click Play and that’s my text spinning.
So now I can come back and refine the text.
So I’m going to just move this down so I could see it better.
And with that PTC selected, that 3D layer, I’m going to go into the Caps which is this
icon here and I’m going to increase the Width, Angle and maybe change the Contour
to something else.
I just want it to really pop.
So for now that’s looks pretty good.
And I’m going to hit the Play button once again just so that we can see what it looks
like.
And I think that looks good.
What I’m going to do now is zoom out just so that we can see our canvas and the Background
is looking a little boring.
So I’m just going to add a little more interest to it by double clicking on the Color Fill
Layer, selecting Pattern Overlay and just selecting any pattern that I think adds to
the background.
I have Multiply as my Blending Mode and I can adjust the Opacity accordingly.
And like I said, it really doesn’t matter which one you use as long as it doesn’t
look boring.
So I’m going to use this one here.
And by the way, I’m using the Artist Surfaces, so I’m just going to press OK to replace
it and I’m using this one here, which is the 5th one from the left on the first row.
Then I’m going to press OK.
And now we have a background which is just a little more interesting, it’s not a flat
color and I think that looks a little better.
If you hit the Play button, the text won’t spin and that’s because we have Color Fill
selected.
But if we go back and select PTC here and click the Play button, it will start spinning
again.
So I’m just giving you a heads up in case you tap on the Play button and nothing happens.
At this point I think we’re ready to export this graphic.
You can do it two ways, you can go into the Render Video and render out of video.
You have the Render Quality Options here.
If you choose something like Ray Trace Final, it will give you a high quality result but
it may take you a really long time to render.
So one of the easiest things to do is go into File + Export + Save for Web (Legacy) and
instead Export an animated GIF.
I’m going to resize it, I think 1920 will be huge for a GIF, so I’m going to type
in 500 and that’s the size there.
I’m viewing it at 100% so that’s what it would look like.
I can then click on this dropdown and select GIF, it’s going to take a second.
Photoshop is going to load it on to the Save Web dialogue box.
So we’ll give it a few seconds here while it loads, and there it is.
Looping Options, change that to Forever, then hit the Play button and you’ll see your
animated GIF.
And that’s what it would look like.
And I think it looks pretty good.
We have clear reflections.
There’s a shadow there in the background that it’s barely noticeable but I like that.
I don’t like my shadow to be too strong.
And I think we’re ready to save so then we just click on this Save button and save
this animated GIF on to our Desktop.
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And that’s it for this tutorial.
I hope that these techniques were new to you.
Let me know on the comments below if you would like to see more 3D and animations tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching and I will talk to you again very soon.