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About this lesson

Turning your text into a 3D object opens up lot of interesting possibilities. Control textures, deform shapes, and add lights and shadows to your text in realistic ways. 

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Quick reference

Topic: 3D Text Introduction

Turn your text into a 3D object in CS6 or Later.

When to use

Turning your text into a 3D object opens up lot of interesting possibilities. Control textures, deform shapes, and add lights and shadows to your text in realistic ways. This course will introduce you to these basic properties.

Instructions

Create some text

  1. New layer. Use text tool with large thick font for best results.

Extruded text to turn it into a 3D object

  1. Go to Menu/3D/New 3D Extrusion from Selected Layer.

Making adjustments to the 3D object

  1. Layer panel shows the 3D object like the camera, lights and the text layer. Click on the text layer to reveal 3D object properties.
  2. Example changes.
  3. Extrusion depth slider.
  4. Add reflections.
  5. Click on the ‘Edit Source’ Button to change the text content.
  6. Moving and rotating the 3D object by clicking on the object and using axis handles.

Rendering

  1. To see a rendered version use the ‘Render’ button in the properties panel.

Adding lights

  1. Use the ‘Add new layer’ button in the layers panel to choose a new light.
  2. Adjust position and properties.
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  • 00:04 Let's go ahead and start by placing some text on our document approximately where
  • 00:07 we want the extrusion to take place.
  • 00:10 Now, in Photoshop CS5, to extrude your text you would head up to the 3D menu and
  • 00:14 then chose Repousse.
  • 00:16 But, to the average person, they had no idea what Repousse even was.
  • 00:20 So on Photoshop CS 6,
  • 00:22 it has now been changed to New 3D Extrusion from Selected Layer.
  • 00:26 That makes a lot more sense.
  • 00:28 Now you are going to notice that we don't have to deal with that clunky Repousse
  • 00:31 window anymore, everything is built right into your work space.
  • 00:34 On the right, there are two panels to take note of.
  • 00:37 At the bottom, the 3D panel contains all of your 3D elements, such as your cameras,
  • 00:41 your text, your materials, and your lights.
  • 00:45 As you select these elements the new Properties panel right above will
  • 00:48 update to display the necessary information about the selected element.
  • 00:52 For example, if you wanted to change the extrusion depth,
  • 00:54 clicking on the text layer will show you it's properties right above,
  • 00:57 where we can change not only the extrusion settings, but we can also change the text.
  • 01:02 This is a huge improvement over what Photoshop CS5 had.
  • 01:05 In CS5 if you wanted to change the wording of your 3D text,
  • 01:08 you where forced to start from scratch.
  • 01:10 Now, clicking on the Edit Source button will allow you to edit the text,
  • 01:14 while keeping all of your 3D settings intact, it's fantastic.
  • 01:18 The way you interact with your 3D elements has changed as well.
  • 01:21 I'm able to simply click-on to the object I want to affect and rotate or
  • 01:25 move it right on my workspace.
  • 01:27 Clicking on the text, I'm able to roll over the axis that I want to move it on.
  • 01:30 Let's say I want to move it a little bit back on the z-axis.
  • 01:32 It's as simple as that.
  • 01:34 Now clicking on the light source right above will display its handle allowing me
  • 01:38 to rotate the direction of the light.
  • 01:40 I'm gonna go ahead and move it behind the text,
  • 01:42 which will cast some really nice shadows in the foreground.
  • 01:45 Good, now pressing the render button at the bottom of your properties panel,
  • 01:48 will render the current scene.
  • 01:51 That's looking pretty neat but I think it could use one more very faint light.
  • 01:55 At the bottom of our 3D panel,
  • 01:56 clicking on the New Light button will allow me to choose one of three lights.
  • 02:00 I'm gonna stick with an infinite light for now.
  • 02:02 And when the light is added in the Properties panel, I'm gonna go ahead and
  • 02:06 decrease the intensity to around 10%.
  • 02:07 Let's see how that's looking.
  • 02:12 Now it's looking a little bit better.
  • 02:13 You might be noticing a little bit of noise as the scene is rendering.
  • 02:16 That'll go away as the render progresses.
  • 02:18 One more neat thing I wanna show you.
  • 02:19 If we go ahead and
  • 02:20 hop into Environment, we have the option of adding reflections to our scene.
  • 02:25 Increasing the opacity of the reflection, let's say to around 70%,
  • 02:27 we'll pop a reflection right underneath our text on the ground plane.
  • 02:33 After a quick render, we can see it's a little bit too sharp so
  • 02:35 I'm going to go ahead and bump up the roughness to around 5%.
  • 02:38 That should give us a more realistic result.
  • 02:41 And I think we're going to leave it at that for now.

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