Bubbly Text

Quick reference

• 00:04 Hey, everyone.
• 00:05 Howard Penske here with the 3D Photoshop tutorial.
• 00:08 And today, I'm gonna be showing you how to create 3D bubbly text,
• 00:12 just like you see here.
• 00:13 And what's cool about this design is that we're gonna be starting with a single
• 00:16 text layer.
• 00:17 And then splitting it up into multiple meshes, so
• 00:20 you can edit each letter individually.
• 00:22 So I'm starting with a 1280 by 720 pixel document.
• 00:25 But what is nice about working in a 3D environment is you
• 00:28 are pretty much working in a vector format.
• 00:30 So, later on you can enlarge or shrink that design as big or
• 00:34 as small as you want it.
• 00:35 And you really won't lose any quality.
• 00:37 Now to fill in the background layer, I'm gonna select a nice blue color from my
• 00:41 color picker right over here, I'm gonna select that color, I love that color.
• 00:45 And to fill that background with that color, I'm simply gonna hold down my
• 00:48 Alt or Option key, Option on the Mac, Alt on Windows.
• 00:51 And press Delete or Back Space.
• 00:53 And now that the background is in place, we can start adding our text.
• 00:57 Over in the toolbars on the left, I am going to grab my horizontal type tool and
• 01:00 I'm going to set the color to, let's say, white.
• 01:02 Right now, it really doesn't matter.
• 01:04 And in my font picker, I'm going to select a nice bubbly font.
• 01:08 And another nice thing about working in 3D is that at any point you can always go
• 01:13 back and change the text and not lose your 3D properties.
• 01:16 So, I'm going to choose this text right here, and
• 01:19 I'm going to type out my name in the center of the document.
• 01:22 So there we go. I'm going to move it in the middle, and
• 01:25 once again it doesn't matter how big or
• 01:26 small your text is because you can always enlarge it later on.
• 01:29 But if you want, you can hop back in the type tool, shortcut key T,
• 01:33 and then enlarge the text as you please.
• 01:35 So I'm going to set it around 200 pixels,
• 01:37 right about there, and position it in the center of my document.
• 01:41 So, now that our type is in place, we need to bring it into the third dimension.
• 01:45 Now, just a quick heads up, 3D only works in Photoshop CS6-Extended or Photoshop CC.
• 01:52 If you have CS6 Extended or Photoshop CC and you don't see the 3D menu at the top,
• 01:57 then your graphics card or operating system may not be supported.
• 02:01 So now to bring this text into 3D, if you have your Type Tool selected,
• 02:04 you can click on the 3D button at the far right side.
• 02:07 Or under the 3D menu,
• 02:09 you can simply choose New 3D Extrusion from Selected Layer.
• 02:12 And in a second, Photoshop will ask you if you want to switch to the 3D workspace.
• 02:16 Sure, why not?
• 02:18 And then you'll see your nice three text built right into the work space.
• 02:22 Now, by default your current view is active which you can see right here in
• 02:25 the 3D panel and
• 02:26 up at the top on the options bar, you have your different modes.
• 02:29 So you can rotate, roll, drag, slide, or scale.
• 02:34 Right now, I have Rotate selected.
• 02:36 So, if I just click and drag in my workspace, I'm gonna actually rotate
• 02:39 the 3D view so I can see my text from a different perspective.
• 02:42 Just like that.
• 02:44 Now in terms of editing our text, we first need to select it.
• 02:46 And we can either do that by clicking on the base 3D mesh in the 3D panel or
• 02:50 we can just simply click on the text in our document just like that.
• 02:53 And you'll see the access around the text which allows you to move, rotate, or
• 02:58 scale that text on the X, Y or Z axis.
• 03:02 So to begin our editing, let's shape out the text a little bit.
• 03:04 Over to the right in the Properties panel, we can select a shape preset.
• 03:08 We have options such as Bevel, Bevel With Frame, Bevel With Contour, Inflate, or
• 03:14 Pillow Inflate and you have a whole ton more down below.
• 03:16 Now, for this example because we want it a little bit bubbly,
• 03:19 we're gonna chose the Inflate option just to get us started.
• 03:22 But we're not gonna leave it at that because it's not bubbly enough.
• 03:26 So, to manually adjust the inflation or
• 03:28 bevel we're gonna go to this option right here at the top, which is Cap, and then at
• 03:32 the top, we have options for Bevel, and then down below, we have Inflate.
• 03:36 So, for this case,
• 03:37 I'm gonna simply increase the strength until my text looks a little more bubbly.
• 03:41 But you'll notice if I grab my current view and
• 03:43 then rotate, that is only being applied to the front of the text.
• 03:46 I also want it to be applied to the back.
• 03:49 So, what we have to do is to go back to the mesh, go back to Cap,
• 03:52 and at the top where it says Sides, select Front and Back.
• 03:57 That way when you increase the strength is not only going to be applied to the front,
• 04:00 but the back as well.
• 04:01 So, if I grab my current view one more time, and rotate around,
• 04:04 you are now going to see we have a little bit of inflation on the back of
• 04:07 our text in addition to the front which is exactly what we want.
• 04:12 Now, for this case, the text is a little bit too thick, so
• 04:14 I am simply going to select the 3D mesh one more time, and
• 04:17 very subtly decrease the extrusion depth somewhere around 50.
• 04:21 Good, that's looking a little bit better, so
• 04:23 now we can move on to defining our materials.
• 04:26 So right in the 3D panel,
• 04:27 right below the 3D mesh, we have all of our different materials.
• 04:31 From the front, the front bevel, extrusion, back beveled, and
• 04:34 back inflation.
• 04:35 Now for this design the materials are going to be very similar.
• 04:38 So, what we're able to do is select one of the material, hold down the shift key, and
• 04:41 then select the last one.
• 04:43 That will allow us to edit all of them at once.
• 04:46 For right now,
• 04:46 we're not gonna worry too much about the color, which is your diffuse option.
• 04:50 But just to show you how that works, I'm gonna set it to a nice bring orange, and
• 04:53 you'll notice the color fo the 3D text changes.
• 04:56 But it's looking a little bit boring, so
• 04:57 what we're gonna do, we're gonna adjust a few things.
• 04:59 The first thing I'm gonna increase is the reflection.
• 05:02 That'll really give it a nice, bubbly look to it.
• 05:04 I'm going to set the reflection somewhere around 60%,
• 05:07 and then the shine can be adjusted as well.
• 05:09 If you increase this value, the highlights will tighten up on your mesh.
• 05:13 But if you decrease it, they'll be more spread out.
• 05:16 So for this example, I'm going to leave it somewhere around 60%,
• 05:19 just like the reflection and that will leave us with a nice bubbly look.
• 05:23 And if we press the Render button at the bottom of the Properties panel,
• 05:26 Photoshop will start putting all of this together and start rendering out our text.
• 05:30 Now, just like with any 3D design program,
• 05:33 the first few passes are gonna be pretty ugly.
• 05:35 You're gonna see a lot of grain and everything just won't look that great.
• 05:38 But as you let it render, that grain will start to disappear and
• 05:41 you'll be left with a nice sharp result.
• 05:44 So I"m gonna press Escape to stop the render, because we're not finished yet.
• 05:46 And at this point we want to split up our extrusion.
• 05:49 So, we can edit each letter individually.
• 05:51 And that can be done at the top under the 3D menu.
• 05:53 And you're gonna select Split Extrusion.
• 05:57 And what that's gonna do, we're gonna press OK, is take each and
• 06:00 every letter and give it it's own mesh.
• 06:01 So, you're gonna see right down here we have a new group.
• 06:04 And if we expand that, we can now edit each letter individually.
• 06:07 Now sometimes Photoshop will name each letter individually for
• 06:10 you, but if not you can simply double click and you can name it O.
• 06:13 And you can scroll down.
• 06:15 This is the W.
• 06:16 I'm going to name that W.
• 06:17 Scroll down a little bit more.
• 06:20 Here's the A.
• 06:21 Scroll down.
• 06:23 There's the R.
• 06:24 And finally we have the D down at the bottom, there we go.
• 06:27 So, now we can start editing our letters individually.
• 06:30 I'm gonna scroll back up to the top where the O is.
• 06:32 I'm gonna select all the materials of this letter.
• 06:34 And I'm gonna change the diffuse color.
• 06:36 So for this one, I'm gonna set it to a nice pinkish red color right about there.
• 06:42 Then, I'm gonna scroll down to the W.
• 06:43 I'm gonna set this to let's say, a greenish yellow color right about there.
• 06:49 Scroll down to the A, select all those materials.
• 06:53 This one will be set to a blue.
• 06:57 Let's scroll down one more time, or
• 06:59 two more times, to the R, this one will be set to a darker red.
• 07:04 And finally right down to the D, we are going to choose a dark black for this one.
• 07:11 And press OK.
• 07:12 So, now we have each letter individually colored.
• 07:15 And because the mesh was split up, we can now select each letter and rotate or
• 07:19 move it individually as well.
• 07:21 So I'm gonna go through and
• 07:22 simply rotate each letter so they're on a little bit of an angle.
• 07:25 Just like this.
• 07:27 I can go to the W, rotate it towards me a little bit.
• 07:30 Grab the A, I'll leave it right around there.
• 07:33 The R, I'm going to rotate it back that way.
• 07:35 And the D, I'm going to rotate it this way as well.
• 07:38 And you can also move them individually right from your work space just like this.
• 07:43 And to see how things are looking, we can press our Render button one more time and
• 07:46 Photoshop will start putting all this stuff together.
• 07:48 And once again the first pass,
• 07:50 the first few passes are going to be a little bit grainy, but
• 07:53 after a few minutes of rendering, we're going to start to see a much nicer result.
• 07:57 I'm gonna cancel out this render.
• 07:58 And there are few more things you may wanna take a look at.
• 08:00 If you scroll up to the top to where Environment is, this will allow you to
• 08:04 set a reflection on the ground plane which is basically where your mesh is sitting.
• 08:09 And right now it's set to zero, so there's no reflection.
• 08:11 So I can increase this, let's say to 40%.
• 08:14 And if I render it, you're gonna see we have a very sharp reflection.
• 08:18 I want it a little bit softened out, so
• 08:20 I'm gonna increase the roughness, let's say to around 60%.
• 08:23 And if I render that again, the relection's gonna look a lot softer.
• 08:27 And as the render progresses, it's gonna look smoother and smoother and smoother.
• 08:31 Another thing you may wanna take a look at is the infinite light,
• 08:34 which is right here.
• 08:35 When you have a light source selected in Photoshop, you have this handle in
• 08:38 the middle which will allow you to simply grab it and move the light.
• 08:41 And you'll see the shadow update in real time.
• 08:44 So if you want a nice long shadow you can just pull it right down here and
• 08:47 you can see that we have a nice shadow going back in the background.
• 08:51 And the light also has properties, too.
• 08:53 If you wanted your shadow soft, just like the reflection,
• 08:56 you can increase the softness value in the Properties panel.
• 08:59 You can change the color of the light if you wanted to.
• 09:01 And you can change the intensity if the light is a little bit too bright.
• 09:04 So one more time, let's go ahead and
• 09:05 render this out and Photoshop will start to put together the shadows,
• 09:09 the highlights, the reflections, all this stuff.
• 09:12 And as your render progresses, it's gonna look nicer and nicer.
• 09:15 And just like you learned before, if you choose the current view,
• 09:18 you can rotate to get the exact perspective that you're looking for.
• 09:20 So if you wanted a more dead on angle, you can do that.
• 09:23 If you want it more from the side, you can definitely do that.
• 09:25 And at any point in the future, you can always grab your letters individually and
• 09:29 move them closer together, further apart, back in space, doesn't really matter.
• 09:33 You have full control over your 3D mesh.
• 09:36 And as I mentioned at the beginning, you can enlarge or
• 09:38 shrink your mesh and you won't lose quality.
• 09:41 So, if I grab the H and I grab the box in the middle to scale it uniformly,
• 09:45 I can simply make the H a lot bigger.
• 09:47 Now you're going to notice it's going a little bit below the ground plane.
• 09:50 So when that happens,
• 09:51 over in the 3D panel, click on the Menu, and choose Move Object to Ground Plane.
• 09:56 And that will snap it right to the ground plane, where you can move it back or
• 10:00 forward or any which way you like, and you'll have a nice sharp mesh.
• 10:04 No quality is lost at all.
• 10:06 And to finish it off, I'm gonna grab the current view,
• 10:08 I'm going to switch over to my pan, and move it this way just a little bit.
• 10:13 And I can finally press Render and
• 10:14 just let it sit for a few minutes until I get the final result.
• 10:18 And after probably about five minutes or so, you should have a nice, sharp,
• 10:22 smooth, free bubbly text which you created completely in Photoshop.

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