TRON Legacy Text Effect

Quick reference

• 00:04 Let's begin.
• 00:05 Starting off with our document,
• 00:06 I'm starting with a 1280 x 720 pixel document with a very dark blue background.
• 00:11 Using a dark background will help your final text pop.
• 00:15 However, you don't wanna use a pure black background,
• 00:17 as it will cause issues when you're adding the final outer glow.
• 00:20 Now for the text.
• 00:21 Over at dafont.com, they have several tron style fonts.
• 00:25 But the one I found most accurate was called TR2N.
• 00:27 I'll link the font over at IceflowStudios.com.
• 00:30 With the font of your choice active, a nice large size, around 400 points,
• 00:35 should work nicely.
• 00:36 Now, go ahead and type up the word of choice anywhere on your document.
• 00:40 You can always move it later if needed.
• 00:42 Once your text is ready to go, under the 3D menu at the top of
• 00:44 your work space choose the new 3D extrusion from selected layer option.
• 00:49 This will convert your text into a 3D layer, as you can see here.
• 00:53 Now the fun begins, we're gonna go through the different elements in the 3D
• 00:56 panel which will slowly form the effect that we're looking for.
• 00:59 Let's start with our infinite light.
• 01:01 All we want to do with this light is to rotate it downwards using the handle in
• 01:04 the middle so it's almost directly facing the text.
• 01:07 And then we're going crank up the softness of the shadow in the Properties panel
• 01:10 to 60%.
• 01:11 Good.
• 01:12 Now hopping over to the Environment properties,
• 01:14 the only setting that we're going to adjust is the reflections.
• 01:17 To allow the text to reflect on the ground plane,
• 01:19 turn the reflection's opacity up to 60%.
• 01:22 And the roughness up to 5%.
• 01:23 Just to ensure that the reflections aren't too sharp.
• 01:26 Of course if you are looking for sharper reflections keep the roughness at zero.
• 01:30 Now moving down to the main mesh of our text layer,
• 01:32 we need to add a bevel by the edges of our text.
• 01:35 This can be done by selecting bevel from the pre-shape picker.
• 01:39 We're also gonna decrease the extrusion to around 50.
• 01:42 At this point, the bevel isn't complete, to give the text a little bit of depth and
• 01:45 to help with the eventual glows, we need to adjust the text cap.
• 01:49 At the top of the Properties panel, the third icon will allow you to do just that.
• 01:54 Increasing the width to 100% will create nice bevel on our text.
• 01:58 Now that we have dealt with the outline of the text,
• 02:00 it's time to start working on the materials.
• 02:02 Due to the nature of this font, our front and
• 02:04 back inflation materials are covered up by the bevel.
• 02:07 So the only materials that we need to change are the front bevel and
• 02:11 the extrusion material.
• 02:12 However, just to be safe, go ahead and click on the front and
• 02:16 the back inflation materials and set the opacity of both of them to 0%.
• 02:20 Let's start with the front bevel.
• 02:23 Starting at the top with the diffuse color, set that at a pure black.
• 02:27 We're actually gonna be using illumination to define the color of this text.
• 02:30 The specular can stay the same, but the illumination, which will give us
• 02:33 a must stronger overall feel than diffuse would, will be set at a nice baby blue.
• 02:38 I'm gonna use the value 4F, A3, F9.
• 02:43 Now, as for the sliders, all we wanna change is the shine and the bump.
• 02:47 Go ahead and increase the shine to 75%.
• 02:50 And reduce the bump to zero.
• 02:52 And that's it for the frame bevel.
• 02:54 Now, the extrusion will be slightly more of work.
• 02:56 Let's start at the top of the colors again.
• 02:59 The diffuse will be set to a bright blue.
• 03:02 I'm gonna use 0090FF.
• 03:05 The specular, which is actually gonna help bring out the bumps texture will be
• 03:09 a nice baby blue, 00BBFF.
• 03:13 And the illumination will be set to a slightly darker blue 234F92.
• 03:20 Now down below the shine will be set to 30%.
• 03:25 The reflection in the bump will be both at 100% and
• 03:28 the opacity will be at 30% as well.
• 03:31 Now in terms of the bumps texture,
• 03:33 it's really up to you how you want this to look.
• 03:35 Over at CGTextures.com I found a really nice scratch texture,
• 03:39 which will give us a nice glassy or icy feel to the extrusion.
• 03:43 But even after the texture's been added, it still needs a little bit of tweaking.
• 03:47 First off because bump maps work off light and
• 03:49 dark tones, we're gonna quickly edit this texture.
• 03:52 Clicking to the right of the percentage choosing edit texture will allow us to
• 03:56 edit the original file.
• 03:57 All we really need to do is pump up the contrast.
• 04:00 Heading up the image menu, down to adjustments and
• 04:02 then choosing brightness and contrast, I'm gonna start by turning on legacy mode and
• 04:07 then turn up the contrast to around 70.
• 04:09 Now the reason I turned on legacy mode is because in recent versions of
• 04:12 Photoshop you can only increase the contrast to the point before the tones in
• 04:15 the image start to become ruined.
• 04:17 But in this case we wanna go beyond that,
• 04:18 which is exactly what legacy allows us to do.
• 04:21 Now that the contrast has been increased, save your document with your Cmd or
• 04:24 Ctrl+S shortcut, and hop back over to your document.
• 04:28 The next tweak that we're gonna make to the Bumps Texture is in regards to
• 04:30 the UV map.
• 04:32 This will ensure that our texture wraps nicely around the text.
• 04:35 This time, go ahead and select the Edit UV Properties option.
• 04:38 When the window pops up, set the U scale at 1,000% and the V scale at 10%.
• 04:45 Let's give our text a render to see how things are looking.
• 04:47 You're gonna notice, especially in regards to the reflection on the ground plane,
• 04:51 that during the first few passes you may see a lot of noise and roughness.
• 04:54 It won't be until the fourth or
• 04:56 fifth pass that your elements will start to smooth out nicely.
• 04:59 Once the render slows down, you know you've hit the crucial point.
• 05:03 You're also gonna notice something missing.
• 05:04 Nothings glowing.
• 05:06 I fear instead of driving myself insane and
• 05:08 attempting to create a glowing affect using Photoshop's 3D features,
• 05:11 it'll be just as affective to add them using Layer styles.
• 05:14 So now that our render is complete, hop into your Layer styles dialog box, and
• 05:18 we're gonna start with an inner glow.
• 05:20 The color of this glow will be a very light blue, almost white, EBF7FF.
• 05:27 The opacity will be set to 100%, and the blend mode to vivid light.
• 05:33 Now, down below, setting the technique to precise will allow the glow to
• 05:37 follow the curves of the text more accurately.
• 05:40 And then set the source to center.
• 05:42 In terms of the size and range values, this depends on the size of your text.
• 05:46 For this example, a size of five and a range of 30 works well, but
• 05:49 if you chose to use the larger or smaller font, you may need to tweak the values.
• 05:54 And finally, let's add an outer glow to finish off the design.
• 05:58 This time the color will be a more neutral blue, 0C75D7 with the blend
• 06:04 mode set to Linear Dodge and down below, set the size at 50 and the range to 100.
• 06:10 And that should do it.
• 06:12 Your own transtile text using Photoshop CS6's new 3D features and
• 06:17 a touch of Layer styles.

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