Locked lesson.
About this lesson
This tutorial will teach you how to create 3D text, edit many useful features and then add 2D elements as well.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic: Tron Legacy text
Delve into a few more 3D functions of Photoshop.
When to use
This tutorial will teach you how to create 3D text, edit many useful features and then add 2D elements as well.
Instructions
Create the text
- New document 1280 by 720.
- Dark grey background.
- With the text tool set your font (an outline style is best).
Convert to 3D
- With text layer selected. Menu/3D/New 3D Extrusion from Selected Layer. From with the workspace you can now move, rotate and scale objects and position.
Lighting
- Make sure the properties panel is active (Menu/Window/Properties).
- In 3D panel (lower) select ‘Infinite Light’.
- Rotate downwards until directly facing text.
- In properties panel, change softness to 60%.
Environment
- In 3D panel (lower) select ‘Environment’.
- Reflection: 60%, Roughness: 5%.
Shape the text
- In 3D panel (lower) select the text layer.
- Choose Bevel from the shape pre-set picker.
- Set extrusion to 50
- At the top of the properties panel switch to cap.
- Width, 100%.
- In the Lower Panel click on each material and set the following
- Front: Opacity 0%
- Back: Opacity 0%
- Front Bevel Material - Diffuse: Black,
- Specular: Dark Grey,
- Illumination: 4fa3f9,
- Shine: 75%,
- Bump: 0,
- Extrusion material - Diffuse: 0090ff,
- Specular: 00bbff,
- Illumination: 234f92,
- Shine: 30%,
- Reflection: 100%,
- Bump: 100%,
- Opacity: 30%.
Add a texture to the extrusion material
- In the lower panel make sure the extrusion material is selected.
- Click on the bump folder icon and load your scratchy texture.
- To edit texture click on the file icon.
- Menu/Image/Adjustments/Brightness and Contrast.
- Switch on Legacy mode. Contrast, 70.
- Back in the 3D panel make sure the extrusion material is still selected.
- Right click on the bump icon again and select ‘Edit UV Properties’ U Scale: 1000%, V Scale: 10%.
- Set to render.
Add a 2D glow
- After render is complete, Menu/Layer/Layer Styles/Inner glow:
- Color: ebf7ff,
- Opacity: 100%,
- Blend Mode: Vivid Light,
- Technique: Precise,
- Source: Centre,
- Size: 5,
- Range: 30.
- Outer glow:
- Color: 0c75d7,
- Blend Mode: Linier Dodge,
- Size: 50,
- Range: 100.
- 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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