Modern Warfare 3 Text Effect

Quick reference

• 00:04 Once you have the text ready to go, let's add a few effects to it.
• 00:07 We first need to add some color. I'll add a gradient overlay to give some color
• 00:11 variation to the text.
• 00:13 The color on the right will be set to a dark green,
• 00:16 the left will be set to a much lighter green, and then I'm going to add another
• 00:20 bright green - right around the 30% mark.
• 00:22 And now that the colors are set, let's set the style to radial,
• 00:26 bring down the angle to zero degrees, increase the scale
• 00:30 right to around 130%. This will give a really nice shine to
• 00:33 the middle of the text, and keep the edges nice and dark.
• 00:34 You may also want to drag the gradient up,
• 00:39 so that the shine isn't overpowering the middle. You can do this by simply
• 00:43 clicking and dragging
• 00:44 inside your document and drag up: good.
• 00:47 Now, let's add an outer glow: we're going to keep it fairly simple.
• 00:51 The blend mode will be set to linear dodge, the color
• 00:54 will be a nice neon green, the size will be set to around 15,
• 00:59 and increase the range all the way up to 100%.
• 01:02 Now, keep in mind, depending on the size of your text, your settings
• 01:06 may need to be tweaked just a little bit. And finally, let's add a slight
• 01:11 edge to our text by adding an inner shadow. And here, we're going to set the
• 01:15 blend mode to overlay,
• 01:16 the colors can be set to pure white, the angle to
• 01:20 ninety degrees and the distance and size down to one.
• 01:24 Fantastic. That just about does it for the text.
• 01:27 Next up, we're going to be adding a few lines that run across the background.
• 01:31 These can be done in a few ways, and I'll show you two ways to do it.
• 01:35 The first can be done using the pen tool. On a new layer,
• 01:39 grab your pen or press the letter P on your keyboard,
• 01:42 and select the second button at the very top, which are paths.
• 01:45 Go ahead and create jagged pattern across your document.
• 01:49 You're free to use straight lines, curved lines, or even a combination of both.
• 01:53 And if you're unfamiliar with the pen tool, I have a in-depth tutorial on my
• 01:56 channel, so check that out.
• 01:58 Now that you've completed your first line, we need to stroke it.
• 02:01 No not in the dirty sense, but in the design sense.
• 02:05 Which means we're going to be painting over top of it. Press the letter B on your
• 02:09 keyboard to enter your brush tool,
• 02:09 and select a nice, small, soft brush:
• 02:13 I'd say around three pixels. You can also set the color if you like, but we'll
• 02:18 probably end up
• 02:18 adding a color overlay anyway. Now that the brush is set,
• 02:22 hop back into your pen tool by pressing P on your keyboard, and right click your
• 02:26 newly created line.
• 02:27 Select stroke path, make sure that the brush
• 02:30 is selected, and turn on simulated pressure (if that option is available to you).
• 02:34 When you accept these changes, you'll see a nice line going across the document.
• 02:38 Now, just like in the text, we're going to be adding a few styles.
• 02:42 For this line, if you didn't set the color from the beginning,
• 02:45 add a nice bright green color overlay to this layer.
• 02:49 And of course, we need to make it glow. Let's add an outer glow.
• 02:53 I'm going to keep the blend mode at screen, I'll set my color to a nice
• 02:56 neon green, the size is going to be set to 18, and the range is 30.
• 03:00 Again, you may need to tinker with the settings depending on
• 03:04 the size and the style of your line.
• 03:05 With this line created, you can duplicate this
• 03:09 layer and distort it if you like.
• 03:11 Let's add a quick sheer distortion, just to show you an example.
• 03:14 Now, because we have a color overlay on the layer, we can switch up the color
• 03:19 simply by double clicking on the layer style and changing the color.
• 03:21 Nice and easy, and it gives you the option to mix it up if
• 03:25 you like.
• 03:25 So, that's the first way of creating a line. But for the second, we will take advantage of
• 03:29 more distortions.
• 03:31 This time, instead of using the pen tool, let’s grab the shape tool
• 03:34 and select the line option at the top: make sure to set or keep the weight
• 03:38 at one.
• 03:39 Go ahead and draw a line across your document.
• 03:42 Right now, it's a boring straight line, but we're going to jazz it up a little
• 03:46 bit by distorting it.
• 03:47 Head up to filter, ‘distort’ and then choose ‘wave’.
• 03:51 Now, if you're asked to rasterize the layer, go and press OK.
• 03:54 In the wave dialogue box, there's a lot of settings in front of you, and honestly
• 03:58 it's a lot of trial and error. Take a look at the settings that I used and try
• 04:02 them on your line. See if you like it
• 04:03 and adjust accordingly. When you press OK, you'll see that we now have a nice
• 04:07 curved and jagged line
• 04:09 which we can go ahead and put behind our text. And I'd say because we already have
• 04:13 two pretty visible lines,
• 04:15 that we will go ahead and decrease the opacity of this line to around 30%.
• 04:19 Here's something pretty cool we can do: if we go ahead and duplicate this layer by
• 04:23 holding down Command or Control on your keyboard and pressing the letter J,
• 04:26 and then repeat the filter two or three times - this can be done by holding
• 04:29 Command or Control F - we
• 04:32 will get a pretty neat abstract effect, which we can also include in our final
• 04:35 design.
• 04:36 I'm going to bring this all the way to the top and set the blend mode to overlay.
• 04:40 That's looking pretty cool. One last thing we're going to add
• 04:43 are scan lines. For this, we need to make a new pattern.
• 04:47 Make a new document with the dimensions four pixels by four pixels,
• 04:51 with a transparent background, and zoom all the way in once it's created.
• 04:55 With your pencil tool selected, which may be hiding in the brush tools,
• 04:59 paint only the top half black, leave the bottom completely transparent.
• 05:04 And now, head up to edit, ‘define pattern’, and name it something relevant,
• 05:08 like 'scan lines four pixels'. Now, back in the original document,
• 05:12 create a new layer. With the fill tool selected, change from foreground
• 05:15 to pattern: now you have the ability to select the new scan line pattern we just
• 05:20 created,
• 05:20 and fill that layer with that pattern.
• 05:23 Now, once filled, I’ll set the blend mode to soft light and the opacity
• 05:27 to 35%. And there you have it, a neat looking Modern Warfare 3 look.
• 05:32 You can obviously use any text you wish to create your own similar design.

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