The Art of 3D Text Effects in Adobe After Effects: A Step-by-Step Guide

This bridge here is your left and then this is when it's resting so if we if we just sort of play it it will give you an easy idea if you look at this curve that's when it's coming on so we go from left to right the flat is when it's here and then the right and then the uh the sort of the the right the left to right and going down is the um is the going off so this is when it's here and we don't want to worry about when it's here we can sort of do stuff with that later on. Now if we select just click this line here because we selected those two key frames previously it would just select this block now you can see here we've got these two yellow handles I want it to accelerate off the line quite quickly and then I want it to slow uh um slow and stop uh much faster so I'm going to move this yellow handle it is important um that you you do keep the yellow handle straight as to where it was before because if you do slope it down it will do other things elsewhere but I want going to I'm going to put it in this um in this the corner box here the transform box and that and then we we'll give it a bit of a quick playback going let it render out there we go and then um and then we'll have another watch see I I'm I don't like that and I I think I've done it the wrong way right yeah I have so I'm going to instead this time go for the bottom handle which will slow it down and as it comes in maybe that's a bit of extreme but we'll um we'll soon find out there we go that's a little bit extreme so I'm going to I'm going to move this yellow handle back again if we hit command Z it will take it back to where it was I'm going to instead this time take it into halfway between and the Very left and the middle transform handles there we go and you can see it now slowly slowly comes on it gets that I'm going to do the exact same thing for this one over here however this time it's going to be um perhaps not so important and not so necessary I'm going to try doing it with the top handle see if that looks better than doing it with the bottom handle is you're not going to see the demise shall we say of it coming off too much so that looks all right I'm going to try with the bottom handle and see if that makes any significant difference it may just make it so that it's faster coming off which isn't necessarily what we want so yeah I prefer it with the top handle just personal preference I think it looks a little bit better and I've lined that up with the black line in the midpoint between the Middle handle and the far right handle just as I did with the left and the middle handle on the previous one so I'm going to escape out the graph editor and then I'm going to play what we've got if I let it render out first because it will be a little bit slow while it's rendering and then we can play it back from the beginning so if I go here and play it back from the beginning we can see that looks that looks really quite nice to me and then and yeah and it certainly it certainly puts the puts the message across as I said you can play around with some different 3D settings and if I have a little bit of a look of how this thing looks um we could we can we can sort of investigate and see how it's going to look when it's done so I'm going to drag some Need for Speed footage into the parts bin over here and I'm going to add a gorian blur to it as well in a second so we drop that onto the timeline put that at the back and then I'm going to scale this up to the 4K resolution so if I just sort of drag that to that that's perfect and then go to the effects this isn't necessary this is just sort to see how it's all going to look in the end so drag that onto there and then go into the effect controls change the gorian blur to 72 and then we can watch these text effects back sorry if I've kind of deafened you all there with the uh the sound of Need for Speed so uh if I just take the volume off on there we can we can play it again you can see that definitely gets a message across and and I think that definitely looks very very nice indeed so hopefully this will give you a bit of an idea of 3D text effects in Adobe After Effects.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when working with 3D text effects in Adobe After Effects is how to control the handles. The yellow handles are used to adjust the position, size, and depth of the text, while the corner box transforms allow you to position the text in space. By carefully adjusting these handles, you can create a range of different effects that enhance your visual message.

Another key aspect of 3D text effects is the use of keyframes. Keyframes are used to define specific points in time when the animation should occur. In this example, we're using two keyframes to control the acceleration and deceleration of the text as it moves off the screen. By setting these keyframes carefully, you can create a smooth and natural-looking motion that draws the viewer's attention.

The use of 3D text effects can also be used to add visual interest to your project by experimenting with different settings and techniques. For example, we're using a gorian blur effect on our Need for Speed footage to give it a more cinematic feel. By adjusting the strength and duration of this effect, you can create a range of different moods and atmospheres that enhance your overall message.

In conclusion, 3D text effects are a powerful tool in Adobe After Effects that can be used to add visual interest and depth to your projects. By mastering the art of handling keyframes and experimenting with different settings and techniques, you can create stunning and engaging animations that capture your audience's attention.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to another geek video and today I'm bringing you something very very different to my normal style of video something that many people have been uh asking for and requesting for for quite a while now so I'm going to address that and that is how I do some of my cool animations so I've got a new composition set up this is a 3840 by 2160 composition which is a 4K resolution at 60 frames per second as you can see down here so if we click on the composition that we've made up here you can see all the settings for this composition and I'm going to open that composition down here I'm then going to drag in my Twitter logo white from my left monitor that you can't see and I'm going to put that into the parts bin for um for this composition I'm then going to drag that onto the timeline and I'm going to going to not worry about that for the moment I also want to add some text in so um so at geat which is my Twitter tagline so just TR it that super quickly now uh you can you can have different fonts if you want you know I I use Futura for my um for my videos futur and futur PT futur looks all right but I'm going to stick with my usual futur PT for this video just cuz it matches with everything else on the Channel I want my Twitter tagline to come in somewhere um along along the middle purely because the bottom left is a conventional place and if it's in the middle it tends to draw attention a little bit more so I'm going to draw this Twitter logo off uh off the screen as well and I'm going to find um I'm going to find the middle roughly here as well so if we go into the view Tab and we can also show some guides snap guides and we can also lock the guides which just makes getting things in the middle just a little bit easier but for the moment this will do and I can sort the middle out at a later stage so this is my Twitter logo I'm going to transform my Twitter logo and as you can see it's yeah that that's not looking good if I try and transform that down it's I'm going to absolutely mess it up so we're going to hit command Z to UND do what I've just done give it a minute to load and then I'm going to start resizing again and once I've started moving like this I'm going to hold shift and that will keep the proportions uh what they need to be I'm going to drop that there in in in line with this and then we're going to I'm going to shove those around about around about what I think to be the middle which is here as I said we can clean that up later on down the line I'm then going to enable 3D for both of these uh which allows me to add a camera in as well uh so y we just sort of drag that Twitter logo down a little bit just because it just looks a little bit uh sort of obnoxious at the moment and I might actually put that to um might actually put that to to the left as well of the um of the Twitter handle and make Twitter handle a little bit bigger so maybe maybe 200 maybe 190 will do for now going to drop that into here and then I'm going to um as I said enable the 3D on both of these and move these just to the right just a little bit more now I'm going to go into my um my my timeline uh where I've got all my different things I'm going to do new and then I'm going to add a camera in a camera you got several settings you can do the main the main setting is one or two no camera and then you can also enable depth of field but I'm going to keep it all on the default this is going to be my my camera it's not going to be camera one I don't have plan on having any other cameras in this video so that's going to be uh that's going to be there you don't want to put that at the bottom keep it at the top and I like to color code my all my things on my timeline here so you can see easily distinguish which one is which so I'm going to change the Twitter logo to an aqua or a blue because Twitter's normally associated with blue I'm going to change my at geek tagline uh to something like a gray if I can do a gray um maybe not Sandstone that's kind of ugly these this doesn't really matter it just helps if you're um sort of referring to it and just want to see sort of what's going on it's got some funny names for things but some should be all right for that and for the camera I'm going to go with red which is what I always do for the camera I'm going to move the text a little bit closer to the Twitter logo and then we're going to start playing around with some of the camera settings so I'm not going to be doing anything major with the camera if you go if you open up the camera settings and go into camera options uh there's there's absolutely loads of stuff you can you can zoom in you can zoom out I'm going just hit command Zed or control Z if you're on a Windows machine at any time to redo the current action you can change the aperture as well if you want uh that isn't really going to change anything for this composition just CU that aperture is all about light and there isn't really any light in this composition but if you go into transform that's where things really start getting interesting and we collapse the camera options you can see we've got our X rotation here and if we rotate our X rotation you can see you can see it starts to it starts to go up and then we can we can bring it down and then drop it back down the bottom if we like and this is how I did my trailer as well so I can also change the wire rotation here uh to sort of anything I want so I can bring it on from one side take it off to the other and that's one of the things I'm looking at for this video with preps doing and then you've also got this rotation which is just going to you know you can make the bird fly if you want uh you can maybe have some fun with that or maybe I'll mess around with that at the end of the video but for the moment the wire rotation looks like something that I want to mess around with and looks like the one the one for me so I'm going to go over here and you can see I've zoomed in my composition it doesn't really need to be this long so I'm going to go into the settings change the um the duration to more like more like 5 Seconds um just because you know that's a bit more or 10 seconds just a bit more easier to work with and less intensive for the computer so I'm going to zoom in and you can see here I've I've gone for 60 frames per second we've got 0 seconds 1 second 2 seconds and 3 seconds which is more than enough for what we need to do at the moment I'm going to turn on my key frames which going to automatically create a key frame however I don't want that there I'm normally things tend to come on from the left and go to the right so I'm going to change this across to to the left not going to change that figure just the right this one here so you can see my blue outline and that's where the edge of my text is and I'm going to I've got key frame record for there about a second maybe a bit bit less than that I want to bring this back round to here and we're going to take it way back down to zero and that's where we want it to end up you can see here that this that this if we uh if we take it up to a second um if we go up to a second and bring that key frame to the second then that's going to allow us more easily to line up the in andout duration I want to keep it there for about about 2 seconds which will take us to the 3 second Mark I'm going to click this button here as it won't automatically create a key frame has there's been no autom aut atic change if I if I went straight to my five my 4 seconds sorry and then added the animation out as soon as it had come in it would then extremely slowly go out and that's not something that I want to happen so I'm going to go over to 4 seconds I'm going to hit um because it's already recording it's already going to create the key frame and I'm going to bring this out to here it's important that you don't you don't go and put it way too far you can see the blue outline appears when it comes off the canvas you want the blue outline just to come off the canvas otherwise it's got a further travel distance even though you can't see it so will go as far as you move it so if you go and pump this dial up by ridiculous amounts it will go that far and and that's not what that's not what you want so I'm going to um going to command Zed and go back to where we were before which is about 39 uh degrees and I'm just going to just going to see if I can get it any closer no no and then that's where it comes off at 39° if I then go to here and I select all of these and press F9 then after effects will do some magic and make everything look a little bit better you can see it will come on into the middle stay there for a moment and then and in a second it will go off again which isn't obnoxious doesn't get in the way but it certainly gets the message across to the viewer that I want you to follow my Twitter which you can follow at geat by the way links as always in the description below now I want to add um something something different to um something different while it's here it looks a little bit boring while it's here and the animation on isn't particularly interesting and it stops very abruptly it's sort of going going stop if you got on a bus the bus doesn't instantly stop at the bus stop it slows down breaks and stops and that's something that I'm going to be doing now so so I'm going to select these two key frames particularly because this is where it's off this is where it's on and this is the transition period in between select both of those key frames and click the graph editor button now this may be in a different place in different versions of the software but there's nothing I can do so it does look extremely weird to begin with which I can only apologize for and it is really quite confusing you can see I've got all of these options selected I don't want all of these options selected instead just the Y rotation and this makes things a little bit easier to understand now because it's not scal because the scale would go from the bottom at zero all the way to the top at 100 or 150% whatever you'd set this is a bit more confusing so this this bridge here is your left and then this is when it's resting so if we if we just sort of play it it will give you an easy idea if you look at this curve that's when it's coming on so we go from left to right the flat is when it's here and then the right and then the uh the sort of the the right the left to right and going down is the um is the going off so this is when it's here and we don't want to worry about when it's here we can sort of do stuff with that later on now if we select just click this line here because we selected those two key frames previously it would just select this block now you can see here we've got these two yellow handles I want it to accelerate off the line quite quickly and then I want it to slow uh um slow and stop uh much faster so I'm going to move this yellow handle it is important um that you you do keep the yellow handle straight as to where it was before because if you do slope it down it will do other things elsewhere but I want going to I'm going to put it in this um in this the corner box here the transform box and that and then we we'll give it a bit of a quick playback going let it render out there we go and then um and then we'll have another watch see I I'm I don't like that and I I think I've done it the wrong way right yeah I have so I'm going to instead this time go for the bottom handle which will slow it down and as it comes in maybe that's a bit of extreme but we'll um we'll soon find out there we go that's a little bit extreme so I'm going to I'm going to move this yellow handle back again if we hit command Z it will take it back to where it was I'm going to instead this time take it into halfway between and the Very left and the middle transform handles there we go and you can see it now slowly slowly comes on it gets that I'm going to do the exact same thing for this one over here however this time it's going to be um perhaps not so important and not so necessary I'm going to try doing it with the top handle see if that looks better than doing it with the bottom handle is you're not going to see the demise shall we say of it coming off too much so that looks all right I'm going to try with the bottom handle and see if that makes any significant difference it may just make it so that it's faster coming off which isn't necessarily what we want so yeah I prefer it with the top handle just personal preference I think it looks a little bit better and I've lined that up with the black line in the midpoint between the Middle handle and the far right handle just as I did with the left and the middle handle on the previous one so I'm going to escape out the graph editor and then I'm going to play what we've got if I let it render out first because it will be a little bit slow while it's rendering and then we can play it back from the beginning so if I go here and play it back from the beginning we can see that looks that looks really quite nice to me and then and yeah and it certainly it certainly puts the puts the message across as I said you can play around with some different 3D settings and if I have a little bit of a look of how this thing looks um we could we can we can sort of investigate and see how it's going to look when it's done so I'm going to drag some Need for Speed footage into the parts bin over here and I'm going to add a gorian blur to it as well in a second so we drop that onto the timeline put that at the back and then I'm going to scale this up to the 4K resolution so if I just sort of drag that to that that's perfect and then go to the effects this isn't necessary this is just sort to see how it's all going to look in the end so drag that onto there and then go into the effect controls change the gorian blur to 72 and then we can watch these text effects back sorry if I've kind of deafened you all there with the uh the sound of Need for Speed so uh if I just take the volume off on there we can we can play it again you can see that definitely gets a message across and and I think that definitely looks very very nice indeed so hopefully this will give you a bit of an idea of 3D text effects in Adobe After Effects if you have found this video helpful I know it's a little bit different drop a like rating make sure to subscribe and we'll see you as always in the next geek up video\n"