Table of Contents Features Cover Story Tech Tips News Departments Columns Past Issues Go To Homepage

TECH TIPS

Shattered!
3-D Extruded Text Without a 3-D Program
by Ben Bardens

Given the features found in most modern editorial applications, it’s not uncommon for editors to animate their own sophisticated title graphics. Editors who know After Effects have even more power for creating sophisticated title animations. Inevitably, though, if you’re animating text, you’ll want to make it look 3-D. In this tutorial, we’ll show how you can quickly and easily create and animate some simple 3-D extruded text inside After Effects without having to touch a 3-D program.

After Effects is a 3-D compositor, so it’s easy to position and animate text in three-dimensional space, but the text itself is still a flat, 2-D object. Currently, it takes the use of a 3-D modeling plug-in to “extrude” the flat text into a 3-D object complete with front, back and side surfaces. The most powerful and full-featured plug-in for After Effects that can do this is the 3-D Invigorator Pro from Zaxwerks––but that’s a third-party plug-in, and not a part of the standard install. Fortunately, however, there is one plug-in that’s a part of the standard install that can be used as well: the Shatter filter.

The Shatter filter is most commonly used to blow up a layer into 3-D particles, such as a brick wall exploding or a glass shattering effect. By changing the default particle to text, and turning off the explosion, it is possible to use the Shatter filter just for the purpose of creating 3-D text. And because the Shatter filter can be set to work with camera and light layers, you can make 3-D text created with the Shatter filter a part of an After Effects composition with other 3-D layers (see Figure 1).

A sample project is available at www.barkanimation.com/guild/27.zip.

Top: Figure 1: 3-D extruded text created directly in After Effects using the Shatter filter.
Bottom: Figure 2: The Guides and Grids button in the Composition panel.

Setting Up the Text
Set up a new project and create a new composition using the NTSC D1 Square Pixels preset and a 10-second duration.

In the composition panel, display the Title/Action Safe guides (see Figure 2).

Use the type tool and click to create some text in the center of the frame.

Use whatever font you prefer. For demonstration purposes, I chose a big blocky font with the following settings in the Character and Paragraph panels:

Font family: Impact
Font Style: Regular
Font Size: 140 px
Font Tracking: 8
Vertical Scale: 120%
Baseline Shift: -67 px
Paragraph: Center Text

With the text layer selected in the timeline, choose Effect -> Simulation -> Shatter.

In the Effect Controls panel, locate the View property. Change the pop-up menu to Rendered.

In the Effect Controls panel, expand the Shape subgroup. Change Pattern to Custom. Then change Custom Shatter Map to Layer 1––your text layer (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: The Effect Controls panel showing the Shatter filter. The red arrows indicate the properties that have been changed.

Push the spacebar to do a preview. Notice that the Shatter filter creates an explosion using the shape of the text.

To turn off the explosion, expand the Force 1 subgroup and change Radius to 0.

You might notice the sides of the model appear partially transparent. This is due to the “anti-aliased” edge of the text. Anti-aliasing is the edge softening inherent to raster (bitmap) graphics necessary to display smooth curves. Even though text layers are based on scalable (vector) font files, the text in the rendered frame is anti-aliased. The easiest way to fix this is to use the Shatter filter’s Textures options and map a different layer, or a solid color to the sides of the model.

In the Effect Controls, expand the Textures subgroup. Click the color swatch next to the Color property and choose a color, or leave it set for white. Next to Side Mode, change the pop-up to Color. The color is now mapped to the sides of the model.

Next to Front Mode, change the pop-up to Color. This will map the color to the front surface of the model too. Change Back Mode to Color as well.

What if you want a different color, or an image on the front, sides or back of the model? Make a new solid layer with the color that you want, or add a new image layer in the timeline. The solid or image should be at least as large as the text layer. Turn its visibility off in the timeline. In the Effects Controls panel for the text layer, under the Textures sub-group, change whichever Mode (Front, Back or Sides) to Layer. Then, directly below, change Layer to the solid or image layer you want to use.

Adding the Camera
While it’s possible to animate a camera move around the text using the Shatter filter’s built in camera controls, it’s more flexible to use a 3-D camera layer directly in the timeline.

Scroll down in the Effect Controls panel and locate the Camera System property. Change the pop-up menu to Comp Camera.

Choose Layer -> New -> Camera. Accept the default camera settings and click OK. Select the camera layer in the timeline.

From the tool bar, choose the Orbit Camera tool (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: The Orbit Camera, Track XY and Track Z Camera tools.

Click and drag in the composition panel with the Orbit Camera tool to change the camera angle and position the text within the frame.

Go to Time = 0. Show the Position property for the Camera layer and initialize keyframing. Tip: If you need to move the text horizontally or vertically, use the

Track XY or Track Z Camera tools hidden behind the Orbit Camera tool (see Figure 4).

Move to Time = 4 seconds.

Again, use the Orbit Camera tool and the Track XY and Track Z Camera tools to position the text as desired within the composition frame. Your second camera Position keyframe will automatically be set.
Set the end of your work area and preview your motion.

Adding Lighting
In the Effects Control panel for the text layer, expand the Lighting subgroup.

Change the Light Type to First Comp Light.

Choose Layer -> New -> Light.

For Light Type, choose Spot. Experiment with different settings. I used:

Intensity = 110
Cone Angle = 45
Cone Feather = 15
Color = White
Casts Shadows = On
Go to Time = 0.

In the toolbar, choose the Move tool. In the composition panel, click on the spotlight. Click near the crosshairs that represent the location of the spotlight, do not click on the individual red, green or blue arrows. Drag the light around on all three of its axes until you get an angle that you like. Show the Position property for the Light layer in the timeline and initialize keyframing.

Go to Time = 4 seconds.

Drag the spotlight to a new location, again choosing a light angle that you like. A second Position keyframe is automatically set.

Preview your animation. The view should animate around the text and the light should animate across its surface (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: The Timeline and Composition panels showing the layer stack, and the resulting composite image.

Going Beyond the Basics
For doing a simple 3-D title or text effect, this may be all you need. Inevitably, though, you’ll want to do more with your 3-D text than what you can do with the limited controls of the Shatter filter. When you get to that point, check out the 3-D Invigorator Pro from Zaxwerks (www.zaxwerks.com). It offers sophisticated controls for creating beveled edges, surface mapping, bump and reflectivity maps, set animators for animating individual parts of the model, and even 3-D model import from other programs––just to name a few of its features. Also, don’t be surprised if, down the road, After Effects offers 3-D text extrusion right in the timeline without a plug-in. I have a hunch this might be something we see in a future release.

Finally, here are some additional ideas for animating 3-D text made with the Shatter effect:

Set keyframes for the Depth, Radius or Position values within the Force 1 subgroup to animate the text exploding. Set keyframes for the Extrusion Depth property to animate the Z depth of the text. Instead of mapping a solid color or still image to the surface of the text, try using a layer containing motion footage, such as a QuickTime movie or pre-composed animation as the surface layer for the front, back or sides of your text.

Ben Bardens teaches After Effects at Glendale Community College, Video Symphony and Studio Arts (www.studioarts.tv) and has been using After Effects professionally since version 3.0. He can be reached by e-mail at bbardens@glendale.edu.

[ return to top ]