Create a Beautiful 3D Text Effect in 3ds Max
on Sep 11 in Lighting and rendering, Modeling by PaulThis tutorial will show you how to create an interesting 3D text image. It will explain you how to set up your rendering engine to render glossy surfaces and create some glossy materials as borders of your letters. Then, we will create a simple background for your rendered text. Let’s get started!
Final Result Preview
This is one of many possible versions of the image that we’ll be creating.
Step 1
Open up 3ds Max and go to Create Panel -> Splines. Create some kind of a text in the front viewport. Decrease the Leading and increase kerning a bit.
Step 2
Duplicate your text and set it to renderable spline. Add an extrude modifier to the first spline and set the amount to something not really high. Go back to the second spline and use the scale tool to scale it in Y axis to make it deeper.
Step 3
Create some kind of a box in the background and apply it a pure white color. Also, apply a pure white color to the front part of the letters.
Step 4
Use the following setting to create some simple glossy material for the letters’ borders.
Step 5
These are the settings I used for lighting. You can use almost any HDR image to create some environment because you will most likely end up with something interesting. I chose the first one I had on my HDD 
. You can also decrease noise treashold under settings tab. And don’t forget to turn off default lights!
Step 6
Render your scene with resolution set to 1280×800. Try different HDRIs to see what works best for you. Obviously you can render your scene differently. Feel free to create your own amazing composition here and maybe use a different perspective!
Step 7
Once you’ve done all that open up Adobe Photoshop and create a 1280×800px document. Paste your renders with alpha maps into it.
Step 8
Now there’s important part. We have to create some nice looking background. You can try to create something on your own or you can follow the next steps to create background similar to mine. First of all I used circle pattern available on http://pattern8.com/free-repeat-patterns/mono-circles-2. Simply paste it into the Photoshop and go to Edit -> Define Pattern… to create a new pattern. Then create a new layer and fill it with black. Once you’ve done that go to Layer Styles and use Pattern Overlay with your newly created pattern. Also, decrease an Opacity of this layer to around 35% and Fill Opacity to 0%.
Step 9
Paint some lighter and darker dots on a new layer with soft big brush. Lastly desaturate them.
Step 10
Create a new layer and again use your brush tool to paint some splatters in the background. You will have to cut out your text and move it on top of everything in order to paint some splatters beneath them. Render Alpha Mask with text and use it to cut out your letters. Splatters can be done by brushes available on the Internet. Truly, I don’t know what brushes have I used there but I’m sure they are free. Try to look for some similar ones. After you paint some splatters decrease Opacity of the layer a bit.
Step 11
Finally, we can paint some lines in the background. My ones were made in Adobe Illustrator. Simply draw two curves using Pen Tool and use Blend Tool to create some more lines in between. If you need more steps simply go to Object -> Blend -> Blend options… and change Specified Steps to something like 16. You can leave background color set to white (like I did) or set it to transparent. Paste your vectors to the Photoshop and place them in the background as I did (see the final image).
Conclusion
This is the end of this simple tutorial. Try to use the techniques you’ve just learned here to create your own cool compositions . I hope you liked it! The next tutorial is coming in the next few days so stay tuned!
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outstanding.
@camus
Thank you
Hmmm. next great tutorial, thanks a lot
nice work, thanks for the tut..
it a great work. i just luv ur light control
right when I feel like I have a good grip on Max I get lost in the material editor… can someone help me get Vray power shader to show up in my editor… I am running 3DS Max 2010. thanks for any and all help.
@Justin
I’m using VRay rendering engine here. You need this plug-in in order to have VRay shader in your material editor. Unfortunately, this plug-in is not free but you can download a free trial version on vray’s website. If you don’t want to use this plug-in try Mental Ray instead. It’s also a very powerful engine and in some cases it works even better than VRay.
hey Paul, thanks for getting back to me so quick! I started to play around with Mental Ray after I posted and found some good effects. You do great work, keep it up! This is one of the best text / max tut’s out there!!!