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[Kyle]

3d text in anim8or as is never fails to look cheap to me. for a while I thought it was the renderer, but now that we have a ray tracer I see its more about beveling the edges.  the fact that anim8or extrudes in tris kinda makes it impossible for a clean bevel, so you have a manually go through and clean it up, and even then, for me at least it still doesn't look good, I guess I'm just not good at clean up.

I can actually get better results in photoshop, but it doesn't do real 3d. even though cs4 has real 3d now, it still seems to rely on importing 3d models, defeating the purpose. any kind of 3d 3d I create in photoshop usually looks pretty flat, sure it can be very shiny and beveled, but there's no perspective to it without a lot of manual work.

idea tips?

Im wanting to make high budget movie quality text (think terminator Salvation), not 90s video game menu screen text.

[hihosilver]

Here are two ways to go about it:

The simpler way (doesn't look as good...)
1.  Create then fill the text
2. Ungroup the object
3. convert to mesh
4. select all letters and join solids
5. shell the depth you want the BEVEL to be
6. select all the back faces, then use the face resize tool to create the bevel
7. Extrude to the depth you want
8. Select and crease whatever edges you want.

The better way, but more time consuming...

Write/draw the letters out yourself, then import the reference image and use the draw edge tool to trace the letters giving them nice topology to work with, allowing you to make nice bevels.

[Kyle]

Hmm, haven't thought about the first one... you don't have any samples on you by any chance do ya? and yeah, the second way is the only way I would know how to get it looking right, but never did more than a few letters due to how time consuming it can be.

[$imon]

Hihosilver, i gave your idea a shot, but anim8or seems to resize the faces unevenly, so the bevel doesnt come out too well.

I have these problems not just with text, but with any object I want to bevel, just beveling it creates uneven bevels in every possible way, so I have to go back and manually align and space everything. It's just the way anim8or bevels that makes it hard.

If you have another 3d program maybe you can try beveling in that, i sometimes use 3ds max to easily bevel the edges and then bring it back into anim8or, saving a few hours of work.

[Kyle]

Yeah, that's what I thought. I might not have tried the fill and extrude method, but I have extruded then beveled and that's what happens to me every time.

If Steve's listening, would it be hard to add a uniform bevel tool?