3D Tutorial for Editors: Confessions of a Two-Dimensional Man
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One more tweak, and I'll be done with the text: the 3D Shadow tab. Unlike drop shadows or cast shadows in Boris, which are thrown OFF the object, 3D shadows are shadows cast ONTO the extruded object by itself. (I could also have drop or cast shadows, of course -- that's just not what I'm looking for here.)
Once it’s all in place, here's how my text looks.
That's not bad, but it would look a lot better if it were tumbled back, reflecting more of the background. I could just go to the Position tab and tumble it just like I did the gradient layer, but I have something else in mind.
A Matter of Perspective
One of the most distinctive aspects of 3D animation is animating not only the elements in a scene, but our perspective on the scene. To do this, Boris offers multiple cameras per scene. Any one of those cameras can be one of three types. The good news for 2D guys like me is that they all do what they say. The Position and Pan camera are both useful when the scene is much larger than the video frame, to look at other parts of the world, if you will. I've built an other-worldly world, but because there's not much to see outside the frame, my choice is the Orbit camera. As it moves around, it stays focused on the 3D text.
Since all I'm doing is positioning the camera, I'd rather not wait for every frame to render as I preview. Things will go much more quickly for me as I switch to wireframe view. You can see the button for that highlighted above, as it appears in RED 2.1.
Now I can move the camera around, and preview the results pretty much instantly, a crucial thing for a 2D guy like me. (I could actually render the wireframe as the finished output of the movie if I wanted to, too.) I wind up animating a tumble up from underneath, with a spin across the front as the text pours into view. The animation ends with the text tumbled back just far enough to see the background layers reflected the way I want them, as well as nicely showing off the 3D shadows that the text's contours are casting on each other. To view the movie, click on the still image below (you'll need the latest version of QuickTime). Or blink 20 times per second while you look at it.
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