… for Apple Motion

Tip #581: Create Colorful Lighting for 3D Text

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Colorful lighting is one menu choice away, and you can customize it to suit.

There’s a hidden lighting secret in Motion for 3D text that is worth learning: colored light! At the top of the screen shot is an example of lighting 3D text with colored light. Here’s how to create it:

• Create any 3D text.
• Select the text in the Layers panel.
• Go to Inspector > Text > Appearance, then twirl down Lighting and enable Environments.
• Show the contents of Environments by clicking the word Show to the right of the word “Environments.”
• Change Type from Field to Colorful.
• Change the Rotation to pick out the colors you like.
• For more control, twirl down Rotation and modify each of the axes. The effect changes with each. I’ve found that changing X rotation creates some very dramatic underlighting.

When you get the look you want, ah, stop tweaking. The screen shot shows the settings I used to create the lighting effect at the top.

Done.