Before we begin, I want to congratulate Alyssa Rountree for winning the weekly blog contest as well as Tia L.Bradford for winning the Layers TV contest.  Way to go!!

Steve Holmes on After Effects

Let the Games Begin
As cool as 3D is in After Effects, there’s no doubt that an extrude tool is something we all wish for. While there are a few plug-ins that handle such a task (Zaxwerks Invigorator PRO being one of my favorites), there’s a cool way to achieve a true 3D look (more or less) using the 3D effects in Illustrator. Add to this mix some cool particles, lights, and shadows (and some Energi studio techniques) and we’ll show you how to turn simple text into a cool extruded-3D scene inside After Effects. Let the games begin!

If you’d like to download a finished movie for this tutorial, just click here. All files are for personal use only.

1 CREATE ILLUSTRATOR TEXT
Create a new Adobe Illustrator document (File>New), name it “Game Night,” select Video and Film in the New Document Profile drop-down menu, and set the size to 720×540 pixels. Under the Advanced option, choose the Dark preset for the Transparency Grid—this will ensure our white text will be visible as we work on it. Click OK. Select the Type tool (T), click on the page, and add your type, choosing the font and size to suit your design. Here, we’ve used a font from www.veer.com called Newspeak-Heavy, which will look great when extruded. Set the Fill color to white and the Stroke to none.