Blender Tutorial For Beginners: Ice text

in this video I'll be demonstrating how to use blender to make text that looks like ice I'll be using blender version 2.6 for we're going to be using the cycles render engine for this video so you need to make sure that you have it so come over to this drop-down menu and make sure that one of the selections is cycles render if you don't have it then you can go to blender.org to download the latest version of blender let's start by creating a new project so go to the file menu and select new and then click on reload startup file this is the default scene with a single cube object we're not going to use this cube so delete it by first right-clicking on it to make sure that it's selected and then press the X key on your keyboard and select delete now let's add some text so from the add menu select text now soo-min to get a closer look by using the scroll wheel on your mouse you'll notice that the text is lying down flat but we want it to be standing up so we need to rotate it to do that press the R key on your keyboard you'll notice that the text now rotates when you move your mouse we want to restrict the rotation to the x-axis so just press the X key on your keyboard now when you move your mouse the text only rotates on the x-axis the amount of rotation can be set used in the mouse or you can enter a number indirectly I know that I want to rotate the text by 90 degrees so I'm going to type 90 and then press the Enter key now let's change the text and to do that we need to be in edit mode if you look down here you can see that we're currently in object mode so click on this and select edit mode we now have a cursor at the end of the text so press your backspace key multiple times to delete it now you can type your text I'm typing a space between each letter so that the letters will be spaced farther apart we're done with edit mode now so we can switch back to object mode by clicking here and then select object mode now let's add some depth to the text come over here and click on F down here in the geometry section click on extrude and type 0.1 and then press the Enter key you can see how it added depth to the text now let's make the text thicker and round out the edges so here under bevel click on depth and type 0.05 and then press the Enter key you can rotate the view to see this a little better to do that press and hold the middle mouse button and then drag the mouse you can also pan the view by holding the shift key while you press the middle mouse button and drag the mouse now that we have beveled the edges we can smooth them out using the resolution setting so click on resolution and then type 7 and press the Enter key this just a good job of smoothing out the bevels we're done with the text now so let's add a surface for the text to sit on go to the add menu and select mesh and then plane we need to scale this plane up in size so press the s key on your keyboard you can scale it by moving the mouse or you can enter a number indirectly I want to scale it to 5 times its original size so I'm going to type 5 and then press the Enter key you can use this blue arrow to move the plane up and down just grab it with the mouse and drag it we want to position the plane right below the text so let's change the view to make this easier to do to switch to front view go to the View menu and select front you'll notice here that there's also a convenient shortcut for switching to the front view instead of using this menu we could have just pressed the number one key on the number pad in blender there's a difference between the number keys above the letters on the keyboard and the number keys on the right side number pad to change the view you need to use the numbers on the number pad the numbers above the letters on the keyboard will not work if you have number pad then I would recommend learning these shortcuts because they can save you a lot of time this is the front view we're currently viewing the scene in perspective mode so let's change it to orthographic mode so go to the View menu and select view perspective orthographic notice that we could have also just pressed the number-5 key on the number pad in this view we can now easily move the plane below the text just grab this blue arrow with the mouse and drag it into place now the way that we're going to make this text look like ice is to turn the text into a fluid and then run a fluid simulation we'll let the fluid fall a little bit which will make the ice look slightly melted now since we're using a fluid we need to create a container that will contain the fluid to do that we'll add a cube so go to the add menu and select mesh and then cube let's switch to wireframe so that the cube doesn't block our view of the text so click right here and select wireframe now grab the red arrow and drag it to center the cube over the text let's scale the size of the cube up a little so press the S key on the keyboard then type 1.2 and press the Enter key this will scale up the cube by 20% now grab the blue arrow and position the bottom of the cube just under the plane below the text now let's pan the view down a little so hold the shift key press the middle mouse button and then drag the scene down now we're going to add a light source so click the left mouse button right above the cube to set an origin point then go to the add menu and select mesh and then plane now if you hold the middle mouse button you can move the mouse and rotate the view make sure that the text is inside the cube and that the plane that we just added is centered over the top of the cube now with this plane still selected we're going to set the material for it so click on the material button right here then make sure that cycles render is selected you can find it in the drop down menu right here now click on the new button the surface section here is where we select the surface type click right here to open the list of shaders and then select emission this will allow our plane to emit light the strength value here sets the amount of light that will be emitted set this value to 20 now right-click on the bottom plane to select it and we'll set its material so click on the new button here we'll just use all of the default values so the surface material will be diffuse when we render the final image we'll see the text and this plane that it is sitting on will also be able to see the background by default the background color is gray we can change that by clicking on the world button then come down here and click on the color button move this slider up into the middle area and then select a blue color now right-click on the text to select it I mentioned earlier that we are going to be turning the text into a fluid but before we can do that we need to convert it into a mesh so with the text selected press alt C then click on the bottom section that starts out with mesh from now come over to the right and select the physics tab then click the fluid button then click here to set the fluid type and select fluid next right click on the cube to select it this cube is the container for the fluid over here on the right under the physics tab click the fluid button for the type select domain here we have some options that we can change start by changing the resolution to 100 increasing this value improves the resolution but it also increases the required memory and simulation time you can see the required memory displayed right here we can also change the start and end times for the simulation these values are in seconds we are going to be doing a short simulation so leave the start time at 0 and change the end time to 0.1 down here below the timeline is where we set the start and end frames we don't need very many frames so set the end frames to 20 now we're ready to run the simulation so click on the bake button this will take a few seconds to run when it's finished you can move this green marker to view the simulation results you'll notice that the text fluid is falling as you move through the frames what you will want to do is to find a frame where the fluid has fallen some but at the same time the text is still readable I think I'll use this frame right here you can see the frame number displayed down here now right-click on the text this will highlight the original text that we created we don't want this text to be displayed when we render our final image we only want the fluid text to be displayed so to turn this text off come up here and scroll through the list of objects until you find text then click on the camera button this will prevent the text from being displayed in the final image also click on the I button to prevent it from being displayed in our current view now we can set the material for the fluid text so right click on the fluid to select it then click on the material button and then click on new for the surface value select glass this will give the text a transparent look now we're ready to set up the camera view so start by going back to our front view we do this by going to the View menu and then select front then hold down the shift key press the middle mouse button and pan the view to bring the text to the center while we're here we can also position the bottom plane if needed just right-click on the plane and then drag the blue arrow until the plane is right below the text leave a small space between the plane and the text now go to the View menu and select a line view and then a line active camera to view this we'll move the camera to the current view this lightened area is what the camera sees you can use the scroll wheel to zoom this view now go to the View menu and select properties click the checkbox next to lock camera to view this will allow us to navigate while in camera view we can turn this menu off by going back to the View menu and select properties again now I can rotate the view while holding the middle mouse button and I can Pan the view while holding the shift button and the middle mouse button you may want to go back and forth a couple of times to get the view that you want you can also use the scroll wheel to zoom you can toggle between the camera view in our previous view by going to the View menu and selecting camera if we rotate the view we can see the position of the camera to get back into camera view go to the View menu again and select camera now that the camera view is setup we are ready to render the image so come over here and click the render button that looks like a camera for now keep all of the default values and just press the render button this isn't rendered with very many samples so it will look a little grainy but it's a quick way to make sure that everything is okay before rendering the final image now you might notice here if you look close that there are some straight edges in the rendered image you can smooth out these edges if you want I like the straight edges because I think that they look kind of like ice crystals but I'll show you how to smooth them out in case you would rather not have them so press the Escape key to go back or a previous view right-click on the text to select it then over here on the left click on the smooth button then click on the render button again you can see now that all of our straight edges have been smoothed out since I like the straight edges I'm going to put them back in so I press escape to go back to the other view and then click on flat now I'm ready to render the final image with more samples so come down here and open the section called sampling and some older versions of blender this section may be called integrator now down here under samples you'll see a value for render it's currently set to 10 change this value to 500 the larger this number is the better the final image will look but the longer it will take to render now go back up to the top and click on the render button again if for some reason you want to abort the rendering before it is finished then just press the Escape key well this is going to take a while to render so I'm going to pause the video until it's done the image is finished rendering to save the final image put your cursor over the image and press the f3 key you can specify a directory here and a file name here I'll call this ice PNG then press the save as image button if you want to save your image as a different image type then go to the output section and click this button to select the image type then put your cursor over the image and press f3 to open the save image window again as a final step we should save our project to do that go to the file menu and select save as you can specify a directory here and a file name here I'll call this ice blend blend is the extension name for blender projects then press the save as blender file button well that concludes this video thanks for watching and please subscribe and leave a comment

Channel: tutor4u

Views: 644,735

Keywords: blender text effects, blender ice text, ice, text, blender, 3d, cycles, cycles render engine, blender version 2.64, how to, tutorial, tutorials, 2.64, tips, tricks, beginners

Id: 39-CWSn_kms

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/ipostpicturesofbutts]

I really like these text tutorials. I find it to be an introduction to materials and nodes.