How to Make a Neon Sign in Blender 2.8 - Part 1

in this video we're gonna make this Wow great so refreshing now if you just wanted to make a glowing tube it's not that hard like it's some of the avid blender users like it's simple you add a curve you give it a little bit of bevel some resolution and you add a emission shader to it and then if you just like control click in edit mode then you've just got like an infinite glowing tube and that's cool but what I want to show you in this video is to make text and text would be fiddly to bend and do all yourself so we're gonna start with with text and then we're gonna convert that to curves and then we're gonna bend and shape it to look like a real neon and that's really the whole point of this this video series two parts is to make something professional like something like Nike might want to use for their advertisements so giving a little bit of gloss making the underside look black and just bending and twisting the pipes to write the way that real neon looks and then putting it on a brick wall using some new displacement in blender 2.8 and yet this is gonna be purely using blender 2.8 because it's the future right hanging around that 2.79 nonsense anymore or in the future so 2.8 is is what we're gonna use so let's get started so let's start with a clean scene and let's just add in a text object now you could technically use any font for this speaking from experience though it's far easier if you start with a font that mimics what neons actually look like because like you see like these sharp edges here like you're just gonna be a pain to have to go and like make all of those edges smooth so I have found the perfect font it's called a text me one it's a free font I try it out like six or seven one one but this one looks the best it's awesome it's like basically it looks like neons and it's designed for graphic design I guess but anyways hit download it's free link is in the description obviously so with your text layer selected click on the little font icon there and before I forget I'm gonna be on the left hand side for this tutorial because nothing was then recording a whole tutorial only to realize that half of the steps were covered by your big dumb face so I'll go to the text text panel whatever and then go to font and then blend is really easy to understand with its font system regular bold italic and then you click the drop-down and there's there's only one fun so it's not like every other program you use you actually have to go to the folder and find your font file click that and then hit open it doesn't read what fonts you've got installed on your computer I guess because I don't know it's like cross-like uses the OS like it works for Linux and all that kind of thing I have no idea but it's annoying anyway you just so like the font that you have downloaded and that's it okay so obviously now is the time to make your neon say whatever you want some of you I'm sure I'm making this for a company do as you would normally do I'm gonna make it Donuts why not why not go all in on that meme the blended donut subreddit and all that it's just gonna say Donuts alright now I want to rotate it by 90 degrees so that it's standing upright very annoying in blender 2.8 doesn't actually show you a plane when it's like looking at it flat on I hoping that changes anyway there it is now we're gonna convert this to a curve so that we can make it look like a neon but before you do that what I want you to do is duplicate it hit escape and then just hide it okay and it'll become clear while we're doing that in a second but for now just do that okay so we got it now to convert it I'm sure there's a hotkey as he is it all see still no that's changed I'm probably not a hockey anymore so we're gonna hit f3 and we're gonna type in convert or convert as I apparently screamed into the text box hit convert and then we're gonna select curve from a mesh slash text there we go now if you go into edit mode with tab you will see you get all these little curved handles nice and if you went into the curve settings here and then underneath well I say space first of all change the fill to be none and then if you went to geometry bevel and just turn that up and then your resolution as well then look at that you've got little neon tubes probably the biggest problem you've probably already noticed is that we have double the amount of neon chips because basically fonts vectors I want to say essentially they're they're a shape a filled-in shape and therefore there is two edges to them there is the outer edge and there is the inner edge and we have both of them and we don't need that so what we can do is just delete the other half of it okay so we can select like with this D here I can hit ctrl L then hit X and then select vertices or if you don't want to have to select anything if you just with your mouse near it if you just hit L it'll select it vertices and now we have a problem okay because these aren't separate objects they are one solid object so you could like go through and like select each one like that but that's going what I would recommend you do is just create an incision like to separate them so you select two vertices like that then hit X and then click segments that's gonna create a break and then you do another one down here segments and then if you select one side of it L X segments and there you go and so we're just gonna do that for the rest of it I think this is why people get into 3d isn't it you know they love the manual labor and I gotta I gotta be honest there is a fair bit of manual labor for this this tutorial mostly just this kind of stuff making your curved shape here actually look like a neon it's not the most thrilling thing to do but hey if somebody wants to make a plug-in that auto generates neons to look the way they should then that would be great but until then you're gonna do it all all by yourself so I'm gonna hit X vertices and look at that we now have a single well this separated lettuce but we have one tube instead of two however there's a couple of problems for one we've got these little tails on it so if you see those little tails you can just select it by the way I'm going into circle mode by hitting C and then escape and then that or you can actually just change it up there now look at that blend at 2.8 with its user-friendly icons so convenient the other problem is I'm sure the designer like graphic designers especially people that know fonts I probably like screaming right now at how bad and disjointed this looks because sometimes we selected the left side sometimes we selected the right side the N and the S actually have the opposite showing like so this is the the inner the the right edge and this one is like the the outer edge or whatever so it's all messed up so turn on the the layer in the background which I told you to hide so there it is and what we want to do is we want to make this tube we want to put it in the center of our text and that you know it's gonna make it look more professional the words are gonna look nice and you know the little things add up right it's it yes it's fiddly and you don't have to do it but these little things add up and you'll find that your neon at looks it looks pleasing it looks like a professional sign that you might see somewhere so I'm doing this in a pretty random fashion so I've got the basic areas done now for something like the you write anyone who knows about busier curves or curves in Illustrator knows that you want to have as few handles as possible and you can see we've got handles that we don't really need all right so I'm gonna delete these and you'll see that yes it's now pointed and delete that one as well but if I take this handle here and I hit V V for Victor victor victim Victor Victor's the one isn't it anyway then I'm gonna hit aligned and now if I make this there we go something like that pull that out we've got a nice smooth curve without any like little jagged handles ruining things and we have much more control over it right so it looks nice and smooth so I'm gonna do the same thing here with this n delete that I'll make a little you'll do that a lot by the way what I just did then because the old blender shortcut for subdividing was W and now it's W changes that so you'll do it like a dozen times while you're doing this that's fine anyway so I just subdivided by sorry I should say what I'm doing select two vertices right click and then hit subdivide that's how you bring up that menu subdivide okay so bring this to the top move this to the edge move this to the middle that's good and now for this one let's try automatic what does that do it's not bad automatic totally the automatic is then you can't rotate it I don't know what purpose it actually serves so I usually just select aligned and that looks good what does vech vech - oh yeah vectors the shop on I hate anyway the curves are you think they could be nicer in blender to be honest it could be a little nicer than they are but they're alright they do the job okay that's good okay now the s so the S is just like with the end I'm just gonna do it one by one so for those of you who use a lot of curves like an illustrator and stuff you'll know what I'm doing now is basically selecting like the height of the cut like the where the curve sort of ends and then anything in-between it I'm just sort of removing so there - there there delete that one as well then I'm going to move that in the middle this one here and then by scaling it you can fill out that shape this by the way like this is tedious but if you're not familiar with curves we haven't used them very often this is actually like a really good training exercise years ago when I was into graphic design that was like a little PDF you could download for illustrator that some guy made that was to like train you how to use curves properly like and it was basically like how do how to like training yourself how to use as few handles as possible to create like the right sort of shape like this right and this is essentially what this is so by doing this yeah it's a little tedious a little boring but you're essentially giving yourself some training on how to uh how to use curves effectively which is nice free little homework a little bit of training you could do the same for the oh by the way but yeah same with the D but I think the D is fine so someone will find a way to make that sentence sexual doughnuts lovely alright so the next step is to make the neons essentially behave more like neons so they need to be connected word to word because if you look at reference photos that's how neons work I was actually as I was creating this result I was in LA and I just went for a little walk down the street and I just noticed neons everywhere I don't know if it's like a American thing but maybe you guys have like a cheap neon maker or something or but I just well maybe it's because I was just making something with neons and I noticed it everywhere but you'll see basically the backside of it here we go is uh yeah it's basically like it's all connected but obviously if it was all connected then it was will be lit up so the backside is like black to hide it and yeah so essentially it has to go around the back and then join up right so that's what we need to do without words here right so if we take for example these two parts of our curve and then we pulled them back oh okay see what happens there I'm trying to extrude it backwards but nothing's happening that is because in our curve data panel object uh it's set to 2d so change it to 3d and now we can pull that back now these little horrible lines I hate them they're very annoying so where it says overlays in the top there just go down and disable normals there we go all right and now that I've pulled them back if I hit F F is the same shortcut that's used for like creating edges and faces and things so it's really great it's the same for ah for curves we have that right pretty good so let's just do that for all of these so everywhere where it's essentially the end of the shape the end of the curve the end of the line we're gonna do that and I'm going to extrude it II pull it out to about there and then you select them and hit F now when you have something like this whoa that was a lot of movement you essentially like yeah you could just select this and then hit F but that's kind of messy and I don't think I don't think a lot of like neon sign designers would like that I think I mean I don't know maybe they do or what I would do is I was to pull it down and then go to there and and make it so it's sort of like it's still one one solid object you know but for something like this that's pretty unavoidable so I would just say that like that I'd make that one line and we're gonna clean this up soon so don't worry about it we're just trying to get the broad shapes in now the O and the D they have to be broken somewhere right so for the D I'll break it right there and let's whoa all over the place okay let's pull that back and then hit E and I'm gonna extrude that out to about here and then what I'll do is I'll delete that face let's delete that segment now we've got a break and then let's put this about here hit E and then F that's horrible ooh all right let's go aligned yeah a line is oddly perfect okay that's good and then mm same one here I know this is fiddly guys like you're trying to follow along alike all right now let's do the bottom of the D like it's really basic right we're just pulling it we extruding it out to put it behind it and then you're just joining it as best as you can and the word that you're creating I'm sure probably isn't doughnuts a loyal crazy people in on that meme might be using Donuts but you know your word is gonna have AIDS it's gonna have all sorts of complexities all you got to do is just like pull up some reference photos of neons and see what they do for those shapes like where do they put the cut you know how do they fix this you know how curved is these shapes in the back here so this is the other thing right like now we've got the bottom of this creating like a really hard 90 degree angle which is impossible so I pull it up a little bit and then I pull that down and we've now got a smooth angle right that's a lot of curves this is like the perfect the perfect study for people who want to get good at curves and currently aren't is to create neon tubes we rotate it and we go yeah yeah pull it out nice all right so I am gonna do the rest in fast motion because it's repetitive and while that's happening let's talk about polygons join 250,000 members who are using polygons to make better renders textures models HDR's brushes they're seamless there's no artifacts they're tack shop they got all the maps you need basically download and drop them into your scene and get on to doing what you do best which is make better renders hopefully okay we are pretty good now one thing I'll say is like try to get the line like the base line try to make it line up like the whole way and this font is sitting just above the bottom line which is kind of annoying so I'll just move that down so it's like right on the red line so now I can tell when something is is a little higher than it should be or lower than it should be and you know this is again going back to that whole you know graphic design sort of thing like you want the woods to look nice because that is what people are seeing its what they're it's what they're reading like they're not really like if you're making this for an advert right commercial you're not really caring that much about the neons they're reading the word and the word has to look nice essentially what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to convince you guys 3d artists that word design is important because I remember when I was a young punk a young dr. young 3d artist and I was all about the technical details and like god dude there's gonna be that and you know now I've sort of realized that it's a lot of typography 3d typography it's like the font is is a huge slice of it got to look nice the words have to look nice and I'm rambling you know so let me just create that fine a little smoothed off edge there oh okay lovely as a final thing I'll take those lost two points oh that one already is I'll just move that back we're gonna do for the last point it's gonna have like a power cord coming out at the bottom of it but for now we'll just leave it at that okay lovely now we have come to the end of this video in the next part we are going to be doing the materials making this thing glow making the back pot of it become black adding a brick wall with the new displacement features in bladder 2.8 and you know just making it look nice so go ahead and join me in the next video by clicking here on your screen

Channel: Blender Guru

Views: 407,196

Keywords: blender, tutorial, 2.8, cycles, neon

Id: eQjQfmjDXXA

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/calculatedwires]

Too bad I'll never be able to thank this dude enough, years ago he got me into blender with amazing tutorials, still makes next level content up till today, what an absolute demigod.

[u/IHAVENOARMS1]

Wait,Blenderguru has a reddit account??

[u/Gwirk]

Don't blame Reddit for donuts memes. You brought this on yourself :)=

[u/polaris343]

Hey... that's not a donut...

[u/Crypt0Nihilist]

I'm positive Andrew Price is one of the nicest guys I've never met. Every time I hear his voice at the beginning of a video it gives me a lift.

[u/mies777]

Thank you Andrew, really cool!

[u/KGenius5]

You are a saint my friend.

[u/Rick2990]

Still putting off making the leap to 2.8, such a big interface and shortcut change..ugh, guess its time though

[u/YOUREABOT]

360p?? M I the only one...