How to Create a Crystal Cube with 3D Text in Photoshop Extended

How to Create a Crystal Cube with 3D Text in Photoshop Extended
How to Create a Crystal Cube with 3D Text in Photoshop Extended

Step 11

Now the sky image is too small but that’s because it’s all the way in the background. To enlarge it back, set your 3D mode to scale then click on an empty area and drag to enlarge it back.

It’s bigger now, but it’s cutting through the 3D ground plane. Switch your 3D mode to drag then click anywhere outside of your document and drag the sky photo up until it is above the ground plane.

Now we need to reposition our camera view so that it is looking straight in front of the blue sky background. On the bottom left of your interface, you’ll notice a translucent black box with 3 arrows inside of it. This is the camera move tool and can be used to reposition your camera view. We just need to move our camera view up, so while holding down the shift key, click on the green arrow and drag down to move your camera up until your background fills your entire screen.


Step 12

Now we need to move the text and cube up so that it’s back in our cameras view. To do this, select the text and crystal layer from the 3D panel (hold Ctrl/Cmd to select multiple 3D objects). Switch your 3D mode to Drag then click on an empty area and drag upwards while holding down the shfit key until the 3D objects are in the center of your image.


Step 13

We finally have everything in place and we can start playing around with the 3D crystal. First, we’re going to rotate the crystal and text slightly. With the text and crystal 3D objects selected, click and drag on the Y rotation angle to rotate the 3D objects. I moved mine to the left until it was around 24º.


Step 14

Select Cube_Material from your 3D panel then in go into your Properties panel. To make the cube look like a crystal, we want it to be transparent, reflective/glossy, and refract the image inside. To make it glossy, set your shine and reflection settings to 100% and roughness to 0%. The bump setting doesn’t matter because we’re not using a bump map and we already have the opacity set to 5% from an earlier step. The key to making it look like a crystal is to increase the refraction all the way to its maximum setting. This will refract the text inside the cube which will give it a crystal look. You won’t see the refraction unless you render it. You can render the scene by pressing Alt+Shift+Ctrl+R (Option+Shift+Cmd+R on Macs) or by going to 3D > Render. You don’t have to wait for the entire rendering to complete – it’ll take too long. When the image looks good enough, click or press a button to stop the render. If you’re on a slow computer, you can resize the image down and scale it back up at a later time. This is possible because everything we’ve done is nondestructive which means you can scale the image back without any loss in quality.

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7 comments on “How to Create a Crystal Cube with 3D Text in Photoshop Extended”

  1. In the video, you keep clicking and dragging to change the text leading. If you highlight the text first, you will see the changes in realtime. Other than that great video and keep these coming!

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