neema

Hi. I'm just working on a little website and I wanted to know if anyone knows of any good tools or methods to build 3D Text. I have Photoshop and I was playing around in there a bit and I also tried 3dtextmaker and GIFworks... but the products from the websites weren't that great.

Thanks!

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Mac... or bust!
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*MacBook 2.16Ghz, 2GB, 120GB, SD*
+ *Nokia N80 w/ Mac Media Transfer*
= A combination almost as good as an iPhone...

betelgeuse

The big names in 3d are 3dstudio and maya. Maya "personal learning edition" is available free for download from their site:

Alias Wavefront Maya

This is probably overkill for just making 3d text but it's a great deal (free!..so long as it's not for commercial use).

If you're using Flash, look into Electric Rain - Swift3D

MannyP Design

If you have a little bit of money, say abotu $99 U.S. you could get the dvGarage (http://www.dvgarage.com) 3d Toolkit -- it gives you a full working version of ElectricImage 3d (my favorite 3d application) that is totally unhindered (unlike Maya PLE which will watermark your entire picture all to heck) with one tiny exception: you cannot use 3rd part plug-ins.

That's it.

It runs on OS X, 9 and has a nifty little tool that can import fonts and allow you to control bevels, extrusions, etc. You can even colour, add textures and a whole lot more.

Modeling/Animation for $99 US -- not too shabby... and it includes TONS of tutorials to get you started!

http://www.dvgarage.com/
(There are tons of other learning products that are quite awesome.)

But, if you're a little leery about spending money (or would rather spend LESS money). I have the first version of the toolkit that works only in OS 9 -- I could sell it to you for $50 (no codes or transaction fees required) or trade for whatever software/games you have for Mac/PS2. And no, it's not an illegal copy in case anyone was wondering.

I'm flexible. The offer is there if you're interested.

P.S. The little biplane I use for my avatar was created in ElectricImage:


As well as the logo I am going to use for my web site (which you can't tell from this perspective, but the text is extruded as well as various portions of the manhole cover):



[ August 01, 2003, 09:18 AM: Message edited by: mannyp ]