Create 3D Extruded Logo With Advanced Lighting (Motion Graphics)

In this tutorial we’ll be creating a stylish and glossy extruded 3D title with advanced lighting effects that can be controlled on the fly or even animated.

Of course you could be tinkering the 3D lights to position them correctly and get the lighting effect you’re looking for, but it’s a painful job to get the result you want by placing the lights in correct places and angles.
Instead in this tutorial we will be achieving the lighting effects without a single 3D light. So instead of tinkering the light we will straight be working with the lighting effects the light could have on 3D surface. That’s more convenient way to do it and you can get the desired results much faster.

We will use Expressions and Expression controls to link it all together and make it easy to adjust the parameters later for extrusion, light amount and light direction.

After Effects CS3 Project file is included. If you find it hard to follow or lost at some point – you can explore the project file that I created. This is a universal project that can be reused again and again in your own projects.

Tutorial consists of 4 parts. Over 40 minutes total learning time.

1: Setting up the title
2: Creating expressions that will drive the extrusion and lightning effects
3: Extruding and Adjusting lightning parameters
4: Animating and stylizing your 3D title

This Tutorial is a high quality video screencast in HD format.

I tried to make this tutorial as simple as possible so even a beginner could follow. However those techniques can achieve a high quality result. If you’re a professional Motion Graphics artist – this tutorial might teach you some new techniques as well.

I’m Filips Baumanis from Placdarms Design Company. I’ve been working with After Effects daily for several years now. I’m amongst the top authors on VideoHive which is a marketplace for professional After Effects templates. I’m also working as a reviewer there.