Introduction

We have designed all of our text effect files to try and take a simplistic approach in which each file comes bundled with all necessary models, images, textures and scripts so that you as the user can open each file and start editing immediately.

The majority of our files attempt to follow the same simple process:

1. Open up the Blender file
2. Edit the text object(s)
3. Press the Play icon at the top of the Blender window to launch the included script
4. Use the "Run Scene Setup" button to apply the scene's unique configuration setup
5. Render out your animation to PNGs using CTRL+F12 (or CMD+F12 on a Mac)

We have created a handy setup guide for each of our text effects files with a step-by-step process for you to follow, and although each scene is slightly different and some are more complex than others once you have used the side panel in a few of our files, then the rest of the files will all start to make sense.

All of our files setup guides can be found here on our website: https://www.3dnames.co/setup-guides/blender 

Bounce Animation Example:

The Bounce Text animation is one of the simpler ones, and here we can see how this works - when you open up the file, the first step is to launch the included script by pressing the small play icon ▷ at the top:

Next, you then edit the text using the Tab key to enter/exit edit mode, and resize and move it using the "S" and "G" keys respectively:

As soon as you are happy with your text placement, and it's within the red guidelines, all you need to do now is press the "Add Bounce" button and this python script will apply the animation to each of your text letters and the scene will be ready for rendering, the red guides will also be removed automatically:

You can then press the "Play Animation" button (or use the timeline to scrub through it as normal)

Your animation can then be rendered using the CTRL+F12 (or CMD+F12 on a Mac) and the images will be saved into the //renders/ folder where you opened the Blender file from

There is a handy Reset Scene button that will remove the animation data and reset it back to its original editable text (almost all of our text effects have this feature) 

For our full guide for this effect please see: https://www.3dnames.co/setup-guides/blender/bounce-in-text-v1.0 

Personalised Happy Birthday Cake Animation

In this scene, we have a Birthday Cake animation that is personalised with 2 text objects, an input box to determine the number of candles to place onto the cake and the balloons at the end, the ability to change the colours of the cake icing, the text and the balloons and an optional "Confetti" extension that will use Physics to drop realistic confetti over your text and cake. So this example our Panel has more buttons to allow us to do all of this. 

When you open up the Blender file for this scene you will see this:

Here we can edit the text on top of the cake, in front of the cake, and set the "Age" number which sets the number of candles to be animated, as well as the floating balloons at the end. 

Pressing the "Run Scene Setup" button adds in the correct candles number, sets the balloons - we could then render a 250 frame animation 

However... let's not stop there, let's use the "Adjust Colors" panel to change the color of the Text, Icing and Balloons:

These all use our pre-made textures to change the colors easily with a simple button click

Next let's use the "Confetti Physics" Panel to add realistic confetti that drops in over our Cake

There are 2 buttons, the first is "Setup Confetti" and the 2nd is "Bake Physics" once these have run our animation will then be 400 frames long, and we can scrub through to see the confetti drop over our cake and text!

Finally, our 4th Panel in this scene is a "Render Settings" panel where we have created 4 presets for Draft (using EEVEE and 50% size), Medium, High and Ultra settings (all using Cycles)

As you can see the Cake animation Panel is more complex than our Bounce effect Panel, but allows way more configuration of the scene. It does however do all of the animation setup for you saving hours of complex setup, and with the handy "Reset Scene" button you can revert it back to its original state ready to create a new birthday video for someone else! 

For our full guide to this effect please see: https://www.3dnames.co/setup-guides/blender/happy-birthday-cake-v1.0 

In-Depth Setup Guides

Use our website for full documentation for each scene here: https://www.3dnames.co/setup-guides/blender - each step can be "marked as completed" as you progress through each scene.

If you are brand new to Blender you can also follow this guide overview: https://www.3dnames.co/super-easy-3d-text-with-blender and open the files in order to learn more as you go through and complete each one!