This week on MacBreak Studio, I show Steve Martin from Ripple Training how anyone can turn a flat logo into a 3D object in Motion or Final Cut Pro X.

The new 3D text features in both Motion and Final Cut Pro X are outstanding: there’s a vast collection of materials and lighting options to choose from, the quality of the texture mapping is excellent, and the performance is shocking (I can design animated 3D titles while playing them back, unrendered, in real time on a MacBook Pro).

However, these 3D features are limited to font-based objects which usually means letters and symbols (we discussed sources for symbols in last week’s episode).

So, if you want to take a company logo, or any vector object for that matter, and make it 3D, how can you do so? By turning it into a font, of course!

There are many ways to turn vector artwork into fonts; in this episode we demonstrate TypeTool 3, which is an inexpensive and fully-featured font editor. Another option to check out which works with SVG (scalable vector graphics format, exportable from most vector drawing applications) which is free is glyphter.com.

Once you’ve turned your logo into a font and installed it, it’s a simple matter of selecting that font in Motion or Final Cut, typing the appropriate letter for the logo, and then you can extrude it, change the edge type, add materials and lighting, and animate it with any of the text behaviors or keyframes in Motion; or use the title animations built into Final Cut Pro X.

Now it’s easier than ever to create beautifully rendered and animated versions of logos for your clients. For more material and animation options, you’ll want to check out our 3D Title plugins for Final Cut Pro X, including the free Ripple 3D Title Animations.