Creating 3D Textured Text with Corel DRAW!

This tutorial will show you how to create 3D Textured Text in Corel DRAW! I used Corel DRAW! 7.0 for Windows. Some things may be done differently with other versions.

I'm always exploring textures and materials effects in the various programs I use. I like creating gold, metal, wood, stone, etc... Normally I use all sorts of filters and tricks to get the look just right and I usually use a bitmap program such as Photoshop. I thought it might be fun, though, to try and see if something like this could be done with a vector program such as Corel DRAW! The following tutorial is the result. Let me know what you think.

The process is quite simple and, using it, you can achieve some really cool effects. I'll be demonstrating how to create "Hot Rocks" or Lava text. All of the effects can be accomplished using the files that come with Corel DRAW!

Open a new graphic. Select the Text tool and enter some text. I used the Braggadocio font at 75 points (see figure 4.1).

figure 4.1

You'll want to use a chunky font for this stone look. Later you can try different fonts and fills to see what you can come up with.

I wanted to give the text some perspective as well as adding 3-dimensionality to it.

Use the Pick tool to select the text and Choose Effects, Add Perspective. This will surround the text with a red grid and put nodes at the corners (see figure 4.2).

figure 4.2

Grab the top corners and move them in and up until you have something like figure 4.3.

figure 4.3

You may notice the perspective marker, a small black "X", appear above the text. Once you're happy with the perspective click on the Pick tool again to clear the grid.

It's time to add the 3D effects. Choose Effects, Extrude to bring up the Extrude dialog box (see figure 4.4).

figure 4.4

Select the Extrude icon and enter Small Back with a Depth of 10.

Select the Rotation icon and play around until you get a view that you like (see figure 4.5). You can see the text change every time you click the Apply button, so play around.

TIP: You might want to change the color of the text to a light gray so that you can see the angles and side more clearly.

figure 4.5

You can see the actual x,y,z values by clicking on the small paper icon to the right of the red Corel 3D rotation image. The values I ended up with were 19, 29, 5.

Now add some lighting. I added all three lights. You can see their placement in figure 4.6.

figure 4.6

Besides the placement you can play with the intensity of the lights. I set the first to 68, the second to 41 and the third to 86. Again, you'll want to play with these values to suit your particular image.

Now that the image is ready you can fill it with a texture. Select the Fill tool and hold it down until the flyout menu appears. Select the texture fill (it kinda looks like a black and white cloud image) which will bring up the texture dialog box (see figure 4.7).

figure 4.7

I chose the Painted Stucco texture from Samples 7. There are a lot of different textures, though, so take a few minutes to go through the libraries and find something you like. I thought this texture looked like hot lava rock. Take a look at the final image (figure 4.8) and see what you think.

figure 4.8

I exported the image as a JPG using Custom for the Size with 400 for the Width and setting the Maintain aspect ratio. I set the Resolution to 96 (both Horizontal and Vertical) and chose Super-sampling for the Anti-aliasing method. In the JPG Export dialog box I set the Quality to around 40.

Play around with some of the effects in this tutorial and see what you can come up with and, above all, have fun.

Make sure you keep a copy of the vector drawing i.e. save the image as a CDR file so you can go back and make changes easily later on.


That's it.... Be sure to check out some of our other Corel DRAW! tutorials.