3d text with dancing LEDs and glow effect

This is another exclusive tutorial for FermiCG fans. In this tutorial you will learn to create a 3d text intro with animated dancing LEDs or pixies with animated glow effect. The entire effect is created on Maya. You will get some cool trick to achieve these kinds of effects with in Maya. In this tutorial I will cover Text tool, Bevel plus, Text as curves for custom effects, lighting technique for motion graphics, custom reflection (the curvy reflection seen in product rendering such as mobile phones, monitors etc.), animated texture with paint effects and custom glow.

If you closely watch the final render, you can see there is no reflection for the LEDs and glow. It is because of the fact that paint effects cannot cast any reflection. I used Maya software rendering with ray tracing because I just want show that you can achieve something like this without using any ray traced rendering such as Mental Ray. Though the preview created without any shadows I added some ray traced shadows in the tutorial.

Don't expect the same result even if you follow exactly as this tutorial because the paint effects and glow effects are scene dependent effects. Slight change in camera resolution, camera angle and focal length and along with the render quality and lighting will drastically affect those effects. So do trial and error method, once you get the desired effect render out. And one more thing before doing the pain effects and glow effects set your camera angle and render resolution first.

pixie.PNG

Pixie.TIF

Download any of the texture above. The tif is preferred. Watch the tutorial and add your comments below.

Total duration 1 hour 30 minutes

Part 1  Creating the 3d Text in Maya

Part 2 Shading and lighting

Part 3 Custom reflection and Render settings

Part 4 Pixies, LEDs  with Paint effects (Animated)

Part 5  Custom Glow effect in Maya

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