Create Animated Titles with Cool 3D

Ulead COOL 3D is a 3D
graphics software that lets you create three-dimensional, still, and animated titles and
headlines for documents, presentations, reports, videos, multimedia titles, and Web pages.
It’s easy to use, and has a wide range of features that were formerly found in
expensive packages used by expert graphics designers.

Now, let’s use this software to create
a title and add 3D, animation, and other effects to it.You can access all the toolbars
that we’ll use from the View menu in COOL 3D. These include: Standard toolbar, Easy
Palette, Attribute toolbar, Location toolbar, Animation toolbar and the Status bar.

Creating a new title

To create a new title, click
File>New. Ulead COOL 3D opens a new face="Arial">window in the workspace with default settings.

Inserting text

To insert text, click
Edit>Insert Text, or use the Insert Text button on the Standard Toolbar. Type in your
text in the Text dialog box that pops up, and specify the font attributes, including size
and style (bold, italic, or normal).

To edit your text, click Edit>Edit Text,
or the Edit Text button on the Standard toolbar. The current window updates automatically
to display your text.

Adjusting space between characters

To adjust space between characters or
lines, simply click on the relevant buttons on the Standard toolbar. These include
Increase character size, Decrease character size, Increase character space, and Decrease
character space. Each time you make adjustments, the current size="2" face="Arial">window automatically updates the display.

Rotating the text

The Rotate and Move buttons
on the Standard toolbar rotate and adjust the position of your text in the current window.
To position your text more precisely, you can also enter the X, Y, and Z coordinates on
the Location toolbar.

The 3D part

Now that you’ve
selected a basic style, you can adjust the 3D settings to give more impact to your text.
Ulead COOL 3D’s Easy Palette (this is what you see in the lower half of the main
application window) contains a number of preset 3D styles. To view these, go to Gallery in
the Easy Palette menu. You can apply any of these by double-clicking or dragging the one
you like to the current window.

To create custom effects, use the
Attributes toolbar. You can save your own settings in Easy Palette by clicking the Add
button in the Attribute toolbar

Adjusting light and color

Click Light & Color in the Easy Palette
menu to apply any of the preset styles to your text. You can also create a custom style by
using the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness
sliders on the Attributes toolbar.

Adding textures

Easy Palette contains a
wide range of readymade textures. To apply any one of them, click on the Texture tab.
Double-click the thumbnail of the texture you like, and use the Attributes toolbar to
adjust its size, position, and appearance.

If you’d like to use your own texture,
create one in any image editor and save it in BMP or JPEG format. To apply this to your
text, click the Use Image check-box on the Attributes toolbar, and click the "Load
texture image file" button. Select the file you’ve saved earlier from the dialog
box that opens.

Adding a background

You can use readymade
backgrounds or create them yourself.To use a readymade
background, click the Background tab in Easy Palette, and select the one you like.

To add a solid background, click Background in Easy
Palette, and click Color on the Attributes toolbar to open size="2">the Color dialog box. Adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness from the
Attributes toolbar.

If you’d like to use your own
background, make a background in any image editor, and save it in BMP or JPEG format.
Then, you can click the Use Image check-box and click the "Load background image
file" on the Attributes toolbar. Adjust the size, position, and appearance of the
image with the Attributes toolbar.

If you’re using an image as background, it may not be
of the same size as the current window. Click the "Resize window to background
image" tab on the Attributes toolbar to resize the current window. Alternatively,
click Image>Dimension and click Use Background Image Size in the Dimensions dialog box.

Creating an image file

Till now, what you’ve done is create
the type of text you want. Now you need to decide on the kind of image you want—GIF,
BMP, JPEG or TGA, depending on where you want to use it. You may COLOR="#000000" size="2" face="Arial">also want to create video files of your text, in
which case you can save it as a GIF animation.

Let’s say you want to use the image on
your Web page. In this case, you’ll create a GIF with a transparent background.
For this, go to File>Create Image File>GIF. Then, select
transparent background from the Save As GIF File dialog box (you’ll find this in the
lower half of the box under GIF Options) to make your image blend in seamlessly with the
background of your Web page.

Once the image has been created, you can
add it to your Web page as you would any other image.

GIF animation

There are three ways to
animate your text—moving along a straight line, rotating through the X, Y and Z axes,
or a combination of the two. You’ll find some preset animation styles by clicking on
Animation in the Easy Palette menu. You can also create your own using timelines.

COOL 3D has a multiple key
frame-controlling feature, which helps you create more dynamic and advanced animations.
There’s also a set of plug-in effects that you can drag to your object to make the
animation livelier.

We’ve used the basic functions in Cool
3D to create text, and give it 3D, animation, and other effects. You can explore the
package further to create more advanced and dynamic effects. Happy exploring!