Easy 3D Text in Procreate and Fresco

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm flow and you might know me from my super easy to follow procreate tutorials on YouTube here at Skillshare you can find some of my exclusive classes. In the Skillshare class, I'm going to show you how you can create amazing 3D texts by using both procreate and Adobe Fresco. I'm going to show you how you can create a dab and how you can turn it into a brush in Adobe fresco. I'll show you how you can write texts in Adobe Fresco and then export it back to Procreate, to add this 3D lighting effects, I'm going to guide you through every single step and the possibilities are endless. So I'm sure you will have endless fun once you have learned this technique, what you need is an iPad, preferably an Apple pencil, the app Procreate, and a free version of Adobe Fresco. So if you have those ready, let's get started with this class. 2. In a nutshell: Before we dive into the different sections of this class, let me show you what this technique is about in a nutshell. First of all, you need to apps, you need procreate and Adobe Fresco, just a free version. And to start creating the 3D texts, you need a dab. That's a basic shape, like a circle with different colors, textures, or a gradient. You can actually find a bunch of pre-made dabs in the resources section. These are PNG files, and if you save them to your iPad, to your photos section, you can open your photos section like this. Here you can find the different gradients and then you can simply drag and drop one of the gradients into Adobe Fresco. Just drag and drop it onto your canvas. And then we can close the screen. Let's make this a little bit smaller and place it in the center of our canvas and tap them. So did the app is the base of our tree, the texts. And to turn it into 3D texts, we need to go to the multi-color eyedropper tool. Here's the eyedropper tool. Set it to multiply color, and then you need to pinch to meet your dab smaller and make it fit that circle. Sometimes it's a bit hard but go for something like this, then tap this color over here and tap the Plus to create a multi-color color swatch. Then you need to turn off or remove this layer with the dapp. Let's just remove a tap it then tap Delete layer. And let's make our Canvas bigger. And then we'll go up here to that brush. Then over here you'll find the basic brush pack and they used a hard round for instance. And then over here you can pick your color and make sure you have your gradient picked to start writing whatever you like with your 3D brush. And then a final step is exporting your work to procreate and adding shading and details. But in the upcoming sections, I'll show you different ways of how to create a doubt, what you need to think of when writing in Fresco. And finally, I will show you exactly how you can add lighting effects to your 3D texts and procreate. 3. Creating a dab: So let's get started with creating a dab. Of course, you can use the pre-made dash that you can find in the resource section, but it's way more fun to create your own dab. To create one, I have created a square canvas. This one is 2,500 pixels by 2,500 pixels. And then let's first create a circle for your brush. You can use the monoline brush, which you can find under calligraphy. Every color. You can pick anything you like. For instance, we can go for a purple color and make sure that the opacity of your brush is set to 100%. Let's pinch out a little bit and then draw a circle. Hold your pen in place to make it snap to the quick shape and untap one finger on the screen to make it snap to a perfectly round circle and drag and a color to fill your circle. If you want to make sure that it's centered on your Canvas, you can go to the arrow up here and over here, turn snapping on. You can just drag the circle until you see a vertical and horizontal orange line. Then we'll go back to the Layer menu to two little squares. We'll tap the plus, and we'll tap this new layer and turn on clipping mask. Now whatever we paint here will only show up on our circle here. We're going to create a gradient dapp, just like the ones that I have pre-made for you. Let's go to the brushes than to airbrushing and use the soft brush. And we are going to grab a lighter, perhaps a pinkish color. For the left side. Over here, I have the opacity of the brush set to 60%. Let's set the size to 12%. Let's just color this area with this nice pink. And then for the lower area, Let's grab a darker, dark blue color. Perhaps something like this. Will be the shadow side. We could even go brighter for a dark corner. Let's go for perhaps a little bit lighter, yellowish. Let's add that over here. And then let's blur this layer. We need to go to the magic wand, then to Gaussian Blur, slides to the right until you have something like this. Let's go for 40% and tab the Magic Wand again. Over here, we will pinch these layers together. So we have one layer with just that circle. Let's turn off our background color. 4. Exporting your dab to Fresco: Now you're ready to export this data to Adobe Fresco. What do you need to do is go to the Wrench, then go to share, and then share it as a PSD. Then over here you need to find Adobe Fresco. You might need to tap more. And then overhears Adobe Fresco, just tap that. And then you need to accept this so we can open our dab. And there it is. Now we can follow the same steps with a multi-color eyedropper tool. So just tap the eyedropper tool than the multi-color eyedropper tool. Pinch out to make sure that that circle is inside of the other circle. And tap the color over here. Tap the Plus to create a dab. Then remove this layer, tapping it and use delete layer, turn this one on, then tap the Plus for a new layer, and then go to the brush over here, use the basic brush, hard round. And then over here, pick that color. I can just zoom in and use this as a 3D brush. 5. Creating a dab from an emoji: Another fun way to create a DAB is by using an emoji on a way to do that is by going to the wrench and then go to Add, then go to Add Text. And then over here, use this little globe icon. And then you can really grab just any emoji that you like. Which one should we pick? Perhaps this little snowflake. Now let's make it a bit bigger. You can wrap the size to the right here. Let's place it in the center and tap Done. And then over here, let's remove that circle that we created earlier. So slide to the left, tap, Delete, then lets rasterize this layer so we'll turn it into pixels instead of a text layer, tap it, use rasterize. And now we can export this to Adobe fresco, just like we did before. And now when you follow the multi-color eyedropper tool steps, this is what you get. When you look at the stab and the results, you can see that you get a special effect when you have a dapp that isn't round but has these little indents. You can use that to create a branch brush. For instance, let me show you how 6. Create a branch dab: First let's turn back on the background layer and remove our snowflake or ice crystal. Let's just clear this layer. And then let's first create a circle again, we'll go to the calligraphy brushes, used a monoline brush. Right now I have yellow, that's all fine. We just need a little circle. Hold your pen and place, tap one finger on the screen for a perfectly round circle. And then let go. And then make sure that you place it in the center by having snapping turned on. And then place it where you see the vertical and horizontal orange lines. Let's go back to the layers, which is still called Snowflake for some reason. Let's make a new layer on top by tapping the Plus. And then let's grab a nice brown color, a little bit towards the oranges. Grab a color like this. I still have the monoline brush. The opacity is set to 100% and the size is at 4%. Now we're going to make a special shape. It's like a little log will follow the round shape of our circle. But here we'll go towards the inside, them back up. I will make a bit of a wobbly line on the outside. Go back in a bit of a shape like this. It's a bit like a weird star. Sheep go towards the inside, then back towards the outside. Back in. For some parts you can go to the center quite, quite a distance. And then for other parts you can use a little distance. Make it nice and wobbly on the outside. Imagine that this is tree bark on the outside. So you'll get something like this. And then just dragging the color to fill it. Now we have our basic shape. We can remove our circle over here, so drag to the left, tap, Delete. And then on this layer we're going to add some texture layer tap Alpha Lock so we won't be able to paint outside of this lovely shape that we have just created. Now let's go to the brushes and then to the charcoals. I'm going to use the vine charcoal. Then let's grab a lighter color. Something like this. Let's make the brush a little bit bigger. 37%, the opacity is at 80%. Now let's go over that center area. I give it this nice little texture. I will leave that outside a bit darker. Now let's grab a different color. Let's move a little bit towards the reds and a little bit darker. And then let's make the brush a little bit smaller, maybe ten per cent. To create some of those rings. We can go even smaller with our brush. Let's set it to 3%. I'll just make these circles. Because when you draw, when you write with your 3D brush, whenever you stop, you will see the dapp. We want it to look like that inside of a branch tree. We just want some of that circular texture. We can grab an even darker color, something like this. Size. At every time you make a dab, it will look a little bit different. So yours will definitely end up looking different than mine. But that's the fun thing about it. It's always a bit of a surprise which you get circles over here in the center. 7. Thinking about stroke direction: Right now, the color of the DAB is pretty much the same all over. And creating 3D texts with this will look pretty boring. Because keep in mind that when you use the brush in Adobe Fresco, when you make a downward stroke, you will see the top part of your dab. When you make a stroke to the right, you will see this part of your DAB. Can we move to the left? You will see this part. When you move upward, you will see this part of your dab. 8. Create a branch dab part 2: So we want some variation in color there. I want some lighter colors here on this area. So let's grab a lighter color, a little bit of a yellowish color like this. Then let's just make a few squiggles as if there is some light on that area of the branch that we're going to create. And then over here as well, how we can do the same with a bit of a darker color. Let's grab a warm color will go towards the reds, and then a darker color like this. I will use that in this area. The opposite of the light area. So now we have some variation in color along the outside of our dab. And when you turn this into a brush, this is what you end up with. Now, since this is supposed to be a branch, this brush isn't the best option. You can actually pick a different brush in this case, let's go to the brush over here and then use the hard round variable. On this brush will give a thicker result when you press harder with your pen and a thinner result, I should press lightly. So let's try it out. Brush is a little bit small, so let's make it bigger. You can do that over here where you see the number. Let's set it to around 300. And if you're having trouble making smooth lines, then you can also turn up the smoothing over here, that's this little squiggle. You can turn it all the way up or halfway or wherever you like, and it'll help making smoother lines. Let's have a look and see how the thickness varies. Of course, with a branch you want it to be thick at the beginning and then thinner as you go towards the end. I can make multiple branches like this. So this technique isn't just really nice to create 3D letters, but the possibilities are actually endless. So I'm really curious to see what you come up with. Make sure to share it in the projects area. 9. From Start to Finish - Create a Rainbow Dab: In this next section, we're going to create a 3D texts from start to finish. So we'll start with the data. Then we'll write the text in Adobe Fresco, and then we'll add the lighting effects. The first thing we'll do is we'll create a circle again. I have created a color palette for you, actually, which you can download in the resources section. We're going to start with this orange over here. For the brush, we will grab the monoline brush again, which is over here under calligraphy. Let's just draw a circle. Hold your pen in place to make it snap to the quick shape. Then tap one finger on the screen to make it snap to a perfectly round circle. Let go and dragging the color, and go to the Move and Transform tool to make sure that your circle isn't a center. Tap the arrow again. Now we'll go to the wrench into Canvas and we'll turn on the Drawing Guide here. It will go to Edit Drawing Guide. And over here you'll see symmetry. Then tap options and set it to radial. But to turn off assisted drawing, we just want to use these lines as a guide. Then tap Done. Now we'll make a new layer on top of this one. We'll tap the plus, then will set this layer to clipping mask. So our colors will only show up on our circle, and it will move to the next color. The second over here. We're going to follow these lines will start here. Hold your pen in place to make a straight line. And do the same over here. Make sure you close the shape here. You can't see it, but it's really happening. Then dragging a color to fill a cheap and then continue and move to the third color. Will follow these lines. Make sure you close the shape and drag into color will do that for each of the slices. So here we'll put blue. Over here, we'll put the lighter blue. And now we have this one. This one, and this one. Now we have our colorful circle. We're ready to export it first, let's merge these two layers by pinching them together and turn off the background layer. And you can see our lovely dab and go to the Wrench then to share and then share it as a PSD. Down. Let's move to more and scroll down to Adobe fresco. That makes sure to accept. And now we're ready to create our 3D brush. 10. Write 3d text: First go to the multi-color eyedropper tool. And here over here, click the multi-color, then pinch to make this smaller. If you end up finding out that your DAB is a little bit too big, they can simply go to this little icon. Here. You can make your dab a little bit smaller. It's the Move and Transform tool. You can simply drag one of the handles to make it smaller and place it in the center again. Then tap them. And then just pinch again to make it smaller and make it fit. I'm multicolor eyedropper tool thing. Then tap over here, tap the Plus to save our swatch and delete this layer. So tap it used Delete layer, turn this one on by tapping the little eye icon and then tap the plus for a new layer. Now, if you want your canvas to be a little bit bigger, if you don't want a square canvas, then you can go to the properties over here, a little wrench. And then here tab change. How let's set the width to 3,000 pixels. And then we'll tap, Okay, here we need to transform our white layer that we have. Let's just make it fit and then tap Done. Continue. And now we're ready to start writing. Let's go to the brush over here, tap it. Let's use the hard round brush and then tap the color over here and select our little swatch. Now I want to write the word colors. I do want to make the brush a little bit smaller so that it all fits. Maybe 184, 85, 86, something like that. And I'm going to try and write this in one go. Don't worry if you need multiple tries for this. And just notice how brushstrokes overlap. So if you want a stroke to be in front of the other one, you need to make sure that you make the one at the back first and then the one in the front. So for instance, if you would like this L to be reversed, it would have to start with the front part and then go back. 11. Back to procreate: Now that we have our texts, perhaps after 100 tries, Let's export it back to procreate so we can add lighting effects. You need to tap this little icon over here, then use Publish and Export. And then over here you can use Export. As for the format will go for a PSD, then tap Export. And then over here we need to find Procreate. So let's tap more. And I'll let select Procreate. I need to navigate to your gallery to find this piece. Here we have it. Now we are ready to add some lighting effects. First, let me change the background color of this piece. Let's tap the background color here in the Layer menu l. Let's set it to a bright bluish green, something like this. It just looks a bit less boring than plain old white. Let's move our text a little bit. Let's go to the Move and Transform. I want to make it a little bit smaller. Make sure you have it set to uniform. Little bit smaller. And I want to place it in the center and tap the arrow again. 12. Add shadows: To add some shadow effects to our texts, we're going to make a new layer by tapping the Plus. And to make sure that whatever we paint only shows up on our text, we're going to use clipping mask. They'll tap the N over here to set the layer blending mode to multiply, which is great for shadows. And then we'll grab this color over here to last color and drag it onto the screen. You can see that it all looks dark now. Then we'll tap this layer. It is purple layer and we'll use a layer mask, right? Not a layer mask is all white, but we're going to make it black by dragging black onto the screen. And I can see the shadow anymore, but we're going to paint some of that shadow back in by using white. So go to your color minute and double-tap over here. Then for our brush, Let's use a soft brush. Let's go to airbrushing. Use a soft brush. Now we're going to imagine where the light is coming from. I'm imagining that the light is coming from this direction. So it's hitting these letters at the tops. And on the opposite sides of where the light is hitting. There will be shadow on the undersides here. So for instance, over here. Now, let's make our brush a little bit smaller. I have the opacity set to 60%. Now let's set the size to 5%. Now when you make multiple strokes, you can make it even darker here. Over here we also have shadow on the underside of the, OH, over here on the underside of this part. And it's also casting a little shadow over there. We also have a little cast shadow and perhaps a little bit underneath here. Just a tiny bit over here on the inside of the L. If you went too far with your shadow, like over here, this is where light would be hitting. You could switch to black by double tapping here. Let's get a crisper brush, like the medium brush. And then let's make our brush nice and small, maybe 3%. And just go over here to get rid of the shadow there. Then we'll grab our soft brush again. We will switch back to white by double tapping here. And then, for instance, this side as shadow, the underside over here, the younger side of the 0, and it's also casting a shadow on the L. You can make multiple strokes. You can make the shadow a little bit darker. Here we have the underside of this part. Over here for the R and C, you know, we're going a little bit too far over here, but we can use the other brush against that to black to get rid of that. So let's grab the medium brush, then switch back to black. Now we'll go over this area to get the light back. Now we'll go back to the soft brush. We will set it to white again by double tapping here. And now we need some shadow on the underside of the R, for instance, over here. Because as you see here, we have the light and this is the opposite side. We have here some shadow on the inside of the S. Over here at the end of the dab, the end of the line, where we have some shadow as well. Darken this a little bit to the side of the ER here. But overall, this is looking way more 3D than before our shadow. Let's check that out. When you turn it off, you can see it looks pretty flat, but once you add those shadows really comes to life. 13. Light and reflection: I also want to add a little lighting effect. Let's tap the Plus for a new layer and let's go to the luminance brushes. These are standard Procreate brushes. Over here, let's use the light pen color. We will use this yellow. It's also change the layer blending mode of this layer. So let's tap the N L. Let's set it to Screen, which is great for lighting effects. I have the opacity of this brush set to 100% and the size is at 45%. Now let's add a few highlights, like over here, little highlight. One over here in the places where the light would be hitting. For instance, over here, Let's make sure to light doesn't go outside of the sheep. So let's turn on clipping mask here as well. So we'll tap the layer, turn on clipping mask, and then continue adding white. Let's do some of these places. Then 40 are here at the top. I live it over here. And this little band, make sure that it follows the curve. Let's blurred is just a little bit by going to the Magic Wand and pick Gaussian blur. Slide to the right. Let's set it to 4%. Now let's go to the Layer tab, the S. Now let's play around with the opacity. Let's set it to 80% of our final effect. I would like to add a little reflection. We're going to duplicate these layers that we already have. Let's slide to the right on these layers, so we have them all selected and tap group. Let's close the group and slide to the left and tap duplicate. It will top to bottom one. And then we'll use flatten. They'll go to the Move and Transform tool. The little arrow will use Flip Vertical. I will move this one downward until it barely touches this letter over here. Tap the arrow again. I'll go to the Layer menu, tap the N and lower the opacity to around. Well, let's see, 22%. Hello, tap the layer, use a layer mask here as well. Hello, grab the soft brush under airbrushing, set it to black. And let's set the size to 25%. Let's go over to bottom area to make it fade a bit. Just gently until you have something that looks like this. 14. Your project: Alright, so here's a little recap. What you need to create 3D texts with procreate and Adobe Fresco is a dab. You can use a gradient, you can use a colorful circle, you can use an emoji. It can make a branch like dab. You can experiment and loosely, once you have adapt, you need to use the multi-color AirDrop them Tool to turn your dive into a swatch. And once you have written in your texts or created your ranch in Adobe Fresco, where the hard round brush, you can export it back to procreate. You can add a multiply layer on top of your texts to add shadows and really create that 3D effect. Like I said, the possibilities are endless, so I'm really looking forward to seeing your projects. Try writing a text in Adobe Fresco with either one of the tabs that I have provided for you or create your own dab and add the 3D shadow effect in Procreate. Remember that if you have enjoyed this class, please let me know by leaving a review. I would really appreciate that and also be sure to check out my other classes here at Skillshare as well. Of course, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I'm looking forward to seeing your projects and I would like to thank you for watching. I'll see you next time for the next class.