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How To Create a Glowing Text Effects in Cinema 4D 68 Comments

I loved this splash screen over at Nylon.la so I decided to have a go at it. I didn’t get it perfect, but it’s pretty close I think. Follow along in this tutorial to see the trial and error on how I tried to figure this out. Hope you like the tutorial. Keep having fun!

With Help From Nylon
Bryan From Nylon was nice enough to drop by the comments and let us know they built the original.

We made an object with luminance inside of another outer object to create the effect. We also made an entire rig of lights pointed outward.

Example

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68 Comments

  3. PlopFace

    How come your tutorials on videocopilot are so much cooler?

    Reply

  6. Vodoo People

    Thanks for another great tutorial, this giveme a lot of ideas…

    Reply

  7. lacza

    Oh, thats great, i go and make this, but i choice different way :)

    Reply

  8. Raul sigala

    Wow!! I remember asking how to do this exactly on your Facebook how awesome :) thanks a million Nick, you are th man.
    And thanks everyone who pitched in the comments.

    Reply

  9. artyous

    thx a lot Nick, great tutorial as always, keep it up man :)

    Reply

  10. Bryan

    hah! honored to have you make a tutorial, Nick. It’s very close to what our solution was. Though it took us around 2 weeks to figure out the look that we wanted. Thanks and keep up the good work!

    Reply

  12. Cory

    Awesome Nick! I’ve always wondered how to make the glowing Engadget logo animation which might be a similar technique but I’m having trouble recreating it

    Reply

  13. Dani

    I don’t know about everybody else’s impression, but I think the point is what Bryan said: “It took us around 2 weeks to figure out the look that we wanted”

    Reply

  14. Dave Koss

    Nice, but I still think the inner part needs more of a subsurface scattering effect. Maybe a gradient from the middle out so the inner most parts are brighter.

    Reply

  15. Mike

    Great work Nick and overall I think you got quite close to Nylons version.

    Reply

  16. jose

    hi Nick you can always increase the GI strengh of the shader on ilumination tab, use fresnel on luminance and shut the brightness of luminance in self. For the GI render settings for this case it´s probably better use the secundary intensity to prevent light from spreading throughout the scene.
    this is my way i hope it helps with something.
    Great tutorial by the way, By the way, great tut as usual

    Reply

  18. Jordan Moss

    Great stuff Nick been watching your tutorials allot, two things I would note is that when you were talking about using the sharpen filter to make it darker on the inside and lighter on the outside you could of inverted the colour in order to make it opposite.
    on a second note, to make that lighting effect Nylon was using on their text you could of used an SSS shader on the top text then placed luminance on the text inside it to light the Subsurface Scattering Shader.
    Worked great for me :D

    Reply

  19. G.West

    Is it just me or all the Viemo videos are not working? :(

    Reply

  21. Kay

    Hey Nick!
    Nice effects indeed! I gave it a try myself, without watching the tutorial.
    I used a plane light (not sure if it’s the right translation for flächenlicht…). You can attach a smaller text to it as shape that is placed inside the glass text. This way the inner text itself is lighting the scene as a standard light.

    That is what I came up with:

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8159333/silk_light.jpg

    Cheers!
    Kay

    Reply

  22. Aj

    I saved the .ai file as Illustrator 8, but when I merged it into Cinema some of the text and logos were missing :/

    Any help?
    Great tutorial as always, btw!

    Reply

  24. Aj

    How would I do that?
    Sorry, I’m new to Illustrator.

    Reply

  25. Aj

    Nevermind, Kay
    I saw what Gorilla did. But thank you for reminding me I needed to do that!

    Thanks!

    Reply

  28. Aron

    great! i’ve seen this design over and over again throughout the years from various design disciplines and usually it’s super well done like Nylon’s and yours. thanks for sharing in the c4d realm, nick. you’re such a great teacher.

    Reply

  29. Roidimitris

    Thanks Nick for this Tut! But you forgot the 70mm Camera at the final render……

    Reply

  31. S.J Mansfield

    I’ve layed everything out and got up to the part of texturing my “main word”. I’ve applied the luminance texture, and all that. But for some reason the texture doesn’t seem to light the rest of my scene. I’ve tried raising it’s Brightness but to no avail. Anyone have any idea what I could do?

    Regards,

    S.J

    Reply

  34. Junior Omede

    Gorilla-man your too funny “Hireckik!.. Hirecickle!!… Hierarckickle!..”

    Reply

  38. DEConcepts

    I’ve found other ways for an internal glow, i just put a glow on the inner material with no fillets, but just added an inner glow at around 50% and no outer glow with a radius of 2. turned out pretty well! :)

    Reply

  43. Godmil

    Another great tutorial Nick, thanks! Seeing how you touch up the renders in photoshop has been invaluable.

    Seeing the use of transparency made me want to mention something that may be useful to people (or may be obvious), but incase anyone doesn’t know the ‘refraction’ setting is a real physical value that can be matched to the material you’re wanting to make.. for example here is a table of different refractive indices: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/tables/indrf.html

    Also not wanting to be ‘that guy’ but your pronounciation of Gaussian is really funky. You’re adding a french feel to a germanic word. The name comes from Carl Gauss (rhymes with ‘house’) so it’s just Gauss – ian.

    Reply

  45. Chris brown

    As always, GREAT WORK NICK! You are my C$D hero!

    Reply

  46. tzm

    Can I make this text in photoshop cs5, and somehow import it in cinema 4d?

    Reply

  47. Dave Woodhull

    Hey Nick, Another great tutorial. Lots of good info. Thanks it will answer some challenges I have been meeting up with lately.
    Dave

    Reply

  50. Omar

    i do it but i have some problem from the shadows , which it is very harsh shadow , so how i can adjust it without affecting the overall look , and thanks.

    Reply

  53. Paul

    Used your tutorial for the Nylon effect for a design piece, came out great… looking forward to the next one.
    First time using Cinema, loving it already.

    Reply

  54. Jason Short

    Hey Nick, where can I download some cool logos for my project?

    Reply

  55. Mattias Hallström

    Great tutorial!
    I have unrelated question about the program you use when you open up files.
    The one with a black border around the “open window”
    Whats the name of that program/plugin?

    Thanks a lot!

    Reply

  59. Andy

    Hi,

    Great tutorial!

    I have a problem. When I render without lights and (when GI and autolight are turned off) I get only reflections from Luminance material. So, I had to turn on GI to get some light on the scene. How can I settle it?

    Thank you.

    Reply

  61. Jhonattan Rodriguez

    Que buen trabajo … gran ayuda para mi formación en diseño 3d Saludos desde Bogotá-Colombia!!

    Reply

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Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.