3D Block Text - Tutorial

Here is a nice little tutorial that tells you how to create text that looks like it has been assembled out of small 3D blocks. We of course need only Photoshop for it. The final result is shown below:




Step 1

In this tutorial I will show how you can make letter ‘L’ with this effect. But you could use the same principle to create any other letter or word. First up open up Photoshop and create a new document of size 500px X 500 px. Grab the Rectangle tool from the palette and with the foreground colour selected as #2998ff draw out a small square of size about 15px by 15 px as shown:

Now duplicate this layer (Ctrl+J) and place the new square block below it as shown.

Now keep on duplicating the blocks to trace out the ‘L’ shape as shown.

After you have created the L shape, you don’t need the blocks to remain in separate layers. So Ctrl+Click on all the block layers on the layer palette to select them and then Right Click and choose ‘Merge Layers’. Rename this layer to ‘Lbottom’

Step 2

Now you will need to distort this layer a bit so as to change the perspective and give it a sort of 3D look. For this, while having the Lbottom layer selected, press Ctrl+T to transform the layer. Now right click on the canvas and select ‘Distort’.Adjust the top middle handle of the transform box so that the L assumes the following shape:


Now we begin to add the 3rd dimension to our L. This is done by creating a number of duplicate layers each separated by 1px. To do this, first select the ‘Lbottom’ layer and select the Move tool on the toolbar. Now, with the Alt button held down, press the Up arrow key on your keyboard to create a duplicate layer that is placed 1px above the current layer. While still keeping the Alt button down, keep pressing the Up Arrow key about 11 more times so that you have 11 layers stacked one on top of the other. Select the top most layer on the layer palette and rename it to ‘Ltop’. Apply the following layer style to it:
It should look like this now:


Now select the lower most layer ‘Lbottom’ and apply the following layer style to it. (We are creating a shadow with this layer)


After you apply the style, with the move tool selected, press the Right arrow key 2 times so that we create a sort of shadow for the L.
Now with the Lbotttom layer selected, choose Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and select a value of 1.4 pixels. You should get the following shadow now:


Now select all the layers on the layer palette between ‘Ltop’ and ‘Lbottom’ (You can select a layer and Ctrl+Click on other layers on the layer palette to add more layers) and merge them as we had done before. Rename this layer to ‘Lmiddle’. Apply the following layer style to this layer.


We get the following result: