i was woundering if there is a program out there that has like a auto chisel effect .. ive had a lot of people ask me for the effect and im tired of hand drawing the numbers .... or does any one have any suggestions on what some of my options are for this effect ....
thanks in advance ...
Posted by Henry Barker (Member # 174) on :
There are various places where this is explained somewhat, Chuck does it at www.letterheadfonts.com for one. In Signlab E6 there is an automatic feature for converting any font to chisel, that said it may need some tweaking by yourself to give it abit more of a living feel and not computer made.
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
good luck
Posted by Matt Fontaine (Member # 3405) on :
thanks for the help i found the how to its almost like me hand drawing them, but its in the computer and dont have to scan and clean up
Posted by Mark Rogan (Member # 3678) on :
Photoshop has a "Layer Style" drop down menu. Put the letters or numbers on their own layer and you can "chisel them out, emboss them up, add glows, drop shadows, textures.... It's pretty damn cool. It always help me sell a design when the client can see the actual carving before I begin the job.
Mark
Posted by Bob Stephens (Member # 858) on :
I use ShapeShifter a KAI plug-in that works from Corel Photopaint.
Type your text into CorelDraw and give it a black fill. Now create a duplicate of your text and give it an outline only with no fill.
Select your black sample of text and copy to the clipboard.
In Corel Photopaint paste the text as a "new from clipboard" at the FILE menu as per Authors instruction below.
Now that you have a new page with the text you copied from CorelDraw, click on the text to select it.
Now go to the MASK tool at the top and choose "create from object" or use ctrl+M hotkey
Now you can go to your effects menu and select the KAI-5 effect called ShapeShifter.
Once you're in the effects tool create your bevel, color, depth and any other desired things to get the look you want. Hit ok and this will take you back to your page setup in Photopaint.
Take your newly created bevel effect and copy that back into Coreldraw.
Position your outline from the original over the beveled bitmap and powerclip. Hint: select and hit your P on the keyboard and it will center your object both vertically and horizontally on your page. Do the same with the text outline and both should be registered precisely on top of one another. Send you bitmap to the back -Ctrl+page down, and the vector text outline should be on top of your bitmap.
Select the bitmap object you created and the under your effects menu in coreldraw, choose powerclip and place your bitmap inside the empty text outline. You can now add outline properites to the letters if you like including the drop shadow tool. This probably sounds complicated but its very easy to do after a few attempts. Takes me less than a minute or two to do.
[ August 11, 2003, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: Bob Stephens ]
Posted by Arthur Vanson (Member # 2855) on :
Just to add one little detail – where Bob says:
quote:In Corel Photopaint paste the text onto a blank page large enough for your lettering.
It may be worth trying the 'New from clipboard' command:
File > New from clipboard
It should save manually creating a blank page.
Posted by Steven Girard (Member # 3931) on :
maybe with fcp3 (font creator program) you make or fix font with that and save it in .ttf ,it's longtime job but you're just doing it one time.....
Posted by Bob Stephens (Member # 858) on :
Thanks for the tip Author. I'll be sure to try that next time.
It's amazing how much an old dog can still learn.
Posted by Arthur Vanson (Member # 2855) on :
And, thanks to you Bob, from another old dog. I'll be trying out the rest of your instructions.
Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :
Matt,
In answer to your question....
If you are interested in a software program that can create vector-basedchisel effects at the click of a button, SignLab has it.
If you are interested in a software program that can create raster-based chisel effects, most of your paint programs such as Corel PhotoPaint and Photoshop can do it. A plug-in that has a better interface to make it easier and faster is EyeCandy 4000 by AlienSkin. This plug-in will also work in SignLab.
Posted by Bob Stephens (Member # 858) on :
Author I went back and edited my earlier post to try and make it somewhat easier to understand. Hope it helped.
BTW...you tip on new from clipboard works great!
Posted by Stephen Deveau (Member # 1305) on :
And EyeCandy looks nice too!
Posted by dave parr (Member # 3868) on :
Matt, I understand your frustration. A lot of stock car folks I used to do work for often asked for prismatic numbers on their cars. The problem was they didn't like to pay any more for the extra work. (Well, stock cars and money, that's been knocked around a few times here.) I recall fighting CorelDRAW 8 to extrude a prismatic line of copy several years ago. It was the first time I had tried it, I figured the problem was me. Seems that extrude may not have been the way to go. I've found a lot of good Corel information here at Letterville & I'm glad you asked this question. My thanks to those who have answered, I'll be trying a few of these methods as well.
dave
Posted by Matt Fontaine (Member # 3405) on :
thank you for all the help ... as far as race cars and money goes i fight all the time with the customer .. after 6 years ive shut my shop down and actually do this at home now .. at one time i was doing over 400 different race teams all over the country and have slimmed it down to the better paying people ... its like i told them either u pay me or can pay my house payment but im not doing it for free.... im sorta looking for a job in sarcramento area in the sign feild but shoot ill take anything i guess ... thanks again for all the great info and tips ... it has helped there is a bunch of great people on this msg board .... wounder if i should post a msg about wanting a job .. heck i even have a fat client list i can bring with me
