Your Step-By-Step Guide to Making 3D Animated Text in Figma

You don't need any special knowledge about 3D animation to create custom, animated 3D text for frameworks like Framer or Webflow. In this tutorial, I'll break down the process into simple, manageable steps. It's surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it.

Getting Started: Create or Choose Your Text

The first step is to choose, or even better, create your own custom text. You can sketch it by hand, digitalize it, and then use it as your own unique template. After your sketch is ready, you can upload it directly into the 3D website, spline.design. This personalized touch adds a higher degree of uniqueness to your work, and it definitely catches the eye.

Creating the Outline

The next phase in the process is to create an outline of your text. You'll need to use a vector or pen tool—like the kind found in Framer—to trace the shape of your custom text. It's important to keep all lines and dots as closely aligned with your sketch as possible. This way, the animation will follow a natural, handwritten flow.

Playing with Curves and Shapes

Now, let's move to making the curves and shapes for your 3D animated text. The bend tool that's available in our trusty 3D program lets you manipulate the outline until it perfectly aligns with the shape of your text. Once your shape is ready, you can play with thickness levels to achieve a design that really pops.

Pick the Right Material and Color

Our 3D text is forming, but it needs color. This part is mostly about customization. In spline.design's Material section, you can pick anything from simple, solid colors to intricate gradients. Just keep in mind the end goal of your design. For example, if you're designing for Framer, you might want to pick colors that match Framer's aesthetics or branding.

Lights, Camera, Glow!

Now that we have our colors figured out, let's enhance the overall look with some lighting techniques. You can add a post-processing effect like bloom to immediately instill a feeling of glow to your text. If the standard brightness level is too much, you can always dial it down or adjust the intensity and blur of the bloom. The possibilities are limitless!

Animating Your 3D Text

Finally, it's time to breathe some life into our text with animation. Animating your design in our 3D software is easy. You just need to select your text, and then move on to exploring the events and states found in the program's properties panel. Here you can make adjustments until you reach an animation that feels natural. You can even watch a few Framer Tutorials to get more inspiration for this part!

Wrapping Up

That's it! We've gone from sketching and outlining to full animation in just a few steps. Gone are the days of needing extensive 3D design knowledge to create stunning animated text for your frames in Framer or Webflow. Now, with this guide and a bit of patience, creating and animating 3D text has never been easier. Visit our Framer Showcase for more inspiration and to see what other designers are creating with this technique. Happy designing!