Creating three dimensional titles / objects

[chrisjothi]

Hi all,

I love using After Effects to animate titles but have long been frustrated by the inability to extrude a logo.

Without suggesting something hard to grasp, like Maya, does anyone know of a simple Mac based program where I can take a PDF/AI/EPS logo into it, give it some depth and animate it and bring it into After Effects for more work?

Any suggestions and even examples of work produced on the recommended program would be great.

Thanks

Chris

[The Repro Kid]

I use Strata because it is considerably cheaper than Maya. but all 3D programs have the potential to be "hard to grasp." I used to do exploded views of mechanical parts with a drafting machine and a pencil and a set of blue prints, so all 3D programs seem easy to me. below $1,000 is about normal for an "easy" 3D program.

[The Repro Kid]

Here's one of a logo, sort of. (Since you were asking for Examples.) this is from Strata. I'd say the brunt of this work was actually done in photoshop.

[edit]What I mean by that last statement is that I made a detailed color map and a detailed bump map in photoshop as a layer file and used this file to apply the texture in Strata of the Pillow Logo object, which gives it it's color and low relief. There was no "Post Production" done in Photoshop.

[ThunderstruckPhoto]

Check out Swift 3D by Electric Rain. A full version is around $300, and has alot of potential for creating and rendering 3d objects.