Now I want to add a second text layer in front of
this chrome text that is more of a neon-looking retro font.
We're even going to make it look like it's reflecting in the text behind it.
Let's start by adding a new text layer and type out something like "radical",
something nice and '80s,
and I want to change the font.
First of all, I'm going to make sure that it's not all caps.
The specific font that I want to use is called lakeshore.
That is also an Adobe font,
if you want to sync that to your Creative Cloud membership.
I'm going to change the paragraphs so that it's left justified.
The first thing I'll do this text, is pre-compose it.
With that layer selected, Control Shift C,
and I'm going to name this comp Foreground Text Source.
Click "Okay", and then I'm going to pre-compose this again,
Control Shift C or Command Shift C,
and rename this foreground text neon.
Click "Okay" and then drag that just above the chrome extrusion layer.
Now, obviously, this text is not aligned where it needs to be,
so what I'm going to do to make it easier to position is actually make
a null object in this comp that will drive the position of the text in its comp.
I'm going to go up to Layer, New, Null Object.
If you've never used a null object,
it's a completely empty layer.
It does not render,
but it gives you all the same transform controls as a normal layer.
I can parent things to it and use it as a controller.
I'm going to rename this Foreground Text Controller.
Bring up the position by pressing "P".
I'll also bring up the scale by pressing "Shift S",
as well as the rotation by pressing "Shift R".
Then I'll jump into my foreground text neon comp and into my foreground text source comp.
I want to stack this on top so I can see
both that comp timeline and the chrome look timeline at the same time.
Basically, I just want to link up the transform controls that I just opened up on
this null object with the transform controls of the actual text layer in this comp.
I'll grab the position property pick whip,
and grab the position on the null object.
Do the same thing for the scale,
as well as the rotation.
Now, whenever I move this null object,
and let me give myself a little bit more room so we can see this nice and clear.
Even though that text is in another comp,
it's going to follow this null object.
I can place this down in the bottom-right.
I can rotate it a little bit so that
it just has a little bit of variation compared to the chrome text.
I could even scale this up and down while holding Shift,
if I wanted to, but I think the scale was okay.
So I'm going to leave that just as it is.
Now that that's all linked up,
I can close this up.
Now I'm going to jump into that foreground text neon pre-comp,
and we're going to build a glow,
a neon glow around this.
I'm going to rename this first one Core.
That'll be our white core to the neon effect.
Then I'll duplicate this and rename it Glow 1 and change the mode to Add,
which is down the list just a little bit.
The blending mode set to Add.
If you don't see those blending modes,
make sure you have this switch enabled right here.
Then I'm going to add a fast box blur effect.
Let me expand this so we can see that again.
Drag that onto Glow one and just increase the blur radius a little bit,
and that's going to give this nice glowing effect.
But I don't want it to be white.
I want it to be a nice, hot pink color,
so I'm going to add a fill effect to this glow.
Just drag it out and change the color to that super hot,
bright pink color and maybe
make that a little bit more dramatic by crushing the Alpha channel.
I'm just going to add a levels effect.
Drag that out, switch the channel from RGB to Alpha,
and then just crush the Alpha.
That will make that all a lot more bright.
Maybe bring it down just a little bit on this side
so it's not too extreme. Something like that.
Then duplicate that effect,
increase the blur radius a little bit more,
and maybe crush that Alpha just a little bit as well on that layer.
Now we have a neon-looking effect on that text.
Back in this comp, that's looking great.
I can sell this effect even more by changing
the blending mode of this layer from Normal to Add as well.
Now those colors really blend into the background a lot more.
I think the second layer could have less of this crushing of
the Alpha and maybe even make it just a slightly larger blur.
That's really making that glow,
and it looks like it's an actual light source.
Now we need to get that to reflect in the chrome text.
This is actually really simple to do since we put this all in a pre-comp.
To get it to show up in that reflection,
I just need to go to the reflection source pre-comp.
Let me grab these foreground text pre-comps and move them into
the pre-comp folder and open up that reflection source.
Remember, whatever is in here is what's showing up in this reflective text.
I can just drag my neon text pre-comp into this comp just above the gradient,
and let's rename this Gradient.
I can get rid of that screenshot,
and that's going to show up in the exact same spot in this comp.
I'll go ahead and set this to Add,
as well, so that the color is really bloom out there.
But now if we jump back to our chrome look, look at that,
we've got the foreground text reflecting in the chrome text.
It's showing up in all different places and warping around
that text because of the way that we built it with the CC Blobbylize effect.
This is where it gets really fun because if I click and drag the position,
the text is going to update in the reflection of that chrome.
This is why I love procedural effects.
Once you have it built, everything just starts to work.
Now if we wanted to,
we can make this look like it's a little bit further away in z-space,
closer to the camera than the reflective text,
just by going into the reflection source and just scaling this down a little bit.
If I click and drag on this transform handle while holding Shift,
I'll just scale it down a little bit, not a whole lot.
Go back to the chrome look,
and you can see that offset where the reflection is.
If I basically center the text,
you can now see that the reflection is scaled down a little bit,
which is how a reflection would actually behave.
If I scale it down a whole lot,
then it's going to look like that text is a lot
closer to the camera than the reflective text.
I didn't need to scale it down that far,
so I'm going to undo that and reposition the text.
But you can do whatever you want to
that reflection source to change the properties of that reflective material.
If I wanted to, I could go back into my reflection source and on this adjustment layer,
I'll just add a fast box blur and really blur this out,
making sure to repeat the edge pixels.
Now if I jump back to the chrome look,
this looks like a much more matte reflective material.
It's not a perfect chrome mirror anymore. You can do whatever you want.
You could add in a bunch of noise,
if you wanted, to make this super grainy.
That's going to change the overall look of that metal as well.
But because it's procedural,
this is all going to update.
No matter what you put into the text layer or font you use,
the colors that you adjust,
it's all going to update automatically.
Let me get back to where we were.
I like that perfect mirror look,
so I'm not going to bother blurring that out or adding any grain or anything to it.
Then I just want to position this so that it's nice and legible.
Maybe something like that.
That foreground text is done.