We're going to add an effect to the reflection source called CC Blobbylize.
It's a really silly name and you may not have even used it,
but it's going to be perfect for what we want to do.
Type in Blobby, and there it is, CC Blobbylize.
Click and drag that to the Reflection Source.
I'll zoom in here so we can see this nice and clearly.
I'll go into the blobbiness.
This effect basically makes whatever you apply to look a little bit more like liquid,
with rounded edges, but it does it in a way that really lends itself to this effect.
It's all based on the alpha channel of whatever this blob layer property is set to.
Currently it's set to the Reflection Source.
It's not doing much if turn it off and back on.
You see it's just repeating itself.
But if I change the blob layer from the reflection to the Chrome text layer,
suddenly we have all of these nice lighting
that's based on the Alpha channel of that text layer.
If I turn that off and on,
you can see that it's warping this reflection in this really curvy soft way,
which helps give this a lot more depth.
Now I said that this was based on the Alpha channel.
It's actually based on whatever you set it to here in the property value.
Currently is set to lightness because the layer was white,
it's applying it evenly over the whole effect.
But I want to change this to Alpha,
just so there's no doubt that it is basing it on
the Alpha channel and not the actual color values of the layer.
Next, I want to take this cutaway property and just turn it all the way down to zero.
There's no need to use it.
Basically, it allows you to choke the Alpha channel off the layer,
but we don't need to do that at all.
I'll turn cutaway all the way off,
and then maybe increase the softness a little bit.
Now, this is a property that again,
is solely based on the contents of your layer.
If you have a different font,
this could make it look completely different.
The softness value that you use is completely up to you.
It's a totally subjective value that you
should play with and see what it does by turn it all the way off.
Can see that we're back to having basically no distortion.
But as I turn it up,
it makes the reflection look like it's
being wrapped around these letters a little bit more,
or basically making it look like the text is rounded.
I'm going to put this somewhere around 38.
I'll just round it off there.
You can see now what happened to that straight line.
The horizon line is now going up and down around
parts of the text based on the shape or the Alpha channel of that text.
Just to show you how dependent this is on the source,
let me go into the Chrome source comp.
I'll duplicate this so that I have a backup and just change
the font to something completely different like this, Azo Sans Uber.
It's totally different way chunkier.
You can see that that now has a completely different look to it.
If I were to change this to a font that was really thin like this 10b font.
Maybe make it all caps.
That's going to have a completely different look as well.
You can see that's a much harder to tell that it has any depth to it.
I might need to turn that softness way down for a thin line font,
so that it wraps that reflection around it a little bit better.
Make sure that you play with that softness property
and get it looking the way that you want it to.
Let me get rid of that second layer and go back to our abolition font.
It changes back up to 38 again.
I'm happy with the way that that looks,
but I want to add a little bit more depth to it.
I'm going to duplicate the 3D move comp,
Control D or Command D on a Mac.
Enable it. We're going to make an outline or a stroke basically for this layer.
We're going to do that using a layer style.
I'm going to right-click, and go all the way down to Layer Styles,
and then all the way at the bottom, you can't see it,
but it's at the very bottom of the menu is Stroke.
Now we'll just give us a stroke based on the Alpha channel.
I want to invert this basically so that the text is black and the stroke is white.
I'm going to add a fill effect to that text,
make it black, and then go into my stroke,
change that color to white.
Currently it is aligned to the outside of the layer,
and that's probably fine.
We might need to change that to the center,
but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.
I think I'll just bump this up a little bit,
make it four points instead of three.
Now that I have this as a black and white layer,
and if I turn the transparency grid on,
you can see that it is black fill, white outline.
I can use it to create an outline filled with this same reflection.
I'm going to duplicate this reflection source,
and change the track matte from Alpha to Luma Matte.
Instead of looking at the Alpha channel,
it's going to look at the luminance or
the brightness values of the pixels of the layer instead,
and use that as a matte.
Need to make sure that I also disable the visibility of that layer above it.
If I turn this one off, you can see that now we have the reflection as
an outline on top of the reflection as a fill.
To keep track of all this,
I'm going to rename this Reflection Outline,
and I'm going to rename this one Reflection Fill.
To rename a layer, you just click on it,
press "Enter" type, and then click off or press "Enter" again.
Now I have these two layers, and if I zoom in,
you can see that there's just a slight gap.
If I turn that transparency grid on and off you can see that slight gap of transparency,
that's because of that stroke alignment that I was talking about.
Let me go back into the Layer Styles where that
stroke is and change the position from outside to center.
Now that's going to basically go invisible because it's perfectly overlapped.
But we're going to make the outline a little bit more visible by going to
that Reflection Outline layer and adding another effect.
This time we're going to add a curves.
Under Effects and Presets,
I'll type in Curves,
drag that in to the Effects,
and then just to brighten it a little bit.
That will make it stand out,
but it's all based on the same reflection colors.
We're still getting that nice reflective property to the overall text.
Now because this is a duplicate of the first layer that we had,
it has that CC Blobbylize still applied.
That is adding some cool color variation to the overall outline.
But it doesn't look all that 3D.
I could turn the softness way down,
maybe just increase it just a little bit.
You can see that that adds a lot more realistic reflections.
If this was like a rounded outline,
you'd be seeing parts of that pink in that section of the text.
I think I like the way that that looks.
I think the brightness might be a little bit too much,
but I can push this depth even a little bit further by adding a bevel to the outline,
just to give it a slight bit more of that highlight and shadow depth effect.
But what I need to do first is pre-compose this as an outline
because the effects that I'm applying are not taking into account this Luma Matte.
I'm going to select both of those layers.
Go into Layer, Pre-compose,
and I'll rename this Chrome Outline. Click ""Okay".
Now I just have this single outline layer with an Alpha channel,
no track mattes or anything applied.
I can search for an effect called Bevel Alpha. There it is.
I'll just apply it to the outline layer.
You can see that really chisels it out,
it gives it a lot more depth.
Now that's a little bit extreme.
I don't need to go quite so intense,
so maybe I'll make the thickness a little bit less,
as well as turn the light intensity down.
This is basically just the opacity of how intense this effect is.
I just want to add a slight bit of a highlight and a shadow.
You can also change the light angle,
which I might want to do because the CC Blobbylize effect
actually has a lighting section and an angle as well.
The light direction for this CC blobbylize by default is set to negative 45.
I'm just going to stick with that.
You can adjust that to whatever you want.
But I'm going to change the Bevel Alpha light angle to the same number of negative 45.
That way the lighting should be consistent from one effect to the next.
Now we have this outline layer,
and it's really starting to make this text look a lot more 3D.