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Materials are used in Art Text for creating 3D looking text and images, to give glassy, metal, plastic look to an object, and for other effects.
The built-in library of materials is located in the Shading section on the Effects tab.
1 – Material category selector.
2 – The thumbnail of a material. The applied one has white background.
3 – 3D shape (bevel) selector. It is not available for image-based materials.
4 – The amount of the bevel effect.
5 – Rotate the applied material. For 3D looking objects, this control moves light spots around the center of the object.
6 – Color. By default, color of the original material is applied. You can change it.
There are two kinds of materials: based on shader technology and based on images. The majority of materials are shader-based. Image-based materials are grouped into separate categories in the library.
To apply a material to an object in the active layer, choose a material category (1) and click on a material thumbnail (2).
When you apply a material to an image opened from a graphic file, be sure that the image has areas with different transparency (not 100% over the whole image). Otherwise, a 3D effect will be applied to the rectangular image bound instead of image details.
Dome-shaped   |
Straight   |
Concave   |
This option is available only for shader-based materials.
Note that straight and concave shapes can produce similar results. To get different pictures, use materials with a light spot near the center.
The Light control moves the light spots around the center. This lets you simulate light falling onto a 3D object from the top or from a side.
When your design consists of several 3D objects, you can adjust the location of light spots as if they appeared from the same light source.
At lower values you will get an object looking almost flat. The slider covers the most appropriate range of values 0 – 20. To set greater values, use the edit box.
An image below shows circles with the Depth parameter set to 7, 15 and 30.
At the same Depth value, the result depends on the size of the object. After some point, increasing Depth will not change the final image. Small objects can loose 3D look at too large values. See how circles 50x50, 100x100 and 140x140 pixels look at Depth = 15.
The Color control changes all colors in a way similar to the Hue parameter in the standard Colors panel. Black, white and grayscale colors will stay unchanged.