What Do the Customization Options on 3dtext2gif Control?

Updated

3dtext2gif is a browser-based tool that turns typed text into animated 3D text GIF stickers. Every control on the page feeds one of five layers of the render: the text itself, the font and motion preset, the geometry (depth, line height, deformation), the camera, and the lighting/material setup. Understanding which layer a slider belongs to is what lets you predict the result instead of guessing. The tool is credited to FUZZYW and includes a gallery of finished stickers for reference.

Text and color controls

These are the first things you set, because everything downstream renders from them.

  • Text input — the characters that become the 3D sticker. The glyph list on the page shows the tool loads different character sets separately, with the Latin set around 0.19 MB and CJK sets much larger (CN 15.4 MB, JP 8.71 MB, KR 2.13 MB, TH 0.32 MB). That means non-Latin text works, but expect a heavier load before the glyphs are ready.
  • Text color — the fill color of the extruded letterforms (shown as a hex value, e.g. FCE5FE).
  • Line color — the outline/edge color drawn around the glyphs (e.g. 000000). This is what gives the sticker a defined border against busy backgrounds.

Zoom depth and line height

  • Zoom depth controls how far the extrusion is pushed along the camera axis — a low value reads as flat lettering, a high value as a thick, chunky block of text.
  • Line height sets the vertical spacing of multi-line text. It has no visible effect on a single-line sticker.

Font and motion presets

The page exposes a font selector plus a set of motion presets, with Motion Craze as the named example. The preset decides the animation style applied to the text; the font decides the letterform shape. Pick the preset first if the animation is the point of the sticker, then choose a font that stays legible under that motion — heavy distortion plus a thin font usually turns to mush at sticker size.

Deformation and camera controls

These two groups are easy to confuse because both change the shape on screen, but they act in different places.

Group Controls What it changes
Deformation Modulate vertical, modulate horizontal, stretch horizontal, stretch vertical The geometry of the letters themselves — squashing, stretching, and rippling the glyphs
Camera Camera horizontal position, camera vertical position Where the virtual camera sits relative to the text, i.e. the viewing angle and framing

A practical rule: if you want the letters to look different, use deformation. If you want to see the same letters from a different angle, move the camera. The Craze controls (horizontal, vertical, depth, direct) belong to the motion preset and tune how strongly that animation is applied on each axis.

Lighting and material

This group is what makes the text read as 3D rather than as flat colored shapes.

  • Direct light and direct light distance — the main light source and how far it sits from the text. Moving it changes which faces are bright and where shadows fall.
  • Ambient light — the base illumination filling the whole scene. Raise it to soften contrast; lower it to let the direct light dominate and deepen shadows.
  • Material metalness — how metallic the surface reads. High metalness makes the text reflect its surroundings and look like polished metal.
  • Material roughness — how matte or glossy the surface is. Low roughness gives sharp, shiny highlights; high roughness spreads them into a dull finish.

Metalness and roughness work as a pair. A shiny metal look needs high metalness with low roughness; a soft plastic look is low metalness with mid roughness.

Output size

Before generating, you choose the sticker resolution:

  • Low — 180×180
  • Medium — 240×240
  • High — 300×300

Higher resolution means a larger GIF file, which matters because messaging apps often cap sticker size. If a platform rejects your sticker, drop to the next size down before changing any other setting.

A quick way to work through the controls

  1. Type your text and set text color and line color.
  2. Choose a font and a motion preset.
  3. Set zoom depth and line height for the basic 3D shape.
  4. Adjust deformation only if you want the letters distorted.
  5. Reposition the camera to frame the result.
  6. Tune direct light, ambient light, metalness, and roughness until the surface looks right.
  7. Pick the output size and create the GIF sticker.

If the result looks flat, the usual cause is ambient light too high or zoom depth too low. If it looks noisy or unreadable, the motion preset is fighting the font — change one of the two rather than compensating with lighting.