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How to create an animated 3D gif

February 12, 2016 by
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If you're looking to seriously step up your creative game for Valentine’s Day, and you have a full Creative Cloud membership, check out this tutorial from Adobe that uses Fuse CC and Photoshop CC. They partnered with renowned fine art photographer Flora Borsi to create a fun step-by-step tutorial to help others create an animated 3D GIF for Valentine’s Day (click the GIF to see it play). With a few steps in Fuse CC (Preview) and Photoshop CC, you can customize characters, personalize the background and add motion, creating a special keepsake for your sweetheart. If you try the tutorial, let me know what you make! Email me using the contact form or upload it to my Facebook page. Here's the tutorial in Flora's own words:

Step 1: I started out by creating a character in Adobe Fuse CC. I already had a woman and a man in mind and I chose the body types and facial features that come in the application to get the look I imagined.

Step 2: I dressed my characters up for Valentine’s Day using the clothing library in Fuse. Using the Texture workspace I was able to customize the color of the dress and the shoes so that she is ready for her Valentine’s date.

Step 3: Next, I saved my character to my Creative Cloud Library. This step makes it possible for me to open up Photoshop CC and see my character in my Library for any future projects.

Step 4: Before bringing my characters onto the canvas, I first started out by combining two images that I found on Adobe Stock. I really like the ethereal look of seeing the clouds combined with the stars.

Here is the end result. So dreamy!

Step 5: Ok, now I’m ready to bring my characters onto the canvas. I did this by dragging and dropping the Fuse character from my Library on top of the cloud background layer. Then it is a matter of using the 3D controls to position the character.

Step 6: I used the CC 3D Animations library to find a motion. I had to make sure that the 3D character is selected, and then use the Properties panel to search for motions until one feels right.

Step 7: It's helpful to be able to reposition the character again once I found this swimming motion that I really like. Using the 3D navigation controls, it is easy to move the character at any time.

Step 8: I used the timeline feature to line up the two character animations, and then did some masking so that the characters look like they are hovering in the clouds.

Step 9: Then I gave the whole piece some beautiful hue changes to give it that overall rosy quality.

Step 10: And there you have it, here is the final composition. After that I exported as a .gif and now I can share it with my favorite valentine.

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