From flat timeline to floating titles: a beginner-friendly path into 3D motion graphics for video editors.
Three-dimensional titles used to mean a render farm and a week of waiting. Modern GPU renderers cut that to an afternoon — here is the exact learning path for editors coming from flat timelines.
Week one: think in depth
Start with primitives and bevels: extrude your channel name, light it with one key and one rim, and animate only the camera. Restraint hides every beginner mistake.
Week two adds materials — roughness maps do more for realism than polygon counts ever will. Week three is compositing the render back over your footage with matched grain.
“Light it like a product, move it like a camera.”
Download the starter project, follow the three-week plan, and post your first loop with the community tag.
