Recreate the Starcraft 2 Logo

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to use area lamps effectively
How to quickly UV unwrap text
When to use an orthographic camera
How to imitate complex lighting using textures

G’day and welcome to Week 3 of the Typography challenge!

At the start of the month I asked you guys what tutorials you would like to see and an overwhelming number of you requested a tutorial on how to recreate the StarCraft 2 logo. Well ask and you shall receive

Finished result

Texture used: Scratched Metal (source: CGTextures.com)

At a Glance

Screenshots from the video:

Chapter Marks

Bored? Skip to the best bits!

6:37 – Part 1: Modelling
16:02 – Part 2: Lighting
24:40 – Part 3: Materials
37:12 – Part 4: Compositing

Join me on the Live Cast this Saturday!

I will be answering your questions live on UStream, this Saturday. Just log on at the designated time below and chat in real-time with yours truly In case you missed it, here’s the recording from last week’s session.

Time: Saturday 2PM GMT or

9AM – US Central
3PM – London
Midnight – Sydney

Where: UStream – The Blender Guru Show
Don’t wanna miss it? Join the special Live Cast newsletter and I’ll send you an email an hour before we go live each week:

Important: No Tutorial next week

As many of you know, I’ve been in Korea for the past 2 months visiting my girlfriend… but next week I fly home to Australia. Which means, as you may guess, I have to do the long distance relationship thing… again

Unfortunately that means I won’t time to put together a tutorial next week. Not unless I spent every waking moment mucking around in Blender, which I don’t think my girlfriend would appreciate. That’s why I’ve decided to take a break and devote my time to the one I love. She deserves it!

That unfortunately means that there will be one less typography tutorial than I had planned, but there will still be a total of 4

But wait, there’s a surprise

You didn’t think I was going to leave you completely empty handed next week did you? Well in lieu of a tutorial next week, I’ll be giving a small gift to all of my email subscribers. It’s not a tutorial but it’s something I know you will all find useful Stay tuned!

I hope you enjoyed this weeks typography tutorial! I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments below

Download finished .blend

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)

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http://n/a reidh

The StarCroft Font (for free) is different than this Logo’s type face by just enough to make it as much work to match this one as to hand model it. (speaking from experience). BTW did you say or why is your GF in Korea? Are either of you familiar with the incredible role that bribery plays in that country?
reidh(ray)

Really?
Dustin

hmm i looked it up on youtube and they had the same version as me and it worked as a single image. the only way i got anything to work was to set the background view for the camera. would it be possible for me to skate by by using this option for everything i need? like i wanted to work with the lightning too and i might be able able to set background to camera but i thought this might be a problem should i need to pan around like you did. any insight would be wonderful thank you andrew i kno your a busy man
Dustin

im using blender 2.58, and when you first add the background image i get stuck because my source does not include FILE as default. i have four options..the default being “single image” when i load the jpg, and the rest including image sequence, movie file, and generated. i need your help andrew because until i fix this im unable to generate a background image which screws up the lightning tutorial as well..PLEASE! btw your tutorials are really helpful and i think you are a gifted individual! keep up the hard work!! also i think it could be something as simple as me not checking a python add on idk i looked a little bit but im new and dont know what alot of this stuff means exactly..thnx
http://www.vangelderdesign.com design studio

I appreciate your time on this. Thanx for sharing.
Max

I can’t seem to get the image of the banner to appear. please help me!
Zelo

WOW! as always you amaze me. I cant wait to pick apart this tut and see all the stuff i learn from it. You use blender as easy as picking up a wrench and tightening a bolt. I hope one day to work side by side with you-pbbh id love just to work in the same building hahaa..anyhow, thank you agian for the knoledge you share with all of us blender-ers
Joe Smoe

I want the Alienware PC…
and Starcraft II
Mikkel

Projecting from view

When i split the screen in 2 and want to project the letters in uv-view.
I hear you say, that i have to select the letter and then hit TAP, but I am just switcing between objekt mode and edit mode, and will not get the menu, were it says project from view.
What is it, that I am doing wrong?
Thank you!
Mikkel

VKbasiVK

Instead of TAB, press U, it should work.

N4Coffe

I made a really nice wallpaper with the same techniques, other style, but still the stuff you teach in the video. It looks really sick! Everyone check out!
http://s1090.photobucket.com/albums/i375/Bart_Davids/?action=view&current=Dwight.png
Jeremy

How do you know when an image is using light versus a texture? If I tried to replicate this on my own, I probably would have started trying to make the orange and blue in a texture. Any tips on that?
Ale

Hi!!

Do you have the starcraft logo without any texture, lights or cameras in the scene? Because there is only a finished blender file to download. Thanks in advance.
Sonja

nice but at min. 40 youre working too fast, i cant follow your steps (
greetings
oladitan

@ 35:30 you used a blend texture. You probably know this by know but you could have used your own custom shaped stencil personalize the shape and visibility of the distorted noise texture. This could even be done using texture painting directly on the background plane if you UV mapped it.

Recreate the Starcraft 2 Logo

Finished result