3D Transparent Text with Reflection

[alpinedigital]

I'd been hoping X3D would impliment something like this, and also trying to find am Xtreme/Designer tutorial to do it. There was one a long time ago that used a blend but it wasn't really satisfactory. Finally it came to me in fiddling around so I thought I'd ask if anyone knows of a tutorial for this kind of thing. If not, I'd want to share my findings.

First, we know Designer can do 3D and X3D can do independent front and rear faces, so I combined the two. I made text (impact font) and flipped it down. Clone a couple more, then make one of the sets outline only. You may want to distance the reflected set from the main set just to give yourself some working room. You'll may also want a dark texture for background...

Before you use 3D, the outline shapes need to be converted to shapes, and then select all 6 and go 3D, set the angle, and kill the bevel. The outline shapes will need fiddle with gradient transparencies and junk. The outline needs extrude depth, but the others do not. However, upon finishing up, I cloned the front side again and added extrude so I could use it for an adjustment layer for highlighting and shadowing.

As u see, I flip the shapes off to the side as I adjust the transparencies, and alignment. The front and rear faces need to be sized down and up as the perspective distance offsets size a bit, depending how deep your extrude is.

Anyway, I think its a nice looking change from the typical opaque text we usually see