3D Block Text Generator
3D block text generator: type a word and give it a solid side, as if cut from a block. Set the depth, angle and colors, then save a PNG with a clear background.
What is 3D block text?
3D block text shows every letter as a solid slab. The face is flat to you and a side runs back at an angle, as though the word had been cut from a block of wood or stone. In technical drawing that's an oblique projection, and its cavalier and cabinet forms mostly differ in how long the receding side is drawn.
Since the face keeps its exact shape and only the side gets added, the word is just as easy to read as flat type.
How to make 3D block letters
You start on a blank canvas with the word Block in heavy type. Change it in Text, then choose a Font and Weight. Heavy faces give the side the most to work with. Colour sets the face.
Under Extrude, Depth is how far the side runs, up to 0.4 of the frame's height. Direction is its angle in degrees (0 is right, 90 is down), Side is its color where it meets the face, and Shade is how much darker it gets toward the far end.
Backdrop is the background color, and No backdrop makes it see-through. Long Shadow Generator is really this same Extrude pushed out to full Depth with a flat black side.
Settings for a comic title, a shelf sign and a thumbnail cut-out
Comic title: Colour #ffd23f, Side #d7263d, Depth 0.06, Direction 45, Shade 0.3, on a Backdrop of #1b1b3a. A warm face over a darker, saturated side looks lit from the front, and keeping Shade low leaves the side solid.
Shelf sign: Direction 90, Depth 0.03, Shade 0.8. The side drops straight down like letters standing on a ledge, and it darkens toward the bottom as if it's in shadow.
Thumbnail cut-out: tick No backdrop and save a PNG. The word keeps its side with a see-through surround, ready to drop onto a video thumbnail in another editor.
Why does dark lettering disappear?
Shape from is set to What is dark. That means the black canvas counts as empty and anything light counts as lettering. A pixel under about 8% brightness is empty and only goes fully solid above 20%, so a face color close to black fades out along with the canvas. Keep Colour light or bright and save the darker tones for Side.
The side is made from 48 copies of the letters, each one a step further along the direction and drawn behind the last. It follows every curve in the font, counters inside an O or an A included.
Saving block letters
Save as PNG. Face and side are flat colors with a hard seam between them. PNG stores that small and exact, and JPG blurs it into a band of noise.
With No backdrop ticked, PNG or WebP holds onto the see-through surround; JPG can't do transparency. Graffiti Text Generator takes the same extruded side further, with an outline, a tilt and a sprayed wall.