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You are here: Home / Design / Shapes & text boxes / Create professional-looking 3D effects with bevels

Create professional-looking 3D effects with bevels

April 8, 2012 by Ellen Finkelstein 7 Comments

READ LATER - DOWNLOAD THIS POST AS PDF >> CLICK HERE <<

The single most effective way to add a professional look to shapes on a slide is to add a bevel.

What’s a bevel, you may ask?

A bevel is a 3D effect on the edge of a shape. The bevel makes the shape look raised. Here are the preset bevel looks, but you can adjust them to your liking:powerpoint-tips-bevels-1

 

Don’t they look cool?

Here’s a slide with an infographic that uses one of the bevel treatments for the circles.

 

powerpoint-tips-bevels-2(Maps are one kind of infographic that you can use to make data more accessible to your audience.)

To add one of the default bevel effects, follow these steps:

  1. Insert a shape on a slide.
  2. Select the shape.
  3. Click the Format tab that appears, then choose Shape Effects, Bevel, as you see on the right.
  4. Choose one of the options from the thumbnail images.

You can hover over the options to see how they look before choosing one. Sometimes the drop-down menu hides your object; just move it so that you can see it as you move your mouse over the bevel options.

For more options, click 3-D Options at the bottom of the thumbnails to open the 3-D Format pane of the Format Options dialog box. You can also right-click a shape, choose Format Shape, and then click the 3-D Format item.

You need to play around with the settings in this pane to understand all the possibilities–there are a lot of options! Here is a brief overview:

  • Top: Click the drop-down arrow to get the same options I discussed earlier. But you can adjust the width and height of the effect to make it more dramatic–or more subtle.
  • Bottom: You have the same options for the bottom as for the top. “Bottom” means the back of the shape. You don’t see the bottom unless you rotate the shape in 3D. You do this with the 3-D Rotation pane of the Format Shape dialog box.
  • Depth: This is the thickness of the object from front to back. Again, you don’t see any change unless you rotate the object. You can also change the color of the depth.
  • Contour: A contour is a border around the edges of a 3D object.  You can specify the color and border width (size).
  • Surface: You can apply Material and Lighting properties to your shapes. These result in different types of highlights and shading. I have a post about this feature, “Use materials and lighting for interesting fills.“

Do you use bevels on shapes? What settings do you like? Leave a comment!

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READ LATER - DOWNLOAD THIS POST AS PDF >> CLICK HERE <<

Related posts:

  1. 3D Effects with Radial Gradients
  2. Layer two fill effects
  3. Slides that pop! Using the 3rd dimension on a slide–Part II: 3D rotation
  4. Create a quick texture background

Filed Under: Shapes & text boxes Tagged With: 3D, 3d effects, bevel, shapes

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How to Use 3D Rotation Techniques in PowerPoint | PresentationXpert

[…] In Part I of this series, on shadows, I showed you how to use shadows for both subtle and dramatic 3D effects. The second 3D technique I want to cover is bevels, which I’ve already explored in greater detail in this post, “Create professional-looking 3D effects with bevels.” […]

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10 years ago
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Free Buy Now and other sales buttons plus how to use a sales button »

[…] is just a matter of using the bevel feature and a semi-transparent white shape for a highlight. Here’s a tip on using bevels. Here’s another tip on creating […]

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10 years ago
Emar
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Emar

2011-01-24 4:41 下午 Its like you read my mind! You appear to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or sontmhieg. I think that you can do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but instead of that, this is wonderful blog. An excellent read. I’ll definitely be back.

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7 years ago
Antione Raimondo
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Antione Raimondo

Good article, thanks.

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7 years ago
Cathleen Remmel
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Cathleen Remmel

Good information right here!

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6 years ago
Caran
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Caran

Very cool and useful. Reminds me of art classes where we needed to shade shapes to 3D them.

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5 years ago
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What is bevel effect?

[…] Reference 5 […]

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7 months ago
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