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3-D Options in PowerPoint 2010 let you format the bevel style of a shape with many more options than those available in the conventional Bevel gallery you explored in our Apply Bevel Effects to Shapes In PowerPoint 2010 tutorial. You can customize options such as contour, contour color, depth, depth color, and materials. This detailed tutorial explains every option within the 3-D Options gamut.

To see a sample presentation containing 3-D Options in PowerPoint 2010, scroll down to the bottom of this page.

Follow these steps to format 3-D Options:

1. Select the shape to which you want to apply 3-D effects (if there's no shape on your slide, learn to insert a new shape). Double click the selected shape to activate the Drawing Tools Format tab in the Ribbon. Within this tab, click the Shape Effects button (highlighted in red in Figure 1).
   
   
   Figure 1: Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon
   
   
   Note: The Drawing Tools Format tab is a contextual tab. These tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time -- they only make an appearance when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.
   
   
2. This brings up the Shape Effects drop-down gallery as you can see in Figure 2. There are two ways to access 3-D Format options from here:
   
   1. Choose the Preset option, and then choose 3-D Options (the last option in this gallery), as shown in Figure 2.
      
      
      Figure 2: 3-D Options in the Preset gallery
      
      
   2. Choose the Bevel option, and then choose 3-D Options (the last option in this gallery), as shown in Figure 3.
      
      
      Figure 3: 3-D Options in the Bevel gallery
      
3. Either way, you will bring up the Format Shape dialog box shown in Figure 4. Make sure that the 3-D Format tab is selected to access 3-D Format options.
   
   
   Figure 4: 3-D Format options within Format Shape dialog box
   
   The options in this dialog box are explained below:
   
   1. Bevel: Allows you to alter the bevel of Top and Bottom surfaces. Click the downward pointing arrow next to Top and Bottom option to bring up some ready to use Top and Bottom bevel styles (see Figure 5 and Figure 6). You can apply any of the Top and Bottom bevel styles, and later change the width and height values in the relevant in the relevant Width and Hight boxes next to these galleries (refer again to Figures 5 and 6).
      
      
      Figure 5: Top Bevel
      
      
      Figure 6: Bottom Bevel
      
      
   2. Depth: This option allows you to change the depth and the depth color of the shape, as shown in Figure 7.
      
      
      Figure 7: Depth and color options for Depth
      
      For depth you can enter the values in points.
      
      
      Note: You must have some depth applied to use the 3-D Rotation effects.
      
      For depth color, click the downward arrow next to color icon to access a fly out menu (refer to Figure 7). Here you can choose any color for the depth. Note that this changes the color of the 3D additions of the selected shape rather than the shape itself.
      

      Theme Colors: Here you can select any of the colors in the active Theme of the presentation. You can also select any of the 5 tints or shades for any Theme color. Learn more about Themes here.
      
      Standard Colors: You can choose any of the ten standard colors available -- these ten standard colors are just choices of colors that PowerPoint believes to be widely used. You don't have to limit yourself to either the Theme colors or Standard colors, as I'll show you in the next options, although it's a good design idea to use theme colors as far as possible.
      
      Recent Colors: Here you will find the colors most recently used. If you have just launched PowerPoint and created a new presentation, the Recent Colors option may be entirely absent since you haven't selected any color recently!
      
      Automatic is the default depth color.
      
      More Colors: Provides more color choices -- selecting this option summons the Colors dialog box with two tabs: Standard and Custom, first select the Standard tab (see Figure 8).
      
      
      Figure 8: Standard tab of the Colors dialog box
      
      This tab offers 127 colors in a honeycomb style palette, 14 gray shades, black and white. If you want more color choices, then select the Custom tab of the same dialog box, as shown in Figure 9.
      
      
      Figure 9: Custom tab of the Colors dialog box
      
      In this tab, you can chose any color from the spectrum and later adjust the selected color's luminosity with the slider on the right. You can even enter specific values of RGB and HSL to create a specific color -- all these combinations provide 16 million color choices.
      
      Once you have chosen the color, click OK to exit this dialog box.

   3. Contours: This option allows to change the edge thickness values in points and the color of the contour, as shown in Figure 10. To change the contour color, follow the color options for Theme colors, Standard colors, etc. as explained in the Depth color section above.
      
      
      Figure 10: Contour color and size options
      
      
   4. Surface: Here you can choose several surface material and lighting styles:
      
      There are three categories under Material: Standard, Special Effect, and Translucent (see Figure 11).
      
      
      Figure 11: Material
      
      Under Lighting, you can choose Neutral, Warm, Cool and Special lighting styles, as shown in Figure 12.
      
      
      Figure 12: Lighting
      
      You can even change the lighting angle (refer to Figure 4 above).
      
      Note: Click the Reset button to convert a 3-D formatted shaped back to a 2-D shape (see Figure 4 above).

4. Click Close to apply the 3-D options and get back to the slide. Figure 13 below shows an example of 3-D effects applied to a shape.
   
   
   Figure 13: Rectangle shape with 3-D effects applied
   
   
5. Remember to save your presentation often.
   

Sample Presentation

Click above to view on Slideshare

Click above to view on YouTube

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