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 for Windows, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
Follow these steps to format 3-D Options:
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 within 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.
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:
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
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
Either way, you will bring up the Format Shape dialog box as 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 Format Shape dialog box are explained below, as marked in Figure 4, above:
A. Bevel
Allows you to alter the bevel of Top and Bottom surfaces. Click the downward pointing arrow next to the Top and Bottom option to bring up some ready to use Top and Bottom bevel styles (see Figures 5 and 6). You can apply any of the Top and Bottom bevel styles, and later change the width and height values in the relevant Width and Height boxes next to these galleries (refer again to Figures 5 and 6).
Figure 5: Top Bevel
Figure 6: Bottom Bevel
B. Depth
This option allows you to change the depth and the depth color of the shape, as shown in Figure 7.
For depth color, click the downward arrow next to the color icon to access a fly out menu, as shown in 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 we'll show you in the next options. 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, then 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 (as shown in Figure 8, below).
Figure 8: Standard tab of the Colors dialog box
This tab offers 127 colors in a honeycomb style palette, in addition to 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 choose 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.
C. 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
D. Surface
Here you can choose several surface material and lighting styles.
There are three categories under Material: Standard, Special Effect, and Translucent (as shown in Figure 11, below).
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, as shown previously in Figure 4, above.
Note: Click the Reset button to convert a 3-D formatted shape back to a 2-D shape (see Figure 4 above).
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
Remember to save your presentation often.
Sample Presentation:
Click below to view this presentation on SlideShare
Ten Easy Topics for Pecha Kucha But what are simple topics, that excite you, and are interesting to your audiences? Of course, if you already have a topic, you need not read further, but if you are still looking for ideas, here are ten easy topics that you can use for your Pecha Kucha presentations.
These special circles have polygon centers: the centers are made of triangles, squares, pentagons, and hexagons! And based on the sides
of the polygon, the rest of the circle has that many segments.
