Free Video Effect
Glass Type Effect: 3D Glass Letters Standing in Your Room
A big word in 3D glass and chrome letters drops onto the wall behind you and reflects the colours of your room.
Claude Code · Opus 5.59:16Advanced
- Run the setup once
- Paste the prompt, fill in the [brackets]
- Approve the preview, get your MP4
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The prompt
effects/glass_type.py: add a "Glass Type" effect between [START S] and [END S].
- Build the word "[WORD, e.g. DESIGN]" as 3D, bold, extruded (60 px depth) glass letters.
Use Blender for this (from the command line, with a Python script) or three.js + Playwright:
- Material: semi-transparent glass (IOR 1.45, slightly frosted), bright chrome reflections on the edges
- Use the video's own (blurred) frame as the environment reflection,
so the letters reflect the colors of the room
- Render a PNG sequence with a transparent background
- Place the letters on the wall behind me, a little above shoulder height, BEHIND the person mask.
- Animation: the letters fall in from above one by one (70 ms apart) and settle with a slight bounce,
then the whole word sways very slowly ±8° on the Y axis (4 s loop).
- A soft shadow of the letters on the wall, and a highlight that matches the room's light.
- If installing Blender is hard, imitate the same look in 2D (gradient + inner shadow + highlight
lines + a slight refraction/displacement).Fill in the brackets
| Placeholder | What to put there | Example |
|---|---|---|
[START S] / [END S] | Where the effect starts and ends, in seconds from the start of input.mp4. | 2.0 / 7.0 |
[WORD, e.g. DESIGN] | The word built as 3D glass letters. One short word, ideally the topic of the video. | DESIGN |
About Glass Type
Glass Type is a talking-head video effect that places a word in thick 3D glass letters on the wall behind you. The letters drop in one by one, reflect your room's colours and sway slowly. After the one-time setup, paste the prompt below into Claude Code with Opus 5.5; Claude renders the letters in Blender or three.js and layers them behind you.
Use it when: You name the main topic or key word of the video and want it standing in the room with you.
What the Glass Type effect does
Glass Type puts a single word into your room as a physical-looking object. The letters are bold, extruded 60 px deep and made of slightly frosted glass with bright chrome along the edges. They sit on the wall behind you, a little above shoulder height, and your body passes in front of them.
The letters arrive one at a time, 70 ms apart, dropping from above and settling with a small bounce. Then the whole word turns slowly back and forth around its vertical axis, 8° each way over a four-second loop, so reflections slide across the glass. A soft shadow on the wall and a highlight that matches your room’s light help the word look as if it stands in the space rather than floating over it.
When it works and when it hurts
It suits the moment you name the subject of the video, or the one word you want people to remember: a product, a skill, a theme. Three-dimensional letters give that word more weight than a caption does.
It hurts on handheld footage, because the letters stay at a fixed point on screen while the wall behind you moves. It is also a poor fit for a tight frame where your head fills the upper third and there is no wall left for the word. And it takes more setup than a flat text effect, so if you need a quick turnaround, a 2D headline is less work.
How Claude builds it
The letters are rendered as a separate 3D scene, not drawn onto your footage. Claude writes a script that builds the extruded word, gives it a glass material with an index of refraction of 1.45 and a little frost, and uses a blurred frame from your video as the environment map so the glass picks up the colours of your room. The scene is rendered either by Blender from the command line or by three.js in a browser that Playwright drives, and saved as a PNG sequence with a transparent background, with the drop, bounce and sway already animated.
Compositing then works like the other depth effects: background frame, the letters’ shadow, the glass letters, and finally you on top through the person mask. If the 3D route fails, the prompt tells Claude to imitate the look in 2D with gradients, inner shadows, highlight streaks and a slight displacement that suggests refraction. ffmpeg encodes the result with your original audio.
Make it yours
Try chrome-only letters for a harder metallic look, glass tinted in your brand colour, or clearer glass with less frost. You can swap the drop for a slide-in or a scale-up, slow the sway to a six-second loop, or move the word lower so it sits beside you instead of above. Keep the reflection source as your own footage; that is what ties the letters to the room. Change one thing per render.
Questions
Do I need to know Blender?
No. Claude writes a Python script, runs Blender from the command line without opening its interface, and saves the letters as a transparent PNG sequence. You only need Blender installed. If that is a problem, Claude can use three.js through Playwright, or the 2D fallback written into the prompt.
What is the difference between the Blender and three.js routes?
Blender's renderer generally handles glass refraction and soft shadows more convincingly, but it is a big install and slower to render. three.js runs in a browser that Playwright controls, so it is lighter and quicker to set up, at the cost of simpler-looking glass. Choose by what your computer handles.
Can I use a long word or a phrase?
You can, but the letters are thick and sit above your shoulders on a frame only 1080 pixels wide, so long words get small and lose their glass detail. For a phrase, ask Claude to split it over two lines, or use one key word in glass and put the rest in captions.
Will the letters move if my camera moves?
No. They are placed at a fixed point in the frame. On a tripod shot that is invisible, but on a handheld shot the wall moves and the letters do not, which breaks the illusion. Use a locked-off shot, or ask Claude to track a point on the wall and follow it.
Step by step
Run the setup once
Open the folder that holds input.mp4 in Claude Code, choose Opus 5.5 and paste the setup prompt. Its person mask is what puts the glass letters behind you.
Choose the word
Pick one short word that sums up the section or the whole video. Bold capitals give the glass more surface to catch light.
Paste and send the prompt
Fill in the start and end seconds and the word. Claude will install Blender or set up three.js with Playwright; tell it if you prefer one route.
Check a still before the full render
Ask to see one finished frame first. The letters should pick up your room's colours and cast a soft shadow on the wall. If Blender is a problem, ask for the 2D fallback.
You need: Setup prompt (run once) · Person mask · Blender, or three.js + Playwright · Wall space above your shoulders
Tips
- Short words suit a vertical frame. Four to seven letters fit across the wall above your shoulders at a readable size; treat that as a starting range.
- If Blender will not install or render on your computer, you do not need to start over: the prompt already includes a 2D fallback with gradients, inner shadows, highlight streaks and slight displacement.
- Keep the rendered PNG sequence. Changing only when the word appears or where it sits on the wall can usually be done without a new 3D render.
- Shoot this one on a tripod. The letters are fixed in the frame, so they only look attached to the wall if the wall stays still.
If it goes wrong
The letters look like flat grey plastic instead of glass.
The environment reflection is missing or too dark. Ask Claude to use a blurred frame of your video as the environment map, raise its strength and add a brighter chrome rim on the edges.
The word seems to float in front of the wall.
Ask for a softer, slightly stronger shadow behind and below the letters, with its direction matched to your main light source.
Blender fails to install, or the render takes far too long.
Ask Claude to switch to three.js rendered through Playwright, or to the 2D fallback in the prompt, and to render a 540×960 test first.
What it does not do
- Blender is a large install, and driving it from the command line can run into download, GPU driver or permission problems on some machines. That is why the prompt includes a 2D fallback.
- The reflections come from a blurred frame of your own video, not a 3D model of your room, so they match its colours but not the actual shapes around you.
- The letters are composited at a fixed position in 2D. They do not track camera movement, so a handheld or moving shot makes them slide against the wall.
- Rendering refractive glass frame by frame is slow, especially in Blender on a computer without a capable GPU, so expect longer waits than with the 2D effects.
Sources
- Rendering from the command line — Blender Manual. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- three.js documentation — three.js. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- Screenshots — Playwright for Python. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- Robust Video Matting (RVM) — GitHub — PeterL1n. Accessed October 21, 2026.
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