Hang on though, what happens if I apply the filter to a group instead of the text? Bingo! 3D text in 3D! Well, yes and no. I really thought I'd cracked it then.

If you move the camera you do get a perspective change and the filter does actually extrude in 3D space and the filter will update depending where you are.

Here we are having tracked in and rotated the camera to show the filter holding up. You can probably spot that the thickness of the ‘extrude’ has thinned somewhat. Dam! we were so close. If you do want to use this method, then just animate the distance control of the filter in the HUD to compensate.

What is slightly surprising though is the extrude filter holds up to adding a light source and the result all starts to look quite sexy even though we are using plain white text.

We still hit the problem of large camera moves even though you now have more latitude. Spinning the camera round 180 degrees puts the perspective right out.