3D Text has Postion in X, Y and Z space. Z space is the line of your sight to and through the scene you are looking at. As you look at your scene, try to take in the “perspective” of objects you are looking at. 3D Text also has what is referred to as an Anchor Point. This is a very important concept because all animation happens around the Anchor Point. Initially, the Anchor point is the same point as the Position. You will use the  ⚓️ Anchor Point parameter to create a displacement from the Position. Most commonly, you will be changing the Anchor Point Z parameter. To get to it, you will have to dial down the disclosure triangle. Most commonly, you will want to displace the Anchor Point Z to a negative value (in the direction going back from the text). You will need to click on the Z value and drag it down to get those negative values.

The next three parameters allow you to set angular offsets from the anchor point, or if the anchor point is unaltered, therefore the same as the Position, then the parameters will simply rotate the text. The “angle offset” symbol used is: ⎋  .

The three parameters after that are the automatic rotation parameters designated by ↺. They are marked by a º/sec (degrees per second). When the title is shortened or lengthened, this will change the timing somewhat and this can be used to advantage if you want to speed up or slow down an animation over a clip.

The parameter marked with ►⎯⎯●⎯⎯Off… was supposed to read Offset but got truncated in a newer version of FCPX). This parameter is the XYZ of the actual position of the text. It has a disclosure triangle that you can dial down to access the Z Position parameter.

The last three parameters are positional animation parameters mark with a delta (𝚫) and a X, Y, or Z/sec. The same rules apply as for the angular offsets (except these are straight line animations). The X axis is a horizontal line left or right from the center position point of the text. The Y axis is a vertical line up or down from that center. The Z axis is a line perpendicular from the flat surface of the screen through the center point.

All Position and animations created by this title effect are relative to the user set position of the text. You may drag the text to any starting position and use the auto-animation controls to move from that placement.

In general: you will move the playhead to the beginning of the title and set up the starting position, then move to the end of the title and manipulate the animations to finish at an ending position. Where there are “corrections” required, you will use keyframing of the “offsets”. The auto-animation parameters cannot be keyframed.