Design Tutorials

This tutorial will teach you how to make 3D glasses on a carpet using Adobe Illustrator. The making of this same 'model' in 3D Studio Max has been demonstrated in a previous tutorial at Oman3D. You will learn here how easily it is to create a simple 3d model using Adobe Illustrator rather than using any 3D program such as 3D Studio Max. The technique that we will use in this tutorial will involve creating a single slice of the object that we want to create and then using the "Revolve" effect to convert our slice into a 3D object. Read on to learn the exact steps on how to do this.













Create a new Illustrator file using the default settings. We will start by creating our single slice of the object. Use the pen tool to create the object you see in the image below. Use a white stroke colour and a blank fill.


Once you have this object ready select it and use the Revolve effect that is found under Effect>3D>Revolve. Configure the settings as shown in the image above and make sure to set the Surface effect to "Defuse Shading". Click on OK to see the instant result of our work!



It is now time to create the second glass in the scene. First of all, duplicate the glass that we already made, you can simple press and hold ALT while dragging the image using your mouse to get a duplicate copy of it. Open the Appearance Palette from the Window menu above, in the Appearance Palette find the 3D Revolve Effect and double click it. Change the rotation around the x, y, and z axis to -44°, 0° and 100°. Once you click on OK you should see the second glass created.

It is now time to make our carpets. You can use any design you wish for the carpets, I personally created these using the library Decorative Brushes ( Window>Brush Library>Decorative Brush>Celtic - 0.5pt stroke weight ). You can copy and paste the image that I supplied here to use for your own project.


After aligning both carpets at the centre vertically and horizontally, now using the perspective view skew the carpets to get a similar scene to that shown in the image below


Adding the Shadow of the Glasses

Create an ellipse shape in a size similar to the glass. Use a blank stroke and a 25% gray colour for the fill. Using the "Effect Menu" apply the Gaussian Blur to the shape. Once done arrange the shadow to the back of the glasses.

To add a shadow for the second glass lied down. Copy the actual glass and change its 3D Revolve Effect from the Appearance Palette. Here you will have to click on the "More Options" button to make the Light Intensity to Zero. After that you will have to apply the Gaussian Blur effect and arrange it to the back in the same way you did to the first glass.













- End of tutorial.

by Jinesh Vora | A Submission made to Oman3D Tutorial Competition 2005