I will give you a detailed analysis of the Illustrator software and share with you the tutorial on how to design an abstract and creative stereoscopic render ball.
Tutorial sharing:
First, let's look at the effect chart.
Sketch conception and copying
STEP 01
First, try to draw a sphere on the sketch. Then you can open your imagination and try to draw as many curves and waves as possible. Similar to tai chi, I named it the "toy ball ".
STEP 02
Import your sketch to AI for copying. This step mainly distinguishes different layers. The color of each part we arrange here is not the same, so pay more attention when drawing. Open AI and create a document 600px * 600px. The size of the vector document is not very important. You can do it in a small document and then tune it up. This will reduce the burden on your computer.
STEP 03
Import the sketch and draw it using the pen tool based on the line track of the sketch. Pay attention to two points in the painting process. The first is the smoothness of the line, and the second is the hierarchy of the drawn path. Therefore, the smoothness of the line requires reasonable arrangement of the position and curvature of each anchor. In general, the anchor is relatively smooth, the anchor distribution is relatively distant, and the anchor is relatively curved, the crank length of the curvature is also adjusted accordingly. The crank length of the former is longer, and the crank length of the latter is shorter.
You can see that some of my lines are not drawn by sketch, because in order to make the edge more accurate, I decided to finish it all and then cut the excess part, as there are overlapping hierarchies between shapes, this is a common method to draw overlapping parts in AI.
Processing shape details
Unless it is drawn by a shape tool, the pen tool will have some manual traces, and the details are particularly important.
STEP 04
Fill different shapes with various solid colors to distinguish them. This step is not to fill the color, but to distinguish these shapes by color, so that the edge can be processed more accurately and smoothly.
STEP 05
When two closed paths have overlapping parts and you want to delete them, you only need to select these two paths and use the shape generation tool to click the non-intersecting parts, click delete again.
Follow the steps for processing the last two details to patiently process the path edge more smoothly.
Gradient color
STEP 06
For the color of the sphere, we choose gradient color. The gradient color will make the overall effect more three-dimensional, but here we must control the color matching in the gradient. In this case, the gradient I want to use is not necessarily based on the actual situation, but a phantom color. According to the real sphere, its surface gradient has a certain pattern, but here I want to break this pattern and become more dreamy and free.
Color control in three colors, red, purple, green, purple and green transition will reveal blue, and red and purple will also transition to a purple red, then, green is displayed as a brighter part. Therefore, a slightly yellowish green part can be used to welcome the light source.
STEP 07
After the color scheme is adjusted, you can place the row of rectangles vertically on the side, so that you can use a straw tool to absorb different gradient blocks based on different needs of each part.
STEP 08
Start with the first shape, use the straw tool to draw the gradient color you think is appropriate, and then use the gradient tool to adjust the direction, gradient angle, and so on. It should be noted that the first step of stereoscopy is to determine the light source. Here I place the light source on the top of the oblique corner. Therefore, the brighter part of the color scheme should be directed to the light source, correspondingly, the blocked parts will become darker.
Add shadow layers
Some lines in my sketch are not drawn in the copy, but these are actually the shadows. In this step, we can begin to do some overlapping shadow relationships between paths to create a richer visual hierarchy.
STEP 09
Select the shape of the previous layer, go to object> path> offset path, and set the displacement to 20px in the pop-up panel. This parameter can be adjusted as needed.
STEP 10
Adjust the shape of the displacement in the previous STEP, use STEP 05 to generate a shape tool to delete unnecessary parts, and then use the pen tool to adjust the edge details of the shape. After adjustment, the fill color is changed to black, the layer blending mode is changed to "overlay", and the transparency is 20%.
In the same way, the shadow section at the bottom of the sphere surface is processed. The transparency of other shadows can be adjusted slightly based on the actual environment.
STEP 11
Let's take a look at the interior of the sphere. The internal design is hollow, so it also has a certain spatial relationship. The new stereoscopic approach is to create a shadow, but it is not true.
Here, we can use the copy layer method to create a shadow. Select two shapes, copy and paste them, and click "intersection" of the path finder to form a shadow. For more information, see the method shown in the figure.
Draw all the parts in the middle hollow-out space that you think should be added to the shadow. Here I don't think we must follow the 3D rules. You can freely create them.
Create highlight
Highlights are also a very important part of stereoscopic creation. Highlights may be the direct projection of the light source or the reflection of ambient light. The first thing to create here is the highlights of the edge, this is the key to increasing the "thickness.
The creation of the edge highlight also adopts the offset path method, but this time it is necessary to add another step because it is for edge processing.
STEP 12
Starting with the first shape, copy the shape first, then apply the offset path to the copy layer, set the displacement to-1px, and select the path after the offset and the original shape, use the Path Finder's "minus top layer" to generate a new edge shape, fill the shape with a white gradient (transparency transitions from 100% gradient to 0%), and change the layer blending mode to soft light.
Use the same method to add such edge highlights to other shapes. When filling the white gradient, it is difficult for beginners to understand the gradient angle. In fact, the principle is very good. The side close to the edge of the sphere is due to the delay of the invisible shape behind it, so strictly speaking, there is no "thickness" here, so the white highlight here is invisible, that is, the transparency of the white fill is 0.
STEP 13
Add a large highlight to the entire sphere, and then draw two white circles using the elliptical tool. Then, use [effect> blur> Gaussian blur] to blur the image. The blur radius is 20 px.
Using the similar method introduced in STEP 11, we need to keep the blurred highlights, but do not want them to overflow the sphere, therefore, we only need to select the largest area of the sphere for copying, and then make an intersection with the highlight, right?
STEP 14
Reduce the transparency of the highlighted shape added in this step to 60%, and set the layer blending mode to soft. The effect is as follows.
End details
At this step, the entire sphere is drawn. Now I can add a projection to it to make the stereoscopic sense more prominent. Draw a long elliptic with an elliptical shape filled with a radial black gradient (Black transitions from transparency 100% to 0% ). Apply Gaussian blur to the ellipse, blur the radius to 8, and reduce the transparency to 68%.
Add a gradient background to the sphere and let the curtain off.
Postscript
Abstract render balls are easier to draw, because you only need to grasp simple hierarchies and process smooth edges and shadows, you can also simplify it into a similar sphere for operation, or not necessarily a sphere, the overall shape conforms to the streamlined shape style, you can use this method. When designing posters, logos, and icons, as the focus of design, it gives people a new three-dimensional feeling.
All right, the above information is the detailed design of an abstract and creative three-dimensional rendering tutorial for the users of this software of Illustrator, all users now see this. I believe you have a very good understanding of the rendering method. Then, let's try to draw a stereoscopic ball based on the small series tutorial.
