How To Use 3D in Illustrator: EVERYTHING You Need to Know

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If you were wondering how to make 3D objects in Illustrator, wonder no further! Here's a complete guide to 3D in Illustrator, with everything you need to know, from objects and materials, all the way to lighting and rendering. And, of course, with a few tips and tricks to improve performance from yours truly! Also, can you count how many times I mentioned Illustrator could crash in this video? :P
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Introduction
1:27 - The Panel
2:50 - Object Tab
7:32 - Lighting Tab
12:20 - Materials Tab
20:24 - Special Performance Trick
21:41 - Rendering
24:15 - Performance Tips
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#AdobeIllustrator #3D #GraphicDesign

[@user-ur5wf2vw3o]

Super comprehensive tutorial! Easy to understand introduction to the 3D-side of illustrator!

[@abc4creative_media]

Thank you Andy for this amazing tutorial. God bless you more abundantly 🙏

[@itsmyname1747]

this is so fun! and the way u explain makes me less stressed❤😅

[@jengee2499]

Thanks so much for this Andy! Been playing with 3D on Illustrator by watching tutorials on youtube. So glad you got your own explainer! The crashing sound always gets me tho 😂😂 I’m not confident that my laptop can handle too much 3D effects. Wish us luck

[@AndyTellsThings]

Hahahaha good luck for you!

[@mikeyreilly2962]

Really good tutorial!

[@natashawehrli7762]

Thank you really for this Video!!! I watched so many Videos/Tutorials but yours is top best really, neat and very well explained ! Now i can really create Amazing Websites !!

[@AndyTellsThings]

Glad it helped!:)

[@ste1nfo790]

Thanks that helps a lot for my studies

[@6113banana]

Thank you Andy for this great tutorial

[@AndyTellsThings]

Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@meredithhurston]

Super helpful! Thank you.

[@AndyTellsThings]

Glad it was helpful!

[@chasebros4948]

Very nice. This is the most comprehensive tutorial I have seen on 3D in Illustrator. I agree that the new 3D features are a huge step forward. However, there are a few issues that I wish Adobe would address. I will try and explain these below for anyone that is interested. 1. When turning two different shapes into 3D objects, it is very difficult to work with them together because illustrator treats them as if each one is separate entirely, almost like they are in a different scenes. For example, let’s say I want to make a light bulb that is made up of a glass part on top and a metal part on the bottom. If I make half the light bulb with one shape for the glass and one for the metal part and then revolve them separately, they will no longer be aligned or fit together even though the 2D shapes were. When revolving from the left edge, the objects actually revolve around the center point of the shape, which throws off the alignment. So the only way to fix this is to move the shapes and try to fit them together again by hand. Of course you could always group the two shapes together and then revolve them as a group. Doing it this way keeps the objects aligned together. However, the downside is that you can’t apply different materials (i.e. glass and metal) to each part of the light bulb. Revolving them separately does allow you to apply different materials to each part, however the shadows would not be treated as one since illustrator considers them two different objects. 2. There is no realistic way to create transparency for objects made out of glass or clear plastic. Let’s take the light bulb example again. After revolving each object separately and then fitting them together again, you should be able to make just the glass part semi-transparent, but I haven’t found an effective way to make glass using materials. There is no transparency setting in the materials settings. The only way I have found to make something transparent is to lower the opacity of the object itself in the appearance panel. However, the downside to doing this is that it starts to make everything transparent, including the specular highlights and reflections. 3. There is no way to rotate a revolved objects without messing up the revolve effect. Let’s say I wanted to take the light bulb I made and rotate to make it look like it was lying on its side on a flat surface with a shadow underneath. If I try and rotate the light bulb shapes it will mess up the revolve since it’s based on revolving from the left edge while the light bulb is upright. I could rotate the objects using the rotation settings in the 3D panel, but then that creates more alignment issues since I would have to rotate each part separately. I could rasterize it and then rotate the image, but doing so would also rotate the direction the light is coming from, etc. It would be nice if we could lock down the revolve effect, and then be able to rotate the shapes together while keeping light source and everything else the same. 4. When applying graphics to the surface of a 3D object, the quality is bad/pixelated after rendering. One would assume that a vector based graphic applied to a 3D surface would not look pixelated. However, it’s important to remember that the new 3D feature renders everything as raster (unlike the old, 3D classic that rendered everything as vector). I’ve tried rendering with the document raster settings set to 300 ppi, but the quality of the graphic is still bad when zoomed in at 100%. I wish there was a way to specify the resolution the graphic is when rendered. You can try using the render as vector option in the render settings, but that does not produce the high quality, ray traced render that you get when rendering as raster. Anyways sorry for the long comment. Just wanted to put my thoughts out there.

[@AndyTellsThings]

Yeah, I agree with you, but I feel like there won't be too much improvements in this anymore. A lot of the problems with the 3D panel are there because Illustrator is not (and not meant to be) a 3D software. This panel is really just for making very simple stuff. Anything more complicated you're way better off using Blender or something else. Thanks for commenting!

[@Mamariard]

Thank you! its a great contentt

[@TheNewDawnLeadership]

Thanks I learned so much today from you!

[@AndyTellsThings]

Glad to help!

[@pf6638]

Wow! You are very clear and thorough in this. Thanks for this video. Now...let's see how I do this on my own LOL I'm now subscribed so I can always revisit.

[@AndyTellsThings]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for the sub :)

[@user-yp5mi7ss2h]

They Are All helpful.

[@alexvbrain]

God bless you, Andy, great job!

[@AndyTellsThings]

Thank you, Alex! Glad you think so! :)

[@wajahatkhan9455]

Wow! Thanks for explaining it in the mesmerizing way Andy. It's fantastic.

[@AndyTellsThings]

You're welcome, thanks for the kind words :)

[@kodihewa1948]

Thank you so much,

[@user-oh7fd8cs4o]

Super video!!!

[@AndyTellsThings]

Thank you very much!

[@ssalem7110]

Great Tutorial. These days many tutorials are only in title and no content. keep it up. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[@ankhanhbui7606]

Wish you fast channel development, thank you for this knowledge

[@AndyTellsThings]

Glad to help!! :)

[@si-bonegraphx]

Nice tutorial. I wish you'd address the drop shadows that cut off even when shadow bounds are set to 400%, and how to avoid that.

[@AndyTellsThings]

Turn down the softness of the light or move the light to a different angle. There is no way to actually avoid that, unfortunately.

[@damiap_dennis_wapshik]

Thanks so much

[@AndyTellsThings]

You're welcome!

[@fabgroove]

👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 Super, merci.

[@AndyTellsThings]

De rien my friend!

[@annatttterenik9035]

Wow It's amazing video! Could you please give any tips how to render faster in Illustrator?

[@AndyTellsThings]

You can try lowering the ray tracing quality or textures resolution... but overall, there ain't many optimizations you can make in Illustrator itself. A more powerful computer is always the best way to increase render times.

[@annatttterenik9035]

@@AndyTellsThings Thank you 🤓

[@sig_das76]

As a 3d modeling professional, I can say that illustrator makes it so simple. This is really good tutorial. I could have figured everythin myself but I watched the whole vid cuz I wanted ti know if there were some hidden tricks

[@dmusic482]

Hey Andy thanks for your video! May I ask if I can turn off the lighting mode in the 3D mode of Ai 2024, I want to warp the text into the sphere shape but it looks awkward with the lighting

[@AndyTellsThings]

Hi there! Thanks :) I'm afraid you can't, Illustrator requires that at least 1 light is present on a 3D object.

[@juliacordeiro9759]

I have a problem with this lighting, all the darkest parts stay gray with I put some depth in a colored object, I try everything but don't know how to fix that 😭😭😭

[@Assalamaidecoder]

Pls which app can i download for ds adobe?

[@samuelcruz3786]

Awesome video btw, learned a lot! But I have a question. Are there certain things that make illustrator crash more? I've been trying to render a graph I made in illustrator with Inflate (normal texture) and it keep crashing. Nothing I do works. (I have a beefy pc so that shouldnt be the problem here, RTX 3090 with a Ryzen 9 5950x and 64 gb ram) Can anyone help? maybe there is a settings that I should turn on or off...

[@AndyTellsThings]

Illustrator has really poor performance with 3D, even if you have a great computer. If there's too many objects in the graph, yeah, it will crash. It's meant for more simple things. Try breaking the graph into different pieces and working separately on each one, perhaps that will help!

[@samuelcruz3786]

@@AndyTellsThings Hi, thanks for the response. I've tried it, in this case it only had two elements which should be a problem. I'm starting to think it's because of the size of it and not the complexity... Once again thank you and I'll try and figure something out. (Is there any other programs where I could do something similar but with better performance

[@AndyTellsThings]

@@samuelcruz3786 Yeah, size actually matters a lot, as well as Raster Effects resolution. I'd try to avoid big/complex 3D things in Illustrator, if possible. I use Blender a lot, it's a great tool, not that hard to work with, and it's also open source and completely free. Give it a try!

[@MDSUMONAHMADSumon_Innovate]

❤

[@MarkoKozlica]

Do you have any workflow suggestions on how to export elements created with Illustrator 3D and materials to SVG for web? Some elements I create appear normal others do not. I render them all with render as vector option ticked

[@AndyTellsThings]

SVG is a vector file format, and 3D elements are raster graphics. They're not vectors! The better option is to export tem as PNGs - and I'd personally use the Asset Export panel for this.

[@lrvogt1257]

Is it possible to change the camera view without rotating the object? If I have a number of things in place on a plane, I don't want to move them, I just want to see them directly from the front or directly from the top etc.

[@AndyTellsThings]

Hi! Unfortunately not, there's not really a "camera" on Illustrator's 3D. It's a limitation, you'll have to manually change every object's rotation and reposition them.

[@lrvogt1257]

@@AndyTellsThings Thanks. Just trying to use it to get a file to Plasticity.

[@Hunterunt]

Why doesn’t it work on groups?

[@mdikbalhosen-jh4vf]

❤❤

[@marcuslow5832]

hi may i know which version is your Ai? mine is 27.0 and my lighting tab is different than yours (cannot add lights)

[@AndyTellsThings]

I always use the latest version, so for this video it was probably 27.something. Perhaps you're using the old 3D effect?

[@habiburrahman6369]

How can I remove restorize effect on object?because I select too many shape and now I can't select them.

[@AndyTellsThings]

The only way to undo rasterizing is by Ctrl+Z. But if you worked for a while after that, then it's irreversible. Rasterize is not an effect you can just toggle, it is effectively turning your vectors into rasterized image files.

[@Venom2Ace]

I can't find the 3D Panel in the Window option ; plz help.

[@AndyTellsThings]

If the "3D & Materials" option is not on the Window Menu, your Illustrator is probably out of date. Consider updating it.

[@Creative8imaging]

How would you create a transparent clossy material, like glass or plastic?

[@AndyTellsThings]

To be honest, I don't do much 3D in Illustrator. I did a deep dive to record this video, but it's not something that really is on my workflow. But to answer you, I don't think Illustrator's 3D actually is capable of complex materials like glass. Even on full fledged 3D apps like Blender glass is already a pain hahahaha

[@Creative8imaging]

I love using blender but man it would be usefull to do glass in illustrator quickly. @@AndyTellsThings

[@user-di1oq4je7q]

cooooooooooooooooool 😍😍😘😘

[@katerinaqueenn4766]

I don’t have perspective and some other options where I can found them?

[@AndyTellsThings]

Make sure you're not using the old 3D Panel!

[@Hman911999]

I want to make it look like a wireframe, but since the 3D option don't look like they used to anymore I can not find the surface option to turn it to a wireframe. Can anybody out there help me? Thanks!

[@AndyTellsThings]

Hi! The wireframe option is now under the Render options, on the top right corner of the 3D & Materials panel. I explain it on this video, go to 21:41 :)

[@akachika3743]

Please do 3d test

[@AndyTellsThings]

Test? Do you mean text? If so, there's already a video like that in the channel ;)

[@rakan_turk]

I dont find the find twist

[@COLDCHEMICALpresents]

14:22 lol

[@AndyTellsThings]

🤘

[@SaiDinesh752]

My humble request, please remove the background music😐 You're a great teacher, but I'm getting distracted by the bgm.

[@saitamassj2475]

It's a tragedy you only have 15k subs...

[@AndyTellsThings]

I try to be glad that I already got that much :)

[@saitamassj2475]

@@AndyTellsThings you deserve Triiilions and trillions of subs, because you're awesome..