Finessing the Look of the Gear
With
the D gear selected, right-click the No Fill color well on the Color
Palette to remove the outlines. The extruded gear will take on a
washed-out look, but you’re not done yet.
Click the Extrusion Lighting button on the property bar.
Click the marker labeled “1” to add lighting to the extruded object.
Drag the “1” light to the front right position on the lighting cage surrounding the proxy sphere shape.
Click the Extrusion Bevels button, the cube with the “X” through its front.
Check the Use Bevel check box.
Put the cursor in the bevel height field and then type 0.07”.
Objects that feature concave edges, as this gear shape does, do not
take a bevel of a much larger size... and still look recognizable.
Put the cursor in the bevel angle field, and then type 30.
Click anywhere in the document to apply the new bevel angle.
Because the light is facing the right side of the
gear, the lighting on the gear’s teeth looks superb and quite intricate
in design. The face, conversely, looks a little dim because it’s facing
away from Light 1. This is not a big design flaw; the face looks
appropriate when contrasted against its side, but if you want to lighten
it:
Click the extrude group to select the group. Then CTRL-click the front face to select it separately from the other objects.
Choose the Interactive Fill tool; the markers appear for the color stops of the Linear fountain fill.
Click a color marker and then choose a different color well from the Color Palette by clicking.
Alternatively,
if you think a solid color would be better for the gear, deselect the
gear and then drag a color well on top of the face of the extruded
object. The extruded sides will take on this color. Press CTRL+Z to undo if you prefer your original to your changes.
Note
The rotation properties of
extruded objects follow the convention of 3D modeling programs. The X
axis (top to bottom rotation) runs left to right through the object, the
Y axis (rotation from left to right) runs top to bottom through the
object, and the Z axis runs around the object parallel to the page in
angles of rotation like those of an analog clock. Degrees of rotation
are counterclockwise—negative values spin the object in a clockwise
direction.
Duplicating the Extrude Properties
When an extrude object is selected, a button is
available on the property bar for duplicating the properties of the
extruded object to a plain, unextruded one: Copy Extrusion Properties.
This feature can change the angle and lighting of an existing extruded
object, but that’s not what you need to do right now. You want to get
the G gear extruded at the same depth, with the same lighting and bevel,
but you then want to change its rotation so it’s facing away from the D
in a mirror-like fashion.
Not a big deal! Follow these steps.
Creating Another Gear with the Copy Extrusion Properties Feature
Double-click the D gear’s extruded side using the Pick tool to bring up the features on the property bar.
Move your cursor over to the G gear, and then click it to select it.
Click
the Copy Extrusion Properties icon (shown next) on the property bar;
because the G object has an outline, the outline remains on all edges of
all the objects. Not what you had in mind for the finished art:
right-click the No Fill color well on the Color Palette to remove the
outline.
To precisely
mirror the angle of the extruded G gear calls for a different feature
than the onscreen interactive rotation: click the Extrude Rotation
button on the property bar, the second from the left after the VP Locked
To... button.
Click
the Rotation Values button at the lower right of the “3” (shown next)
to go to a number-field view of the current object’s rotation.
To
mirror the G gear from left to right is a Y axis rotation. Whatever
value you see in the Y field, replace it by typing in an equal negative
value. In this example, the Y aspect of the G gear (copied from the D
gear) is –22, so typing in 22 rotates the G an equal and opposite amount
compared to the D gear.
Click
the Extrusion Light button, and then drag Light 1 from its upper-right
position to the upper left. Artistically, it’s usually bad form to mix
lighting sources in a single illustration; however, this is a logo, with
no real visual clue as to where the light is shining because the scene
is incomplete. You can get away with this in the world of logos.
