Using Clipping Masks with Blending Objects

[Valerie (da V in ci)]

I am trying to mask some lines to a blended object. I have taken 3 lines made with the pen tool and blended the 3 shades of black together(actually it's 2 grays and a white for the highlight in the center). I'm doing an illustration of a wire and need to create lines for texture with in the curved wire. Now, when I do this effect with a straight cable that is just a rectangle with a gradient, the clipping mask works just fine. BUT when I try this same effect with the blended object it tells me that I can't do this. Is there a way to get this clipping mask to work with blended object cable with out creating a traced path over the object(which isn't always exact, even with the smart guides on)???

I hope someone can give me some insight into this!

Thanks,

Valerie

[Alexander Kogan.]

Valerie,

what exactly are you trying to mask? I haven't figured out this part.

If you are trying to do a 3d-looking metal wire, maybe the easier way would be to create various strokes for the object in the Appearance palette.
There's a style in the default Style labrary called "Engraving plate". Create an object, apply this style to it. Then open Appearance palette (Shift-F6) and see how the outline is done (you can trash Fill and Drop Shadow). If you scale it up so that the widest stroke is about 20pt, you can apply a Feather effect to every one of the strokes, improving so the effect.

If I'm not much mistaken, with this kind of effect you won't need the clipping masks.

[Valerie (da V in ci)]

ps not very familiar w/ the appearance palette, would love some info on that! Is it similar to styles in InDesign or Quark??

[Valerie (da V in ci)]

I am designing an audio cable. Actually I have to draw about 30 or so of them, not just audio cables, but video cables, lighting cables...list goes on... basically they are techincal illustrations for a product catalog. (www.sheersoundcable.com) if you want to see a temporary website i did for our company and of what I need to illustrate incase anyone is interested. the audio cable has multiple curves, thus I have created 3 lines. 2 dark and one light. Then, I blended the three together to give it a "gradient"-3D look to it...looks great, very happy with it. Now, I need a texture on this cable, so I put a bunch of lines together, spaced em evenly, grouped them together and placed them on top of the wire. Then I duplicated the wire, pasted in front and selected the lines with it. When I try to do a clipping mask, which that option is not grayed out, i get an error telling me I cannot do a clipping mask unless my objects are a compound path, a group of objects, or a completed path. Well, for some reason, the Opacity mask works, but not the other, so I went with the opacity mask, which seemed to work better anyhow....Still would like to be able to figure this all out! Hehe only 30 more wires to go for my catalog! This is going to take me forever!!!! AHHHHHH, I guess it comes w/ the territory of being a designer!

I would love some feedback on these cables, so if anyone wants to see them, please let me know and tell me how/where to put them so they can be viewed.....

Thanks,
valerie

[Alexander Kogan.]

Valerie,

I put a bunch of lines together, spaced em evenly, grouped them together
and placed them on top of the wire. Then I duplicated the wire, pasted
in front and selected the lines with it. When I try to do a clipping mask,
which that option is not grayed out, i get an error telling me I cannot
do a clipping mask unless my objects are a compound path, a group of objects,
or a completed path.

You are trying to use a blend (which is the wire) as a clipping mask. It is not allowed.

You can expand the blend (Object>Blend>Expand), then expand the whole bunch of objects you've got (Object>Expand) and then , if I were you, I would unite the result (Shift-F9 to bring up the Pathfinder object, Unite or Add to Shape button, depending on the AI version you use). Now, you can use it as a clipping mask.

As for the Appearance palette, it's a long story, so here's just a small part of it:

The Appearance palette (Shift-F6) shows you the attributes of an object that make it look like it does. The basic attributes are fill and stroke. You can add any number of fills and strokes to an object through the Appearance palette. Every fill/stroke is a virtual copy of the object (filled or outlined) which can be colored and transformed with the Effect menu's items.

The Effect menu gives you a number of operations that change the look of object while living its structure intact. Thus, you can make a triangle look like a circle, while staying triangle "in the background".

The complete set of attributes in the Appearance palette can be saved as a style in the Styles palette.

Appearance attributes can be expanded - converted into real objects - through the Object>Expand Appearance command.

Now, in your case, to do this wire you can add say, 5 strokes to a line (to add a stroke, drag the Stroke item in the Appearance palette to the Duplicate icon at its bottom). Then you make the bottommost stroke 20pt wide and 80% black, then next one - 17pt/60%, then - 14pt/40%, 10pt/20% and 5pt/0%. Superimposed, this strokes will look like a "blend", though a bit more rough, maybe.

You can select every one of the strokes in the Appearacne palette and apply the Feather effect to them (Effect>Stylize>Feather) playing with its value to obtain a smoother image.

After you have all of this done, you can drag the object to the Styles palette and then apply this new style to any path regardless of its shape.

The wire's texture is a bit more problematic and depends on how it looks and what do you want to do with the object after it's ready.

[Valerie (da V in ci)]

thanks for the insight! Definitally helps! =)

[Alexander Kogan.]

..oh, and about the site: do you still have a chance to change this logo a bit?

You see, in this from-right-to-left reading and up-growing world, directions have strong psychological application.
In the Sheer Sound logo, the word "Sheer" is a little above the word "Sound". The "positive-negative" direction (from upper-left corner to lower-right one) has a psychologically negative trend and, in general, is not recommended to use in corporate identities, for it makes them look "degradating". If you can, try center the words vertically, or, if you want them to be on different levels, try putting the right word above the left one. It will improve the image.

And speaking of clarity (which is everything): where the letter "R" from "Sheer" overlaps the blue circle, the contrasts are not worked good enough. Reduce it to, say, 10% and watch the mark becoming a "Sheep Sound" which is not (I think so) the idea :) Outline it with white, or make the blue a bit lighter.

Cheers!

[Valerie (da V in ci)]

Ah yes, the DREADED so very much Sheer Sound logo. I'll be honest w/ ya-I DID NOT DESIGN it, and If I had, I would hope to of done a better job! I did try to re-design this logo with no success. I wish I had more time to spend on it, because I agree with you 100 percent on the logo...it's not too bad, but exactly what you had mentioned, I'd like to play with it...I WISH IT WAS SO EASY! The person who did the logo design for this company before me I do not think he knew what he was doing....either way, I have myself a Flat EPS and AI file...not sure what the guy did, but it isn't an easy logo to work with. This is why I need to re-design it. I Do however, have a re-created vector line art of it for a die cut I needed to get done for some sample binders for my company. I am running a marketing department/in house design team and I have so much to do, I would never be able to go home if I did EVERYTHING that NEEDED to be done! i'm sure you can feel my pain. ;)

Thanks for the feedback on the temp site though, much appreciated.

-v

[Alexander Kogan.]

Val :)

Offer them a complete re-design of the logo, come up with a better solution, show clearly the deficiences of the current logo, and - for god's sake - show them the "Sheep Sound" and explain that a good logotype works when reduced to 10% as good as it does on 100%, and if they really want to hear people asking them about sheeps and such, then of course they can continue with this logo. :)

Good luck with your work!

[Teri Pettit]

I would make the cross-hatching texture as a pattern brush, and then add another top Stroke layer to my appearance with that brush.

As Alexander describes, taking this approach may involve more first-time setup, but it has the huge advantage that you can then reapply this style to multiple paths, or adjust the shape of the path after applying the style to it, and your cable will automatically adjust with no additional steps. So you are trading off a slightly more elaborate first-time construction process for much greater ease of use on later projects that need the same look.

If you still want to go with the blend and the clipping mask approach, though, what I would do is direct-select the BOTTOM stroke that you used in your blend, the widest one, and copy it. Then paste-in-front of your whole cable design, blend and texture stripes and all. Then do an Outline Stroke on the stroke that you pasted in front. This should convert it to a filled compound path. That sounds easier to me than doing a Pathfinder Unite on a copy of the whole blend.

As far as becoming familiar with the Appearance and Style feature, you might want to start by loading the various Style libraries that come with the product, especially the Stroke styles, and use the Appearance palette to examine how they're structured. A lot of neat stuff can be done with the Appearance feature. The final results are usually the same things you could get in previous versions using the Filters and making lots of stacked copies, but being able to save the "recipes" away in a Styles palette so that you don't have to redo all the steps each time you want to change the basic path shape is a huge time saver.