Illustrator Gradient Bend?

[JoeLongstreet]

Good morning all,

Just wondering if there was a way to make a gradient within illustrator bend and conform to a path. For example, if you have a gradient applied to a rectangle and you want to that rectangle to bend in the shape of a C, the shape would bend but the gradient would continue to exist in it's normal state (vertical, horizontal, or something inbetween). I hope this was understandable.

Any suggestions?

Joe

[Danger_Mouse]

Gradient mesh.

[D-Frag]

you could also create an envelope on the rectangle, then do an envelope distort accrodingly

[Mynock]

Both of them are correct. You could also find six other ways to do they exact same thing.

[Craig B]

Possibly the blend tool.

[Danger_Mouse]

Envelope distort only distorts the rectangle, not the gradient. *** edit...actually Im wrong you can.

Blend tool its a good one too.

[Craig B]

Just to see what would happen I also tried a 3D extrude and bevel, set the bevel to rounded and changed all the axis degrees to 0 and got a nice gradated unique rounded shape.

You may have to mess with extrude depth and the height of the bevel.

[JoeLongstreet]

Hey, thanks for your replies. I messed with the envelope tool for a bit and got my problem figured out. If you expand the appearance of your shape with the gradient and then apply the envelope distort to all of the objects, you'll get the effect. Let me know if anyone comes up with a less cumbersome way to go about this.

Thanks for your help,

Joe

[Craig B]

If you show a visual of the end result someone might be able to give you a better idea of a shorter route.

[JoeLongstreet]

Hey Craig,

My end goal was to create twisted chrome. I don't have any visuals for this but I hope this gets the idea across.

Joe

[Craig B]

A little bit. if it's twisted, it sounds like you did 2 envelope distortions essentially, which certainly sounds as if it would work.