PS Bevel/Emboss Effect In Vectors, Any Tuts, or Ideas?

[mattborghi]

This forum is so excellent and chock full of information, I decided that I should post this question here. Much to my chagrin, I have a boss who LOVES PS effects, specifically, Bevel and Emboss. However, I hate working with Raster especially since we work with everything from thumbnails to billboards. Does anybody know of a way to create this effect in Illustrator, Freehand, anything that will create the effect of PS' Bevel/Emboss but in Vectors? Any help would be really, really appreciated.

Thanks!

matt

[defjoe]

Matt,

check our tutorial section. might be something in there (don't remember). If not do a search online for a tutorial. i'm sure someone has something up.

[Tyger]

what version of Illy are you using?

This is for CS....

To add a custom bevel path to the Bevel menu:
1. Open the Bevels.ai file located in the Adobe Illustrator Plug-ins folder.
2. Create a single open path in the Bevels.ai file.
3. Choose Window > Symbols, and do one of the following to make the path a symbol:
• Drag the path to the Symbols palette.
• With the path selected, click the New Symbol button in the Symbols palette or choose New Symbol from the palette menu.

For information on symbols, see Drawing with symbols.
4. To rename the symbol, double-click the symbol in the Symbols palette, enter a name in the Symbol Options dialog box, and click OK.
5. Choose File > Save.
6. Quit Illustrator and then relaunch Illustrator.

The Bevel menu in the 3D Extrude & Bevel Options dialog box lists the bevel.
7. To apply the custom bevel, do one of the following:
• To apply the bevel to an extruded 3D object, select the 3D object, and then double-click the 3D Extrude & Bevel effect in the Appearance palette. In the 3D Extrude & Bevel Options dialog box, choose the bevel from the Bevel menu.
• To apply the custom bevel to 2D artwork, select the 2D object, and then choose Effect > 3D > Extrude & Bevel. In the 3D Extrude & Bevel Options dialog box, choose the custom bevel from the Bevel menu.

[mattborghi]

Thanks Tyger, and Thanks DefJoe!

I worked for a half day with Illy CS and then Freehand trying to create a vector version of the bevel/emboss. Nothing that really emulated it well. I did find some info in the forum about doing this, but since I knew what I was trying to achieve, and my boss did as well, we weren't able to hit the mark. With that said, I did find a great tutorial on working with shapes and doing a bevel/emboss with gradients and strokes in Illustrator, but I started to run into point overlap problems in Illustrator and got those jaggy postscript error looking daggers around the text paths. So with that said, I'm doing the work in Photoshop... :-( So it goes... better than nothing, but I sure do love my vectors... especially as many different sizes as I have to do things in....

Thanks again!!!

matt

[Eggles1]

For those stuck with older versions of Illustrator, and wanting a bevel/emboss effect on TEXT (actually more of a 'deboss' effect i.e. sunken) then make two duplicates of the text to be debossed - colour one black and one white (or if using a spot colour, a darker and lighter tint respectively - which of course will only work if the original text is not 100% of the spot colour). Send both the dark/light copies behind the original and slightly offset one to the right and down, the other to the left and up (or right/up and left/down) and you will get a reasonable effect.

[pythagoras181]

Just a suggestion...suppose you apply a bevel effect (in PS) to a word, you get to choose the highlight and shadow colours (crank up the depth and size spinners and keep soften at minimum till you achieve something crisp). There are several ways to select these regions of colour after applying the bevel. The simplest being to create layers for the bevel. These selctions may then be converted to paths and then exported to illy. Within illustrator these regions can be coloured however you wish and effects like blend can soften the vector bevel