Amazing Illustrator 3D Effects And PS Brush Creation
Adobe Illustrator is very powerful tool in the right hands, especially in creating nice 3D effects in the very fast time, later You can easily define those effects as photoshop brushes for later use. Enjoy this tutorial and follow with me to those steps – I will show and give You different ideas how You can use the same technique and get out amazing effects.
At first I will show You technique, how to create effects and after that, I’ll show You my ideas and different ways how to implement them.
Step 1
At first I’ll teach You how to create curvy lines, how to differentiate them and later import them to Adobe Photoshop and convert to brushes for later use.
Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document.
For the fill color use none color, and for stroke use 1px monochrome colors. If You will use them as brush, select black #000000 color.

Select Pen tool(P) and create two curves, there is no matter what Your shape will be, we will later change it anyway. If You want to modify Your curve later, deselect curve, select Direct Selection tool(A) and click on just one point, drag it later to fit curve Your needs.

Now again select all curve, holding ALT click and drag the curve to duplicate it. Then holding SHIFT+ALT resize it smaller to differentiate it.
Select the top curve, right click on it and send it to the back - Arrange–>Send to back.

My result is like this now:

Step 2
Now Select both curves, and go Object–>Blend–>Blend Options..
I used Specified distance, 2px, You can try different settings using Specified distance or Specified steps.


Now with both curves still selected press CTRL+ALT+B or Object–>Blend–>Make to execute those steps.

Bonus Step 3
Select top curve and adjust transparency to 10% to get cooler and more realistic effect.
Press SHIFT+CTRL+F10, if You don’t see the Transparency.

Step 4
Now We will go to Adobe Photoshop and create our own brush!
Resize Your lines holding SHIFT+ALT and dragging them bigger, You must create ~2500x2500px size (it’s maximal allowed size for brush, if You are using Photoshop CS3). Copy and paste Your effect into Photoshop and hide background color.
Press CTRL+ALT+I and check Your document size – if it’s bigger then resize it proportionally with one one of the values 2500px, use Bicubic Sharper, which is better for document reduction.

Now we are ready to create our Photoshop brush:
Edit–>Define Brush Preset and name Your probably first Photoshop brush!
Different Techniques With Adobe Illustrator and Blending tools
Now I won’t be going in so much deep details, I’ll just give You more ideas, how to use the same technique to get different results.
3D text effect
Create text using just stroke color and bring up Stroke panel and check more details and create dashed line:

Now just go through the same steps as I described in previous example, to get this result:

And then just click with Convert to Anchor Point tool on the Anchor points, to get swirly effects.
After this, You can simply import effect in Photoshop and add some spice to it.


Using Spiral tool:

The same effect using dashed star strokes and simple coloring in Photoshop.

Feel free and experiment with different shapes, spirals, type-faces. You can get really technical and amazing effects doing just those simple steps! If You have any more suggestions, ideas – comments will be appreciated!
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Commander Selvam
Posted 987 days ago 16The designs are looking good, amazing effect
Thanks for posting
Jati Diri
Posted 1041 days ago 15Very Amazing.. I will try right now, thank you
.-= Jati Diri´s last blog ..Jati Diri Bangsa =-.
Stop Dreaming Start Action
Posted 1055 days ago 14thanks for this great “HOw To” article,
Stop Dreaming Start Actions last blog post : Follow Your Dream
Manga
Posted 1217 days ago 13Thanks for sharing your work with us! Your theme is just awesome!
Michael Stewart
Posted 1251 days ago 12Interesting effect, I must try this one time. Thanks and keep up the great work.
Michael Stewarts last blog post : Create Lightning in Photoshop
Ryan G
Posted 1298 days ago 11Great tutorial. I’ll give it a go. Thanks.
Dainis Graveris
Posted 1304 days ago 10Wow, thanks for all of the responses!! I am glad, You enjoyed this! :)
@Hisoka yeah, You can do something similar in Photoshop, but it takes a lot more time modifying Your 3D effect, while in the Illustrator, You can easily and a lot faster get much better result. I don’t think this is a trick to do in Photoshop really. But, Illustrator haters can try Your way :) Thanks, anyway for sharing – appreciated! :)
Hisoka
Posted 1304 days ago 9You can do this without using Illustrator actually. It will take time to duplicate all the lines though. But if you want to, you can press alt+down key to duplicate the lines until you have enough, merge the layers, and then transform>skew. The effect should be similar to what you could make in the Illustrator part.
Joel Drapper
Posted 1304 days ago 8They look great! I can’t wait till I can afford illustrator :P
Joel Drappers last blog post : How to Comment Like a Pro
Hisoka
Posted 1304 days ago 7Wow, this is one of the best Illustrator tutorials I have ever followed! Nice props to you. Hope to see more great tutorials.
Justin Leaf-Wright
Posted 1304 days ago 6If there is one thing I lack in.
Then that is DESIGN…..
Photoshop = GGGGRRRRRR (i need to learn)
kosyman
Posted 1305 days ago 5Beautiful work!!!
Dainis Graveris
Posted 1305 days ago 4Thank You for kind words and responses!
adam
Posted 1305 days ago 3Excelent tut! Very goog FX.
adams last blog post : Wyliczanie gniotów
Thomas | Brush King
Posted 1305 days ago 2Wow, great tutorial! Thanks
Brandon
Posted 1306 days ago 1A pretty awesome tutorial, there’s still so much to explore in PS. Thanks!
Brandons last blog post : Alltop – The Ultimate in News Feed Aggregation