When performing tests to solve this puzzle, I decided to explore the Outline Object effect in order to attempt to create a vector edge tracing of a black silhouette image 'on the fly' as part of an Illustrator style appearance. Having known of the technique using Knockout Groups in the Transparency panel, I've tried several times to achieve this mapping of a flat blended color onto a raster before, I knew this would tie into that somehow. It is a good thing that I recently encountered the variable-mask request, which prompted me to look into and ultimately find the solution to the application of a color-mapping technique. Unfortunately for me, I never quite figured it out and resorted to tracing out my product to get its outline and use blending modes to have some of the color transfer to the raster below. While it is fairly trivial in Photoshop, to do so in AI is more of a challenge. Sometimes they would want to see the thing on several variations of promo products in different colors, and I would be in need of a technique to apply a quick color-fill to a raster image to produce a colorized version of whatever item it was. Related familiar puzzle.īack in my promo manufacturing/decoration days, I've had to quickly produce mockups of various logos on various promo items. I decided to explore using Knockout Group option to create an appearance-based opacity mask, but I'd have to enlist help of another effect in the process. The way forward had to be in trying to create an opacity mask without using the actual "Opacity Mask Mode". Illustrator goes crazy and creates new images in the top left corner of the artboard (at least it does for me) whenever the datasets are changed.
#Masking in illustrator update
So I'm afraid when I create a clip in CA instead of AI and then update the AI file, all hell might break loose. Switching back to CA it has made a minced salad of my puppet, shards all over the place. I mean, I might have moved the characters nose in CA, then I go to AI and work on its neck a bit. Yes, CA has this 'puppet>create clipping mask' command, but I would never consider smashing it 70 times a healthy solution.Įven more so, when CA seems to blubber things up more often when transformations have been made to the artwork elements in CA instead of AI. But which ones? And when? Oh it's a mistery. I just had a case where I had to 'pathfinder' the hell out of it and injured my wrist converting about 70 clip groups into cropped paths because no layer reordering helped whatsoever.Īnd then, more randomness ensues, accepting some clip groups that are put in child layers in AI. I then create a copy of all of it elsewhere, finetune some AI layers, and then CA suddenly decides clip gruoups are its mortal enemy, even though I might have changed some totally different layers. Then I need an iteration of the CA project with some small changes to the puppet vector artwork as well. Which makes it a real pain.įor example, upon first import from AI to CA, all is fine. In my experience this 'CA not liking AI clip groups' behaviour is quite random. which I can say since this is a hobby for me, not work.
As long as its fun, who cares what it looks like. Regarding artwork quality, looks good to me! I am a programmers with zero formal art training, so I cannot speak either! -).
Sometimes it highlights the area that is wrong (the mesh looks funny around a point you did not expect). This is very important to get right otherwise things will distort badly later. It shows the mesh it allocated to the layer. The other thing to try is clicking the little mesh icon at the bottom of the “rig” and “scene” windows. Otherwise (or as well!) try going into AI/PS, go into isolation mode for the suit, then try using the laso tool around the suit to see if you can highlight something that snuck into the wrong layer. There is a property that you can set to “Contour” to force using the outline instead of the default “auto”. It is usually because there is some discontinuous object in the layer. Ah, gotcha! Character Animator tries to auto-detect the outline, but sometimes fails.
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