I’ve been playing around with the Envelope Distort functions in Illustrator the last couple of days. Really teriffic on some points, crap on others. What I want to do is to create some warped text, but beyond what’s possible with the Make with Warp feature. See, Illustrator has a tendency to skew and »lean« the letters, wich just is downright awful. Take a look at the image below for an example of one of the effects I would like to create. It is taken from a program (TypeStyler 3) that can do some of the stuff I wanna do, but down the road, the result is somewhat not that great PLUS the application has a good 7 years on it’s back.
See how the CONCERT, LECTURES, PLAYS… text there in the middle. That’s the sort of »correct« distortion I’m talking about… without any »real« perspective.
So what I would want to know is if there’s anyone who’s come across a plug-in – or perhaps even a tutorial – on how to create more advanced, warped and distorted letterforms.
here is a very quick one, takes about 4 min to get this result. i add a hint below, let me know, if you want further explanation. (designed in freehand but should be more or less same with illustrator)
-create the text block
-justify the text block and adjust the font sizes
-convert the block to outlines (you can skip this if you want to keep text editable)
-create an (rectangular) envelope for each word seperately
-add extra points (don’t know the illustrator command for this)
-now select points together and drag (i mean; if you want to distort “CONC” and “LECT” part in the above example, then select the points between O-N and E-C by holding the shift key)
…Almost any shape can be defined as an envelope and then tweaked using the conventional path tools. The envelope’s distorted contents are dynamically updated during manipulation…
you have to select each word one by one, and create an envelope.
Appreciate your efforts. Unfortunately, I’m still where I started. Here’s a live example of the undesired result I get in Illustrator.
First of all: Illustrator does for some reason add handles to the anchor points in the envelope. When I remove the handles, what you see on the right is what happens. The letters are »sucked« into points without handles. And this is what I initially meant by »leaning« letters. So as yo can see for yourself, the result is pure crap and I don’t have a clue on how to get it right. Any other takes?
Ok, first of all your method for creating the envelope is not true. You have to create a rectangle and attach it as an envelope to the text object. I’m sure there is a predefined rectangle mesh or smt. in Illustrator so find it or create a rectangle that fits the size of your text.
Use corner points, as you’ll see below this gives you the result you want. I’d like to have Illustrator installed, so I could help a lot easier
There isn’t – as far as I know – any other way to attach an envelope to an object in Illustrator then through the Envelope Distort-menu. All options in there produces the same undesired result as even you got here in your last example (»curve point«): leaning letters that’s sucked into points. It buggs the hell out of me; shouldn’t be that hard… To bad you don’t have Illustrator – would be easier to communicate properly then :).
I’m sorry, but I’ve already tried what you suggest here without any result. When you say »Convert all points to corner points and drag«, I suppose you mean that I should make anchor points of the corners of my newly created envelope, right? However, I’ve searched Illustrator inside out but I can’t find anything that would match or do the same thing…
Geez, I feel like a reeeeal pain in the *** when I say that, no, that’s not what I want. The thing is that no matter what I do, I always get those freakin handles on my envelope. And they mess up the entire thing… I simply don’t know how to get rid of them. They’re the main problem. Cause even if I follow that tutorial (and I did), as soon as I move one of the points or as much as touch a handle, I’m stuck with the same phenomenon that occurs here:
Perhaps I’m looking for somehting that doesn’t exist, I dont know.
I appreciate your very detaild efforts, but I already know how to do all that. I’m not sure how to express myself so that I can show you what I really want to to. Now, it seems like we’re working around eachother. I’ll post a example of something that I’m trying to achieve later, and perhaps things will sort themselves out =).
