Gradients on a path?

[tony hepburn]

I'm currently drafting a map in Illustrator & am searching for a way to add a gradient that follows the line of the land? I tried using a mesh but the nodes are to plentiful lol

just wondering if anyone knew an easier way to achieve this?

thanks ;)

[Lukas Engqvist]

Look in the graphic styles, there are neon effects will that do what you want? (place the strokes below the fill). (basically thinner strokes ontop of thicker strokes with colour shift at each stroke, can also be done with a blend depending on how complex the shape, but a "neon" line is by far the simplest because it is an appearance recipie applied to a single berzier curve)


If you want to go along the line you will have to expand the stroke to fill it with a gradient.

[joeparis]

Or, again depending on which kind of gradient, use Blend first of all to make the appropriate gradient and drag it into the Brushes Panel to make a new Art Brush. You can then stroke the line with the Art Brush. But it sounds like Lukas's first suggestion would be the most appropriate.

[tony hepburn]

thanks for the help peeps

the shape is quite complex and can't be blended but I could give the layer styles a whirl and see how we go :)

[tony hepburn]

I ended up blending the two tints of cyan I am using for the coastal line using two straight lines and dropping that in as an art brush... works well where there are no sharp corners or overlapping :)

[Johnboy42]

Ok, so there is another way to apply a gradient to your path. I would practice this method by creating a simple stroke with your pen tool or rectangle tool. After your stroke is created, select it. Go to your object menu, scroll down 'paths' and then click on 'outline stroke'. This will make your stroke an object which you can now fill with a gradient. BUT FIRST......you have to select your outlined stroke. Zoom in and you will now see that your original stroke (the thin line in between your newly made object) is still there. All you have to do is ungroup and delete the old stroke (or leave it there in case you might need it). Now you can fill with whatever you would like! Hope this helps.
/j.

[joeparis]

Yes, but that way the gradient doesn't follow a path, it simply fills a shape with an overall gradient, does it not?

[Johnboy42]

This is true. Now I realize what he was trying to do. None the less, the 'outline stroke' trick is still cool and useful. I am going to research a little more, because there has to be a way!

[micke]

I guess this is where Blends come in. I would've thought to try the Blend tool first.

micke

[tony hepburn]

yes but my path is too complicated to use the blend or mesh tool... I ended up just adding a Gaussian Blur on the shapes to blend the color of the the coastal line with the rest of the ocean.

although this exercise has taught me a lot about gradients in Illustrator and what you can and can't do with certain tools.

I will have to upload the final map to my DA account and post a link here, keep an eye out :)

[Lukas Engqvist]

If you are using a path that you want blur/soften anyway you can go into
Object> path> simplify...
to cut down the number of control points on the selected path.

[tony hepburn]

yes, the simplify command is extremely handy, helpful when you are working on a detailed vector that requires extreme node action.

this map requires an abundance of nodes, even when simplified, the amount of layers used is a tad insane :)

[tony hepburn]

here's a link to the map and what I ended up running with, rather than have gradients I just stepped the transitions with some raster Gaussian Blurring effects.

http://whitsundaydeals.com.au/files/map.jpg

[Lukas Engqvist]

I remember the old days, before we got our first mac IIci, so must have been end of eighties or 1990. Has a client wanting a map with shades in sea and on map and feathered coast…*remember telling them that they can't have it all (we could only work with 256 shades per image) Ended up doing double exposures on the MGI filmrecorder, took a couple days to fix with all workarounds. did it in 3 exposures. one for background, one for map, and one for coast… today I would be able to just concentrate on making it look good rather than figuring out if I could beat the system…*I'm glad things change :)

[tony hepburn]

haha, too funny, I'm just glad I don't have to fight too hard with the software I use these days. Before this I was doing everything by hand and was more of an illustrator.

This map was more than 27MB and had issues printing and distilling due to the heavy raster effects on such a small scale. Problems aside this was a rather kewl project to work on, trying to get the mountain range to stand out only slightly as well as show the towns and general spaces between destinations was a tad tricky though, all in all it has been a great learning curve :)