Question

apply texture to spherical object (basketball) in Illustrator

Asked by: yessirnosir

I'm a relative noobie with Illustrator, trying to finish off the logo below by adding a dimple-texture to the basketball.  I think I'm getting close, but I haven't been able to figure out how to make my texture multiply to cover the whole surface.  I can get it to show up on a small part of the surface as you can see near the top middle of the ball.  But if I just stretch the symbol to cover the ball, the result is to make the same dimples really big, rather than multiply.  Is there a trick to make this work?  or do I need a different approach entirely?  

The second image below is a screenshot of my Illustrator workspace, so you can see the tools I'm attempting to use to make this happen.. the 3D revolve tool to create the basketball, and the "Map Art" option to apply the symbol with the texture.    The third image is the pattern file I generated starting with an actual photo of some basketball dimples and using Photoshop's "Pattern Maker" filter and then imported into Illustrator to create the symbol.

Have also uploaded my AI file here:  http://www.texasxpress.com/logo13_feb72009.ai in case anyone wants to just dive in and show me how it's done.

As I said at the outset, I'm a relative noobie with using Illustrator so please feel free to offer any advice that you think will be helpful getting this logo to look good...

  • basketball-pattern.jpg
    • 23 KB

    dimple pattern generated with photoshop filter "Pattern Maker", and converted to a Symbol in AI

    dimple pattern generated with photoshop filter "Pattern Maker", and converted to a Symbol in AI
  • ai-basketball.jpg
    • 195 KB

    screenshot of AI workspace: using 3D revolve and applying Map Art

    screenshot of AI workspace: using 3D revolve and applying Map Art
  • logo13-feb72009.jpg
    • 30 KB

    current version of logo: note attempt at dimple pattern top left

    current version of logo: note attempt at dimple pattern top left

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2009-02-07 at 17:14:26ID24123009
Tags

illustrator

,

pattern

,

3D

,

texture

Topics

Adobe Illustrator

,

Adobe Photoshop

Participating Experts
1
Points
100
Comments
4

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. What's the difference between PhotoShop and Illustrator?
    I was using PhotoShop for sometimes. Lately I went accross my friend's computer that has Adobe Illustrator installed. I open Illustrator and I can see Illustrator has about the same tool menu as PhotoShop. I have no idea about how to use Illustrator, so I wonder what does Ado...
  2. I want to illustrate and self-publish a book. Which softwa…
    I have Adobe Creative Suite, which includes the InDesign module. I also have a month-to-month subscription to Lynda.com, not the one year that allows access to membership files. I can't afford to have someone illustrate OR publish for me, so I've taken on this daunting task ...
  3. 3D graphics texturing question
    Ive looked at some 3D textures from other peoples works, and have a question about how they come up with their textures. for example, when you see a texture of a person, the face is streched out (on the 2D texture) which wraps around the face to make a perfect texture. my q...
  4. Photoshop Textures
    Hello Could someone please show me how to make a texture similar to the red image at the top of the following site http://www.firenetdesigns.com/ . Im using photoshop cs2 Thankyou
  5. Illustrator - Greyscale
    I just converted a picture to greyscale in illustrator. The effect looks nice, but I am wondering if I can change the colors to match other parts of my pamphlet.

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: yessirnosirPosted on 2009-02-08 at 07:47:23ID: 23584025

continuing to hack around, I managed to cover the basketball surface by using Photoshop to do create a much larger sample of the dimple pattern -- large enough to cover the whole ball in Illustrator.  But the end result isn't as smooth as I had hoped, and I've got some strange yellow artifacts in the dimple pattern, and some roughness around the edge of the ball.  

So I'm still hoping someone will have some suggestions about how to make this look better.  If not, I guess I'll close the question accepting my current output as the answer.

 

by: D_BruggePosted on 2009-02-09 at 10:44:19ID: 23592960

Hi yessirnosir!

I'm sorry that no one has taken up this question. It seems all of the "experts" must be on vacation. I saw your question the other day, but felt that someone else would be sure to help you out.

I'm afraid that i don't have time to go into a lot of detail here, but I'll hit the basics and check back with you.

The first thing that you need to do is turn your basketball texture pattern into a symbol. A symbol is illustrators name for a repeatable object. Since you want to tile the image across the surface of the sphere.

Once that is done, reopen your 3D dialog box and click the button that says "Map Art..." (it is just under the cancel button)

That dialog box will open and let you select your new basketball texture symbol and adjust the size and orientation to suit and give you a preview as well.

Best of luck to you.

 

by: yessirnosirPosted on 2009-02-09 at 11:09:26ID: 23593212

thanks for the comments D_Brugge... I think I had managed to stumble my way through all the steps you listed when I originally posted, but the thing that I couldn't figure out was how to make my symbol cover the whole surface with a repeated or tiled pattern.  If I adjust the size of the symbol in the Map Art dialogue to make it big enough to cover the whole basketball, then the dimples get huge.  What I really need is to apply that symbol about 200 times in a tiled pattern over the surface of the ball.  I expected there would be some functionality in Illustrator similar to Photoshop's "fill" function that could result in the symbol being repeated as many times as necessary to cover the basketball surface.  Is there no way to do that?  

Anyway, to create the image in my second post, rather than continuing to try to get Illustrator to do something like Photoshop "fill", I thought to myself, DOH!, why not just use Photoshop fill?  So I went back and created a huge jpg in Photoshop, which I converted into a huge symbol in AI, which was big enough to cover the ball without resizing.  So I figured out a workable solution, but I would still be grateful and would award points if someone pointed out a better way to accomplish the task in Illustrator.

 

by: D_BruggePosted on 2009-02-09 at 18:34:06ID: 23596743

At the moment you've got me stumped. I have to admit that I used this feature quite a lot when it was in (Can't think of the name of the Adobe program that did this) about twelve years ago, but since (unknown program) was discontinued and the features were rolled into Adobe Illustrator, I've never made use of it.

Why don't you award yourself the points to get a refund and repost the question. There are not a whole lot of top level Illustrator experts at Experts-exchange, and it's possible that everyone else was snowed under with work  the same as me.

If you get a refund of points, you can rephrase your question (for free) and have another chance at getting a knowledgeable answer.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...