Police & Fire department badges in Zaxwerks

[Steven Wills]

After reading all we could about AI and ZW, we have decided to give up.
It’s too complicated for us.
Thanks for trying to help us though.

[Fernando Mol]

It’s a shame. We were so close.

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[Steven Wills]

Wow. That’s about all I can say.

Sorry, it’s been a very flustering couple of days. I’ve worn myself into a frazzle and overloaded my brain. I really don’t want to stop either. I want to learn this as best as I can. So let me try again. I’ve learned I need to “flatten” my pieces then import them into ZW 1st (I believe).

So I’ll regroup, and give it another shot. I just need to read more of my AI manual and then focus on ZW more. Thanks for the inspiration, it’s just what I needed at just the right time. I guess somehow you knew…

Thanks

[Fernando Mol]

What I did was this:

Copied the badge logo and paste it in a new, clean document in AI. Then I scale it very big, almost the full page.

I render it at 300 dpi.

Used Live Trace at the default. Then I pressed the Expand Button.

Selected all the white elements and delete them. Ilustrator has a tool to select similar objects, so I selected one and asked AI to select all the elements that had the same fill color.

Saved the new document as AI, just remembering to uncheck the compression option so it can be recognized by Invigorator.

Open After Effects, created a new layer and applied 3D Invigorator selecting the Create from AI file option.

The image was messy, so I went to the options in the plug-in and review each of the elements. The last one was the big mesh. I selected it and went to the Object Options panel, expanded the Info tab and checked “Mesh”. That fixed the weird fill.

I’m uploading the AE project so you can see what I did. It’s in CS5.

I hope this helps

[Steven Wills]

I will follow your instructions exactly as posted, and try this 1st thing tomorrow.

Thank you for showing me these tips. I’m sure after looking at your example, I’ll be (and many others) much more proficient. Thank you for your time and the examples that could have probably been better spent with other things…like your family. I’m so very grateful & humbled by your kindness.

I’ll keep you informed, and I won’t give up…it was just a frustrating couple of days, and I’m
sure many of you have had quite a few of them also when you started.

You inspire me.
Thank you
Steve

[Fernando Mol]

You may want to try a simpler solution for your project, so you can deliver it in time, but never give up on learning.

There are many ways to achieve the same thing, this is just how it worked for me this time (but it toke me some time to figure it out and it was just with one of the logos).

Edward also gave you a lot of great tips. Give yourself the time to watch all the tutorials you can find and eventually you’ll be giving help to others.

[Edward Wu]

Hi Steven,

I’m happy to hear that you’re pushing on. You have a very interesting project, so I’m hoping you’re able to complete it the way you envisioned it.

As I’m thinking about the project a little more, for some of the separate pieces, you can also try going into the Pathfinder window, and using the “Add” function. This will add all the pieces together, so you don’t have to worry about having to redraw any of the elements.

Fernando’s idea of scaling the image up and using the Live Trace is a great idea. That should save you a lot of time in having to re-draw any of the pieces.

Best,
Edward

[Steven Wills]

I’m studying my Illustrator manual and working the tutorials as well as trying all these ideas in Zaxwerks.
Integrating the two effectively seems to be the next step once I get all my groupings set.
I’m keeping my eye on the prize and pressing on…
Thanks.