Attached Link: Bulb Tut Link

I am following this tutorial for Cinema4D but it begins in Illustrator by making a curved path with the Pen Tool.

(I don't know much about the pen tool in PhotoShop never mind Illustrator).

In the tutorial he's got a curved blue line but no white area - I have a white area!

Also he's talking about increasing the path's width to 3 points - but only for the tut, so for an actual model to be realistic in C4D the path needs to be 1 point in thickness - how do I do this?

(I've tried Path /Outline Stroke - as per the tut - nothing happened, so I'm assuming there's some parts of the tut deliberately missed out as he's assuming people are used to using all the same progs as he is - I'm okay in C4D, but not Illustrator.)

Help? Pretty please?

You shouldn't have a white fill, the fill is empty according to the toolbox. Do you have only the two objects on the artboard - the background image and the black path? You set the stroke width in the Stroke pane - should be under the Window menu. What the outline stroke command does is turn the line, with a stroke applied, to a path running around the edges of the stroke, filled with the original stroke's colour - presumably so that when you take that into C4D and lathe it the result will be a double-sided bulb, rather than a skin around a bulb-shaped void. Visually, nothing should change, but the stroke colour should be set to none (the black box at the bottom of the toolbox in your image) and the fill colour to black (the box with a line across it, behind the stroke colour in your image).

Lately, I have been pecking away at learning Illustrator as well as I know Photoshop... well, trying to, anyway. I had to learn the basics years ago for a similar reason.. end product had to be "processed" through Illustrator, for use. Long story.. anyway.. I have found that Deviant Art has several excellent tutorial on "how to" for Illustrator. Lou.

Richard,

Thanks, yes I had a suspicion he'd already done something - that might be what gets rid of the white area.  I've tried this with my pen tool on the same layer as the pic and on it's own layer. (easier to get rid of the pic later) But both times the white appeared.

However, I've figured that part out - simply select 'None' for the fill.  That's located under 'Appearance/Path' for 'path' you get stroke and fill, if you click on the box for fill - you get a selection of colours, one of which is 'none'.

Aha, that 'Window' - oh yes, that's made a difference, thanks.

Ha ha ha, lol!  The tools pane you see is the one for the tut, mine looked different, in order to follow his tut as accurately as I could I just used the view of his workspace to get the pic of the lightbulb - his tools pane came with it.  I just didn't think about it.

However, my fill now looks the same as his - 'none'.

"What the outline stroke command does is turn the line, with a stroke applied, to a path running around the edges of the stroke, filled with the original stroke's colour - presumably so that when you take that into C4D and lathe it the result will be a double-sided bulb, rather than a skin around a bulb-shaped void. Visually, nothing should change, but the stroke colour should be set to none (the black box at the bottom of the toolbox in your image) and the fill colour to black (the box with a line across it, behind the stroke colour in your image)."

R...right... I think.  So it should actually be the opposite of what it is now.....? i.e. fill has colour, line has none, okay.  Will do.

Okay...

Um... Got another problem with this:

The tut says: select the line segment joining the two points at the bottom of the curve, and delete it.

However when I try selecting it and deleting - that deletes the whole thing, all the curves and points!  I'm using the same selctor tool as he has in the tut image for this stage, but it's just not working - and I can't find the history in this prog (like you have in PhotoShop) so I can't tell what I've done and what hasn't had any effect, and what has - unless the effect is obviously visible.

Does anyone have any idea how to do this bit?

It's done in order to draw more of the curves and points to continue the glass filament support inside the bulb.

(P.S. Archdruid: I noted what you said and I would like to increase my knowledge of Illustrator too, expecially if it makes drawing bezier curves for importing into Cinema easier than drawing them in C4D directly, but I'd rather get this light bulb model finished first as I want to use it to replace my box modelled light bulb I've already created, so I can pack up a set of lanterns I've been making for my first attempt at selling things, with a hopefully less poly heavy and more detailed model in the pack.)

PPS I've also tried clicking on that end line segment with the pen tool - but all that does is adds another anchor point - and I'm not sure if that's a totally new anchor point not connected to the previous lot - of if it IS connected, I have no way of telling - but I don't think thats correct any more than using the 'Direct Selection tool' was.

Help?

If you are using the white arrow, which selects parts of a path (points of line segments) then it's likely that you had the path selected anyway, and when you switched pointers it kept all parts of the path selected to "match" that. Try clicking away from the path, and the background drawing if it isn't locked, to deselect and then click the segment you wish to delete.

Argh!!!  I think that's worked.  You are probably correct in that it had already worked, and daft ole me tried it again, thus selecting everything - and deleting everything!

Duh!

Then I go back to the pen tool to add more points... okay.

Yeah.. that is one of the things I had to learn to make a habit.. making sure I had the correct pen tool selected. Another thing you will likely have to get used to is, when you "bend" a line, adjusting the "length" of the adjustment, (what I call "tweakers"... the two lines that appear when you are bending),  this adjusts the "severity" of the bend. Lou.

Can't add more points. 

When I try, (using the pen tool with the +,) it just adds an anchor point on the layer below and switches to that layer (it's the layer that I have the guide on, and I'm trying to use the visual line of that guide line to position the next point right over that guideline - but on the layer with the spline path curve thingie on it.) and it keeps on switching to the layer below my spline curve layer ....

What on earth am I doing wrong now?

Quote - Yeah.. that is one of the things I had to learn to make a habit.. making sure I had the correct pen tool selected. Another thing you will likely have to get used to is, when you "bend" a line, adjusting the "length" of the adjustment, (what I call "tweakers"... the two lines that appear when you are bending),  this adjusts the "severity" of the bend. Lou.

Yes the handles for each point on the bezier curve - I know about those, I'm used to those - but in Cinema4D, I'm not used to them in Illustrator.... and it's driving me nuts!

Mind you I don't usually do bezier curves over more than one day like I am now, it's usually done in a few minutes, not days!

In Cinema those handles are the nicest things about bezier curves, makes it all so easy... unlike now... I'll try the ordinary pen tool, not the one with the + maybe that's what the problem is...

Ha ha ha!!!!  Finished!  I was the ordinary pen tool!!!

Hooray!!!!

Almost finished.

I need to save as an .eps file - the tut says version 6.

I've managed to find the 'save as EPS' option but I don't know what to choose from the settings in there.

The tut says:

Remove the guide line (important!) and the bulb image, and save the curve out as an Illustrator EPS file, version 6.0, no preview, no thumbnail.

I've made the layer with the guideline on it invisible, (hopefully this is sufficient?) but I don't see what else could be relevant execpt perhaps I should uncheck 'include linked files'?

Anything else?

You need to remove the unwanted elements - save before you do that - then pick the right version in the drop-down at the top, and you can safely uncheck all of the other options - all you need is the path itself for the modeller to sweep.

ermm.. guides.. you go to View then guides.. then clear guides.. that will remove them. Lou.

Thanks for the reply - I don't seem to be able to escape from Illustrator with this.

I've deleted every layer but the one with the spline, I've saved as .eps - with no linked files or other unwanted elements, but when I am in Cinema and try to 'merge' with the .eps file as the tut instructs - absolutely nothing happens, nothing appears in C4D at all.

Do you have any idea what I could have done wrong, or missed out?

Or should I start all over again asking in the Cinema forum?

I have tried selecting both the options at the top of the eps setting menu - both 8bit colour and B&W - neither seems to make any difference.

(Image shows my latest choices in the eps save menu)

Oh hi Archdruid, I've already gone past that point, I just deleted the layer with the guideline on it (- in fact all layers except the spline - it's why I put the spline on it's own layer).

Do you have any idea why it won't 'merge' with my C4D file?

Did you try purgung the caches?.. History, etc.. sometimes that works in Photoshop when something is being stubborn.. might work here.Lou.

I watched this video... He used version 8, not 6.. that MAY be the culprit... here is the link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbJxQmxjwns  Maybe watching this will give you an idea on why it's being stubborn. Lou.

Meantime.. This guy has several tutorials for Illustrator... they are, mostly, Videos... go to the page linked here...    http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/tutorials/?qh=&section=&q=Basic+Illustrator#/djrygb     this is his first one for Illustrator.. He DOES have a Celtic accent, (Irish, I think), but he's pretty easily understandable. Stick with the vid.. he shows quite a bit of what the pen tool does and takes the time to point out what's different from Photoshop, and what's the same.. it's a download... look to the upper right part of your screen for THAT link... in some ways, being a download is a good thing, since he moves fairly fast.. if you have Windows, you will be able to play it... Media Player comes with Windows.. it's a WMV file.

He has several more tuts that you can also download and look at. Hope this helps, Lou.

DON'T SAVE AS .EPS!

When I followed the advice from contrafibbularities, and saved as a normal .ai file (choosing Illustrator 8 - good catch there, Archdruid!) the spline imported smooth as silk.

I'm now halfway through following the C4D part of the tut.

I won't say 'so far no problems' because as soon as I say that something will go wrong.

So I'll just say thanks for looking around further on this for me, I really really do appreciate it.

Lol, I'll take a look at the video tut you mention, & I'll let you know what sort of Celtic accent it is - as I'm part Celtic myself and more use to UK regional/country accents being English, I should be able to tell.

Just looked/listened - he's Scottish.  Luckily not too broad, so easily understandable.  I'll watch the whole vid later though when I've finished with this tut. 

I'm wary of video tuts since they are usually too fast and people do things off screen and don't tell you what they did.  But it would be nice to find a second video tut maker that is good enough to follow - so far I only know of 1, and that's 3dkiwi from C4D Cafe, but he's gone on to higher versions of c4d so those are useless to me now.

I'll also look at the vid you link to in the message above - gosh, I'll be spoilt for choice, won't I?

One other thing, you mentioned purging the history caches - but I couldn't even find history in Illustrator - can you tell me where it is?

(No need to purge caches, as the problem is solved) (See Pic)

Sorry.. I was remembering the OLD version I had..lol.. Illustrator 6.. also, His accent.. turns out he's Scotch.. I looked at his profile.

But.. purging caches.. That stems from the old days when computer resources were limited.. in Photoshop, even now, you can purge the caches to speed up what you are doing.. just know.. if you do, especially the history one, you cannot undo past that point.

A small explanation, here.. I HAD to use Illustrator 6, specifically, at one time, due to the software it had to work with.. I was doing graphics for output to a Roland wide-format printer and the path I defined was the cuts.. the "light" ones where the decal remained on the backing. I could have done a lot more with CS2, which I had then but, Roland could not parse anything past Illustrator 6. Anyway.. I am glad to have helped.. at least a little. Lou.

Is there a history in Illustrator?

(Not sure if this still applies, but it used to be that people from Scotland didn't like the term 'Scotch' but prefered Scottish or 'Scotts' since Scotch is the drink.  I think that's right. Anyway, just FYI.) (and thanks for the help)

  Illustrator does, indeed, have a History.. that is your "Step backward" and "Undo" However, it's not used the same way as in Photoshop, (apparently hasn't been, for quite a while), and is not used quite the same way... so it's not available to purge any longer. It seems that, the way they are using it for Illustrator is "lighter" on system resources.

  Actually, it's still true.. they prefer Scot Scotts, or Scottish, rather than Scotch. Sorry, that was a faux pas on my part. Lou.

Ah, so you can't select a whole slew of actions and undo lots at once, like you can with the history pane in PhotoShop?... shame.

But at least now I can stop hunting for it... sigh.

On the Scotts, I wasn't sure it I'd remembered it correctly as it's quite a while since someone once told me that - glad your memory has confirmed mine - maybe I ain't loosing it as much as I thought. Brill!