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Illustrator Blur Border Overrun


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Wallybanger

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Hello!

I am having a problem with illustrator and it's making me want to pull my hair out. I am trying to create a 3D looking bevel on my logo and, so far, it's turning out really well by using a 10px gradient stroke perpendicular (gradient across stroke) to the path and another unidirectional 10px gradient stroke (gradient within stroke) that comes in at -35° to simulate a light source. I am then applying a 10px Gaussian blur to simulate diffused light and allow the perpendicular stroke to show through.

It looks great except I can't, for the life of me, get the blur to stay WITHIN the outer boundary of the shape. It's spilling over and blurring the lines between the logo and the background. I have tried creating a vector mask but it doesn't seem to be working at all and it would be nice if this geometry didn't need a big "skirt" around it to cover the spill over as that would make it difficult to use the logo in many different application.

So, to clarify a few things:
1. I had to offset the outside path by 5px inwards because apparently illustrator won't let you set the stroke to the inside or outside of a path AND use a perpendicular gradient for some stupid reason.

2. Sorry, the background colour is REALLY close to the logo colour, just slightly darker so the bottom & left side are the background, the middle area is the part of the logo I'm beveling and the orange is the inside of the logo. You can actually see some black blur bleeding over onto the orange too.

3. The 3D Extrude & Bevel tool is a complete piece of crap and after wasting a bunch of time with it I realized I needed to find a better way.

4. I'm using Illustrator CS6 in case you need to know.

Thanks in advance for any info you're able to offer, I attached a screen shot! :)
 

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If I understand you correctly...Make a copy of the basic object and paste in place. Add all the strokes and blur to the original, then use the copy as a mask to clip the blur.
 

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hawkeye said:
If I understand you correctly...Make a copy of the basic object and paste in place. Add all the strokes and blur to the original, then use the copy as a mask to clip the blur.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I tried that and it didn't work. Also, the mask has to be a black area outside of the shape, right?
 
Just copy the original shape paste in front, and use a white fill. Then use it as a clipping mask, or as a transparency mask set to 100%.
 
hawkeye said:
Just copy the original shape paste in front, and use a white fill. Then use it as a clipping mask, or as a transparency mask set to 100%.
Click to expand...
OK, so going out on a limb here... if you use black does it mask everything inside of the filled area and if you use white does it mask everything outside of the filled area? After copying the "layer 2" object, do I place it above the "Bevel Layer" group or inside the "bevel layer" group? The Bevel Layer is the only thing I want to be affected by the mask.

Cheers, :)
 
Wallybanger said:
OK, so going out on a limb here... if you use black does it mask everything inside of the filled area and if you use white does it mask everything outside of the filled area? After copying the "layer 2" object, do I place it above the "Bevel Layer" group or inside the "bevel layer" group? The Bevel Layer is the only thing I want to be affected by the mask.

Cheers, :)
Click to expand...
I can't seem to get that to work at all. I have no idea why.... this is soooo frustrating.
 
What is going on in that video is exactly what I want.... but of course, for some reason, that doesn't work for me at all. What am I doing wrong?

Untitled-1.jpgUntitled-2.jpgUntitled-3.jpg
 

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It's kinda working, but I have no idea what's going on under the blue and why the blue won't go away. That said, the white fuzz around the outside is gone.....
 
OK! I Got It! I have it working now but I have no idea why.... if you guys could explain to me what is going on I would really appreciate it. So, unlike that video above, I redid the clipping mask using black as the fill colour (which seemed to make a difference). I then had to set the transparency of the very top level of the resulting clip group to 0%. The black mask went away, the fuzz was gone and everything was the way I wanted it.
 
The color of a clipping mask doesn't make any difference as it is set to none after you apply it, release the mask and you'll see that. The only time color matters is when you use a transparency mask, which is why I said fill it with white in case you chose that option, as I often do.
 
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