Learn how to create stunning 3D assets in Adobe Illustrator

Bring your designs to life with Adobe Illustrator's 3D and Materials feature, which allows you turn flat vector assets into realistic 3D artwork.

Follow along in this tutorial and learn how to create star burst shapes and apply an Inflate 3D effect. We'll also take a closer look at how to apply Object and Lighting settings as well rendering the asset for best results.

As a final step, I'll also go over how to save the 3D asset to the Libraries panel to use across other Adobe apps.

Before jumping in, you can click the link below to download the final Illustrator design to reference against your own as we move along in the tutorial.

3D Star Project.ai.zip

Download ZIP • 4.51MB

The first step is creating a document. In this case, create a document that is 1000 px by 1000 px with one artboard is just fine.

Now, let's create the initial square shape that will become our star shape.

Create Star Shapes

• Click the Rectangle Tool and click anywhere on the artboard to bring up the size options dialog.

• Set the size to 715 px by 715 px and click OK.

• Center the content to the artboard using the alignment tools in the Properties panel.

• Select the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) and hover over any of the four corner handles.

• Hold Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows), click on the handle once and then drag downwards to create the star shape.

  

  

• Create another copy of the original star and decrease the size to 200 px by 200 px. Place this copy to the upper left of the original star.

• Create another copy of the smaller star and place it in the bottom right of the original shape. Make the size 100 px by 100 px.

• Click on the Pathfinder panel and with all three star shapes selected, click Unite to bring them all together. If you don't see the Pathfinder panel, go to Window > Pathfinder.

Here's a look at the Unite option within the Pathfinder panel.

Here comes the fun part – using the 3D and Materials feature to bring flat vector shapes to life.

If you haven't yet, open the 3D and Materials panel, which can be found under the Window dropdown menu.

• With the shapes selected, click the Inflate option in the 3D and Materials panel.

• Set the Depth slider to something around 1400 px.

• There are options to adjust the rotation of the shapes, but in this case, we'll leave everything on 0%, however feel free to play around with these adjustments.

• Click the Lighting tab to bring up the lighting options. You can choose one of the Preset options: Standard, Diffused, Top left or Right. In this case, let's add custom lighting by clicking the circle and dragging it closer to the bottom right of the circle shape.

• The color adjustments will be adjusted based on how you drag the circle shape to set the lighting.

The key component to finalizing the 3D design is to render it. This next step will enhance the quality of the design and make it ready for export.

• In the 3D and Materials panel, click the arrowhead next to the Render icon in the upper-right corner for the window.

• Turn on Ray Tracing and choose your Quality. In this example, we'll use Medium.

• Click Render to finalize the Rendering options.

Here is a look at how the rendering will appear after following the steps above:

• Now that the 3D shape is complete and rendered, open the Libraries panel by going to Window > Libraries.

• With the 3D shape selected open the Libraries panel and click the plus icon in the bottom right corner.

• Choose the Graphic option to add the 3D shape to the Libraries. This asset will now be available to you in the Libraries panel across all the Adobe applications.

For example, there is also a Photoshop document available in the exercise folder. Open the PSD called World Design Summit and let's add the Star shapes to the design.

Here is how it will look like when opened in Photoshop.