In todays Adobe Illustrator 2022 video tutorial we’ll design some cool 3d social media icons, a speech bubble and a heart. These icons you can use for any of your designs and they are so realistic 3d looking, you’d think they were created with a 3d software, but instead we can design such 3d assets in Adobe Illustrator 2022. So let’s get to it.
Create 3D Icons in Illustrator
In todays Adobe Illustrator video tutorial we’ll draw some cool 3d social media icons, a speech bubble and a heart. These icons you can use for any of your designs and they are so realistic 3d looking, you’d think they were created with a 3d software, but instead we can design such 3d assets in Adobe Illustrator 2022, So let’s get to it.
Choose the the Rectangle tool and create a long rectangle on the Artboard.
Then with the Pen tool add a triangle on the bottom left to make it look like a speech bubble.
Then select both shapes and in the Pathfinder unite them. Switch to the Direct Selection tool and click once in the middle of the shape and round out the corners. Just make sure your Corner Widget is turned on.
Then create a circles with a white fill with the ellipse tool and place it into the middle of the speech bubble
Switch to the Rectangle Tool and create a slim long rectangle in white as well, right next to the circle, duplicate it and reduce the width.
Round out the corners as well, group them and then we’ll allign the elements to the cirlcle
Then we’ll create a person icon for the circle, use the Ellipse tool and create a circle, then create a rectangle, with the Direct Selection tool select the left side and notch it inward, repeat this on the other side and then again round out the corners
Group the two elements and then move them with the white shapes to the side.
Working with the New 3D Tool in Illustrator 2022
Then open the 3D Tools and select the speech bubble shape. Hit the Inflate button under Object in the 3D Tool window, put the Depth to zero and the volume to 25%
The rotation you can set as you like. I am using the 12, -25 and -15
Go to the Lighting and change the Intensity to 60%, Height to 90 degrees and Softness to 85%
Before we add the Ray Tracing, let’s create a graphic style of these settings first. Open the Graphic Styles window and drag the speech bubble into it. Then double click to rename it to whatever you like.
Now we can apply the same settings to the person icon. Since we still have access to the 3d setting, because it’s a live effect, we can change them via the Appearance panel. For the icon, increase the depth to 3 px.
Then apply the 3D style to the circle with the lines as well. Place the elements onto the speech bubble.
Ray Tracing Settings in Illustrator 2022
Let’s check the Ray Tracing setting, go the the 3d tool and in Materials Panel and click the arrow for the settings.
First you’ll see the the quality settings are greyed out. To change the settings simply slide the Ray Tracing button to the right and then you can select which quality of rendering you’ll prefer.
In the raster settings you can choose the screen resolution, to anti-alias and set a background to transparent or white
Now lets’ hit the render button. Do the same for the other two shapes.
Adding 3D Shadows in the 3D Tool Settings
Select the speech bubble shape and under Lighting in the 3d tools, turn on Shadows. Set the distance to 10 or 12 % and the shadow bounds to 300 or higher. Watch what happens on the screen, we are adding some really nice realistic shadow.
We’ll apply the shadow to the person icon as well, play around with the shadow setting and , we might as well change the inflate settings to make it a bit more 3d like. Just adjust the volume in the inflate setting until you are happy with the outcome.
And here you have it, A truly cool looking 3d speech bubble, 3d look but still in vector shapes.
And because it was so much fun, let’s create another 3d shape, a heart. Use the Pen tool and set the stroke to a red color, then hold the shift key to constrain the angle to 45 degrees.
Create a line on the left and continue to the right. Open up the Stroke panel ad se the cap to round then increase the stroke to some really high value until you’ll see a heart shape forming.
Unfortunately when we apply the the graphic style from earlier, it switches us to a blue fill style and our stroke settings are gone. Keep that in mind when you create graphic styles, the fill or Stroke settings are remembered so even though the 3 settings are the same, we lost the stroke. We can keep the 3d settings for now, but we have to add back the Stroke settings of a round cap and a really high stroke value.
Inflate Settings in the 3D Tool in Illustrator
Once we see the heart shape again, let’s change the Inflate settings. Increase the volume and now we have a neat 3d heart shape. The cool part with the new 3d Tools in Illustrator 2022 is that we can set the Inflate to both sides, just check it in the settings.
After that you can increase the stroke, play round with the Lighting presets to see wich lighting you prefer.
Once you are happy, hit the Tracing Render button. Super cool 3d design in Adobe Illustrator 2022. Here is a quick tip, if you want to change the size of your heart icon, before you resize it, make sure in the Scale Strokes and Effects settings is checked, if not, when you scale the icon, the Stroke size will increase and your heart shape won’t look like a heart shape anymore.
And that’s it, I hope you enjoyed the Adobe Illustrator video tutorial, give it a like, share it, and leave a comment. I’ll see you next time.
Adobe Illustrator 2022 / 3D Tool / Design Social Media Icons
