3D Bars II

1. This is Part II of the 3D Bars tutorial and requires the pipe you created in part I. If you have not completed Part I you can either complete it or take the short cut and download the 3D Bar here.

2. Open your 3D Bar from Part I. Once it is open change the canvas size to 400w x 400h. To change the canvas size go to the main menu and select - Modify> Canvas Size. Change the values to 400 x 400 in pixels. Also, remove the drop shadow effect for now.

3. Create a circle at 90 pixels x 90 pixels and center it on the canvas

4. Create another circle at 30 pixels x 30 pixels and center it on the
canvas. You should have a large circle and a smaller circle as shown below.

5. Select both circles and go to the main menu and select Modify> Combine> Punch. This will create a donut shape with a width of 30 pixels.

6. Use a Radial Fill on our circle. We also want to add a couple more colors to our radial gradient. Go to the Fill Floating Panel and click on the edit button. You will get a new window with gradient colors. Make the colors #FFFFFF (white) and #7777777 (Gray).

Now add two more colors of #FFFFFF and #AAAAAA. Click on the area between the top gradient and the lower radial gradient. This will add a slider that can be moved from left to right. Make them so they look similar to the image below. It does not need to be exact. We will fine tune this later.

The donut should look like this.

7. Now create a square and punch out half of the circle (Modify> Combine> Punch). You should have a half a donut now.

Create another square and punch out half of what is left of your donut. The end result should be an elbow shape for your 3D Bar. This will serve as all corners that you may want to use.

8. Once you have the elbow complete, select our 3D bar from Part I and copy it (Ctrl+C). Paste (Ctrl+V) a new version of it on the canvas.

We now have two straight bars. Select one of the bars and go to the main menu and select Modify> Transform> Rotate 90 CW. This will rotate the bar 90 degrees clock wise. With the bar still selected go back to the main menu and select Modify> Transform> Flip Horizontal. This will align the Gradient for our elbow piece. Take the bars and place them as I have below.

Place the elbow top left corner.

As you can see the gradients done match up. To get the gradients to match up... Select the elbow shape. Then go to the Fill Floating Panel. Click on the edit button. Move the 4 sliders so that the colors match up with our straight bars. This is a tricky part of the process. Once you get the hang of how the sliders work and what happens to the gradient it will be much easier. The image below shows where I placed my sliders to get the gradient to match my straight bars.

Once you have the gradient all set, add a drop shadow to the elbow. Setting for drop shadow below. Lastly select the Elbow and move it 1 pixel up and 1 pixel to the left.

Drop Shadow settings on Elbow.

Drop Shadow settings on the Bars.

End of tutorial.

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