1. Create the disco ball texture
First, we need to turn on the grid and enable snapping. Go
View>Show Grid and
View>Snap to Grid. With the
Rectangle Tool draw a grey square with a 1pixel white stroke. You realise it will snap perfectly to the grid while drawing. Using the
Selection Tool, select the grey square and hold
Alt/Option as you drag to the side. This will duplicate a new square.
Press
Ctrl/Command+D to duplicate a row of 20 squares. Select the whole row of squares. Hold
Alt/Option and drag below to duplicate a new row of squares. Repeat this by pressing
Ctrl/Command+D. Do this until you get a 20 by 20 rows of squares.
With the
Selection Tool, select a square. Hold
Shift and randomly select a number of different squares and fill it with a shade of teal color. Repeat the steps until you have a range of 5 different shades all spread out. Select all the squares and duplicate by holding
Alt/Option and drag it to the right side. Now open your
Symbols Palette by going to
Window>Symbol. Create a new symbol by dragging all the square into it. And we are done with our texture.
2. Create a 3D sphere
Now draw a circle with the
Circle Tool. Hold
Shift as you drag to create a perfect circle. Next, draw a rectangle that overlaps the circle in the middle. Select both shapes and open up your
Pathfinder Palette. Hold
Alt/Option and click
Subtract from shape area. This will create a semi-circle.
With the semi-circle still selected, go
Effect>3D>Revolve. Choose
Map Art and select the texture we created under
Symbol. Click
Scale to Fit to fill up the whole sphere. Press
Ok to confirm.
Under
3D Revolve Options, select
No Shading for
Surface and turn the
Preview option on. Spin the cube to create the angle of the disco ball you want. Click
Ok to confirm. We are done with our disco ball.
3. Add sparkles and glow
Draw a circle and fill it with
Radial Gradient. Open up your
Transparency Palette and set the
Normal to
Screen. This will create a glow on the disco ball.
We will need to add in more sparkles. Select the
Star Tool, click and drag to create a basic star. Without releasing your mouse, press
Arrow Up key to increase the number of points. Hold
Ctrl/Command and drag to adjust the radius until you get the shape below. Next, we draw a
Circle and fill up with a
Radial Gradient as shown below. Align both in the center and set them to
Screen under
Transparency Palette. Select both and duplicate a few with different sizes to add sparkles to the disco ball.
4. Disco Ball Reflections
Let’s begin to do the disco reflection. Create a black solid circle. Select it and press
Ctrl/Command+C to copy it. Paste it to the front by pressing
Ctrl/Command+F to paste in front. Hold
Shift and grab to corners to resize it smaller. Fill it with white after that. Select the
Blend Tool and click the white circle once then hold
Alt/Option and click the black circle. The
Blend Options will pop up. Set a value of
6 steps and choose
Specified Steps for it. Expand it by going to
Object>Expand to break them into individual circles.
Duplicate a few of the reflections and spread them around. Select all the reflections and group them by pressing
Ctrl/Command+G and go
Effect>Warp>Fisheye. Play around with the options until you find something you like. Go
Object>Expand Appearances to expand the warp after that.
Next we create a new rectangle above the reflections. Give it a
Radial Gradient from teal to black color. With the
Gradient Tool we can click and drag in the gradient to create the gradient below. Open up
Transparency Palette and set it to
Multiply.
Finally we will create a faint glow for the disco cube. Draw a circle and fill it with
Radial Gradient. Go to the
Layers Palette and move it behind the disco ball and your done!
Here’s the final disco ball. Hope this tutorial has helped you have a better understanding of using the Map Art in 3D Revolve.
Bonus Tip: We can further make changes to the disco ball by going to
Window>Appearance and double click
3D Revolve (Mapped).
