heigtmap with blendtool?

[3Dme]

I'm working on a heightmap to use with vue. The map has to be a gradient going from black to white. I drew the isolines with the pen tool. Than I gave every different line a different grey-value. Than I planned to blend all this lines to get a nice smooth gradient, but here things start to go wrong. The situation:
the isolines:

my gradient-try :S

I'm quite new to illustrator, so there's a possibility that I'm overlooking something obvious, sorry for that
During my search at this forum, I found out that the new mesh-tool is quite good in this, but I don't really see how I can apply it in this case...

 

[nefaste]

3Dme:
I'll try to help but I'm still quite new to Illustrator too.

The gradient tool works well with similar paths. I don't know what is the little vertical line on your second picture but it might also be a cause of the unexpected result.

I advise against using the gradient mesh : it's good for shading simple, convex shapes, but in your case you won't get good result without a lot of manual tweaking.

I think you should cut your paths into smaller parts, and only then use the gadient tool. To deal with the parts where your isolines split you should first switch to filled closed paths instead of lines. (This will also avoid blanks in the gradient).

So in summary :
1. Make filled closed paths
2. Draw a bunch of lines and 'Object->Path->Divide underlying objects'
3. Make a gradient for each subpart.

I'll post an example if that's not clear.

 

[3Dme]

Thanks nefaste... it looks like a solution that might work, so I'm going to give it a try. I'll let know how it worked out.

 

[3Dme]

Nefaste, I tried your workout, but it's too much work (rotating every gradient)... maybe there's no other way out (in that case I'll have to find out another way), but if someone can still help me with this...

 

[apepp]

...have you tried the blend tool, this is able to blend most objects from one to the other...

...here is an example of two paths blended together, one with a different shade of stroke to the other...

http://www.zen63258.zen.co.uk/ahp/Untitled-1.jpg

good luck!

andrew

 

[apepp]

...also may help if the lines don't overlap...

...try blending one line to the other, rather than ten at once...

andrew

 

[apepp]

...if unwanted gaps appear in the blend with the blend tool on smoothed out lines, you will have to adjust the direction of the handles on each point using the direct selection tool in combination with the convert anchor point tool...

andrew

 

[apepp]

...oh and best of luck...

: )

andrew

 

[3Dme]

Thanks to all of you... specially the tip with adjusting the directions of the handles seems like it might work, since I was already using the blend-tool.. I'll let you know how it worked out in a few days.

 

[apepp]

...oh yes, just remembered, double click the blend tool and make sure it is set to smooth shift, there are three options in this pull down menu...

andrew

 

[apepp]

make sure the lines have different values/percentages, the same percentage lines will only produce another intermediate line and not smooth blend...

andrew

 

[apepp]

also stroke weights of the blended lines affect the results, if different weights between the two u will end up with gaps. play about with the blending options to fix those gaps up. again, get blending options by double clicking the blend tool.

andrew