Is this an opacity issue?

[willowest]

Hi all! I am having a problem with placing a gradient behind an existing 3D sphere. When I send it to the back, the sphere (except for the text and highlight ellipse in the center) disappear. I checked opacity for the two ellipses that blend into the background gradient--they're both set to normal, not screen blend. Not sure what to do to fix the problem. Any ideas?

 

[apepp]

...your best to look deep into the layers palette to make sure your gradient really is at the bottom and not just sat on the bottom of a layer, that is in turn, on top of another layer...

Andrew

 

[willowest]

Thanks for the reply, Andrew! One thing I forgot to mention is that the gradient is on a separate layer, and I copied and pasted the sphere from another file onto a second layer. The outline stroke is visible on the largest ellipse, but the fill and the smaller ellipse it is blended with disappear. I tried bringing them both to the front and sending the gradient back, but it didn't work. I'm new to Illustrator, so I'm not sure if I'm just missing something that should be glaringly obvious or not.

I did end up redoing the sphere in the new file, and it looks okay, but now I'm getting lines (kinda like tree rings) in the fill color of the largest ellipse. Is this due to the gradient background? How can I fix that?

 

[apepp]

...gradients can often display a bit of banding...

...gradient banding is dependent on distance and colors used, there's not much you can do about it, until you print it out it can sometimes look worse on screen than in print, depending on the printer some can print better than others...

...your best posting a screen shot if you can by pasting a link...

Andrew

 

[JennyBenny5321]

It could be inside a different group that is not visable on the main layers box. You should click the arrows next grouped layers and look inside them. It could also be an issue with a transparency mask