Landscape design: overlapping opacity and stroke lines

[neilmorbs]

Hi,
I am working on my final landscape project and thought it'd be grand to use illustrator for a clean colour look! HOWEVER>>> I have areas of large blocks of tree planting (opaque so you can see under it). These are made of lots of individual trees ( a group of shapes and lines I made).

I want to have the opacity the same throughout the woodland block, rather than overlapping opacities (which block any underlying detail).
I ALSO want to turn these overlapping individual trees into a mass with no separating black lines... sort of lick an outline on the outskirts of the trees to make one big group.

I tried using pathfinder functions with no success... any ideas?

Or it is back to good old Photoshop... easier!

 

[ayersart]

To make the opacity the same, you select all of the trees in a group, make the opacity 100% for all of them, then place them in a group (ctrl-g). NOW you adjust the opacity.


I am not sure I understand your second question, but I think i might. Are there strokes on each tree? Get rid of the strokes. I would make a copy of your group, then use the pathfinder to add the shapes together. In your appearance palette create a new stroke, make the stroke 2 points thick and white (or whatever your background color is), then add a second stroke (black) and make that 4 points thick. Adjust it so the fill is white(or your background color) on top, the white stroke is underneath your fill, and the black stroke us under the white stroke. Put this shape under the first group, and you are keeping the opacity of the trees and now you have created a black stroke around the group.