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I did a quick search to find an illustrator tutorial on creating a disco ball but I couldn’t find one. So I’ve decided to write this tutorial to help those interested in creating this awesome disco ball effect. It is actually quite simple, the technique is to create the texture first and map it onto the 3D sphere. However, we will require Illustrator CS and above to create this effect.
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).
Download source file (Illustrator CS)
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April 15th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
excellent tutorial!
April 15th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
AWESOME tutorial!!! I’ve been BEGGING for someone to teach me what happened to the 3D distort! This is a beautiful work around! Thank you so much
April 16th, 2008 at 2:13 am
[...] via iStockDirary Tips Web???? ??????? ???? Tips | 3:13 am ?????? [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
[...] the techniques of using 3d revolve to achieve this effect. Hope you guys enjoy it! Tutorial: 3D Disco Ball __________________ iStockdiary - Illustrator techniques and tips on vector [...]
April 20th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Great way of creating a disco ball, can see loads of applications for this technique:)
thanks, bro
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
how do you apply the symbol to the sphere? i do what it says, but all i get is a silver ball.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
When you Map Art, under symbol selection, select your new texture. It should work.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
darn. it still doesn’t. oh well. good tutorial though.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I figured out what I did. Just in case you’re new like me…make sure the circle doesn’t have a stroke. I changed that and now it works.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Great tutorial. Do you expand appearance after 3D revolve? I am not sure if Istock accepts it as is.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Yes, you will need to expand it and clean up the file if you are submitting to istock. You will also need to give up transparency effects. It’s a lot more troublesome.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Illustrator Tutorial: Disco Ball…
Have you thought you’d be able to create a very realistic disco ball in Adobe Illustrator? Learn how to do this, step by step….
April 30th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
This is just awesome. Excellent tutorial. I’ll come back for more
May 1st, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Want to save yourself A LOT of steps? To make the 20×20 grid do this instead. 1) Create a large square 2) Object > Envelope Distort > Make with mesh 3) Choose 20 columns by 20 rows 4) There is no step 4
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:41 am
very cool, thx
May 4th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Very Good Tutorial. Thanks
May 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
That’s great
May 9th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
THAT IS SO AWESOME!! I LOVE IT!!
May 12th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
[...] web istockdiary.com encontramos este fantástico tutorial para crear tu Disco Ball en [...]
May 12th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
fantastic tutorial. Thanks for sharing.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
yes, this is awsome tutorial… the great one… very easy to learn…. thanks allllllllloooooooooooottttttttttt……………………………
May 19th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
very good tut, thank you
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:55 am
Great tutorial, but I can’t seem to get the final step , getting the final result to render. I am using CS2 and that might be why? When I try to use it effect on a full circle it works (donut shape) but with many tries on the half circle the best I get are the squars applied very much elongated horizontally.
Thanks tho
May 25th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
KOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL MUN
May 26th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Want to save yourself some steps, to make the semi-circle?
Use the direct selection tool to select one of the anchorpoint from the side of the circle
Delete the selected anchorpoint, and use the pen tool to connect the open ends from the semi circle.
awsome tut btw!
May 27th, 2008 at 11:33 am
For anyone getting the “donut” effect, change your offset in the revolve options from left or right or vise-versa.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
[...] Istockdiary hacen un gran tutorial de como crear una bola de discoteca en formato vectorial con Illustrator. El tutorial esta en inglés. [...]
June 6th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
good
June 7th, 2008 at 7:01 am
[...] autor de Istockdiary cuenta que no tuvo suerte buscando un tutorial de Illustrator para crear una bola de disco, y entonces se decidió a crear uno el mismo. La verdad que es fácil de realizar, como el nos [...]
June 16th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
This is greater inspiration
I done it!
uhhHoooo!
June 17th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
[...] >> Boule Disco << [...]
August 9th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
gr8 tutorial m8
Thanx a lot!
August 26th, 2008 at 3:42 am
yes, nice, only that the first step might be easier achieved by using Split into grid on a rectangle.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Hi there!
Men, what’s the font name u used on this design ? the “Disco Ball” ?
Thanks!
September 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am
very good techniques…tnx
October 9th, 2008 at 5:38 am
[...] Illustrator Tutorial: Disco Ball A fun tutorial on working with symbols and the 3D effects of Illustrator. This is a fairly quick tutorial, with not a lot of steps to create the ball itself. [...]
October 9th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
[...] Illustrator Tutorial: Disco Ball A fun tutorial on working with symbols and the 3D effects of Illustrator. This is a fairly quick tutorial, with not a lot of steps to create the ball itself. [...]
October 12th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Hey awesome tutorial. I’m a newbie…so how do you add the sparkles and then then the reflections and the faded white outline?
October 12th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Hi Bob, See step 3 to create sparkles and reflections. I guess a lot of people miss out page 2. Anyway I have combined all in a page. Hope it is better now.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
supper tutorials for beginners !!! it will causes to know what is Illustrator !!!
October 17th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Awesome thanks for your help. Sweet tutorial.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:09 am
[...] Illustrator Tutorial: Disco Ball A fun tutorial on working with symbols and the 3D effects of Illustrator. This is a fairly quick tutorial, with not a lot of steps to create the ball itself. [...]
October 24th, 2008 at 12:01 am
[...] 5. Illustrator Tutorial: Disco Ball [...]
October 24th, 2008 at 12:58 am
A half bowl remain half after evolving
Sometimes it helps to re-read before publishing.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
i’m also a newbie here… and i love your tutorials! but in step 3 when i try to make that circle with a radial gradient and pretty much do it all, why is it that instead of a glow i just get a semi-transparent white circle?
October 29th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Once you set transparency to screen for your radial gradient the black areas will be semi transparent.
October 31st, 2008 at 4:50 am
[...] 5. Illustrator Tutorial: Disco Ball [...]
November 12th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I got the same problem as sss_sarzz. It is set on screen, but im not acheiving this glow effect.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Hi Koby. Most probably your working in CMYK mode. Go File>Dcoument Color Mode>RGB to change it to RGB.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Great tutorial, thanks a lot, it just help me for one of my homeworks, I was doing a very sucky disco ball by miself, so triying to vectorize from a real one I just find this tutorial and all I have to say is Thanks man!!!, you saved me a lot of time
November 20th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
i dont understand how to do the 20 rows
November 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 am
Nice job. I have mapped a can with a label created. want to show the back of the can, but it is not mapping in color, only light shades of grey. I tried adjusting the plastic shade lighting effect. Any advice?