- [Narrator] Let's see how we can create
a wire frame version of our type.
Start with a piece of type,
effect menu, 3D, extrude, and bevel.
I'm going to use off axis front
but feel free to experiment with the position.
I'll set the surface to wire frame
and increase the extrude depth, in this case to 200 points.
Now for what I want to do with this,
I need to, at this point, expand the appearance.
This is as far as I can go with it as a 3D object.
When I expand the appearance,
the result isn't going to look that great,
and it's going to give me
way more paths than I actually need.
My artwork is way more complicated than it needs to be.
So we need to go through a process
of quite dramatic simplification here.
I'll come to the object menu and clipping mask release.
There are a number of clipping masks
in here which we don't want.
Then I'll come to the object menu once again
and choose un-group.
Now so that you can see what's happening here.
I'm going to come to the layers panel
and I'm going to move my artwork onto its own layer
and lock the other layers so that I can't affect them.
And then we'll disclose the contents of this layer.
I'll tear the layers panel off and we'll expand it.
Object, un-group, look how many subgroups we have there.
Un-group again and just keep choosing un-group
until you can choose it no longer.
Now what I want to do is just isolate
those essential parts of the shape.
Most of this, we don't want.
Here's how I'm going to do it.
I'll create a new layer above my current layer,
de-select and now I'm going to select
just those essential parts of the letter form.
I'm holding down my shift key as I do this.
And I think that's all I need.
So I will now move all of these pieces to the layer above
and to verify that I have what I need,
I'll turn off the layer below.
Looks like I missed a piece,
so I can turn that layer back on, select it,
select the missing piece, and then move that
up to the layer above, let's now hide that.
And I think our artwork is now simple enough
that we can combine the shapes
using the shape builder tool.
Had I gone to the shape builder tool prior to those steps,
the result would not have been good.
We would have had way too many anchor points
and the parts would have just been
way more complicated than they needed to be.
So now I will select everything,
come to the shape builder tool and combine the shapes.
I still have way more anchor points than I need.
So from the object menu, I'll come to path and simplify.
It tells me that 68 points is the result
from an original number of 273.
Let's now increase the stroke weight
and this shows up another problem, and that is the joints.
So I'll come to the stroke panel.
I'll make sure that we are using rounded corner joints.
Let's now take this
and we'll make it into a colored version.
So I'll duplicate it simply by dragging away from it
using the option or alt key.
And I'll set the stroke color to none.
Now I see that there is a bit of a problem up here.
I need to incorporate that segment.
And with this version, I'll make sure
I do that now with the shape builder tool.
I'll come to my swatches panel and we can just swipe
over the segments to combine where necessary
as I need to do right here or just to apply color.