ILLUSTRATOR CC HELP - CREATING A 3D VERSION OF A FINE SERIF FONT

[doodlebuglynch]

Can anyone help and please forgive me if this is basic to a lot of people but I'm painstakingly trying to create a 3d serif typeface that is too fine to work effectively using the 3D bevel and extrude option. I need the offset type to appear as flat white (not shaded (diagram 2) but in 3D so there are no gaps between the white serif and the serif in black (diagram 1). I have multiple versions to do for a client and am hoping there is an easy less painstaking way of doing this without it being so ridiculously time consuming altering each letter by hand. I just can't get a good effect from the 3D effect version of creating it. Please help! Thanks so much

 

[Paul Murray]

I'd probably use actual 3D software for this to render out if it was me. Illustrator 3D objects give you really messy files when you convert them to outlines which I've never liked.

Or, I'd offset the text as you have done then manually draw the connections between the two by hand.

 

[scotty]

It depends how pure/simple you want your paths to be but if you do want it simple then the way to do it is far from that.
Fact is there isn't a easy way to get a perfect

The easy, quick way:

You can make a blend and if you don't mind a complex path on the blend once it's expanded then you could set it to a lot of steps so it appears smooth
but it will be jaggy when you zoom in really close and the number of nodes will crank up the file size.
Here's a tut that uses the above.

The extremely laborious manual way:

To get it perfect then you need to have fewer steps so it's not too complex and delete all the nodes in-between and join the gap so that there is just one path between the two nodes.
Here's one that I did with the steps deleted and re-joined which is kind of a similar thing.

It took ages and I wouldn't relish the thought of doing an entire typeface.

 

[doodlebuglynch]

Thanks Scotty, I thought the manual method was going to be the best option, I just hoped I was missing something! The blend option is one thing but with complex vector illustrations also included the file size would be huge and not easy to work with. Thanks for your help