# Creating & Using Custom 3D Objects in Adobe Illustrator - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/creating-and-using-custom-3d-objects-in-adobe-illustrator/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Video & Animation · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # Creating & Using Custom 3D Objects in Adobe Illustrator By Gareth B. Davies · Updated July 2026 Evgeniya & Dominic Righini-Brand · Graphic Design & Photography Intermediate · 49 min A tight 49-minute walkthrough of Illustrator's classic 3D effects that trades photorealism for genuinely creative, low-cost geometric object-making. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fcreating-and-using-custom-3d-objects-in-adobe-illustrator%2F1785933369) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. Adobe Illustrator's 3D tools have a reputation for being a footnote next to Cinema 4D or Blender, and this course does not try to argue otherwise. Instead it treats that limitation as the point: here is a fast, inexpensive way to bolt geometric depth onto flat vector work, taught by someone who uses proper 3D software professionally but clearly still finds value in the cheap version. The structure follows the two effects Illustrator actually offers, Extrude & Bevel and Revolve, and builds outward from there. Early lessons establish the mental model that matters most: a 2D path is squeezed along the Z axis to make an extrusion, or spun around the Y axis to make a revolve, so a circle becomes a cylinder and a semicircle becomes a sphere. That framing pays off later when the course gets into less obvious shapes like torus forms from offset revolves or pyramids from custom bevels. ## Where the technique actually lives The middle stretch is the strongest part of the class. Lighting and shading get a genuinely useful breakdown of the light-sphere control, ambient light, highlight intensity and blend steps, explained in terms of what each setting visually does rather than just where the slider sits. The appearance-panel workflow, using Apply Last Effect, Alt-dragging thumbnails to merge attributes, and saving graphic styles, is the kind of efficiency layer that separates someone poking at menus from someone who can actually produce a set of consistent 3D objects quickly. Art mapping, which lets custom symbols wrap onto individual 3D surfaces, is demonstrated with appropriate honesty about its limits: no pattern repetition, fiddly manual scaling instead of a reliable fit-to-surface option, and visible seams where artwork wraps around a form. The custom bevel path lesson is the class's best idea, walking through opening Illustrator's Bevels support file directly, adding hand-drawn open paths as symbols, and relaunching the application to unlock genuinely novel forms like faceted polyhedrons and stepped pyramids that the standard bevel shapes cannot produce. ## Composition and finishing The final third shifts from single-object techniques to assembling multiple 3D elements into a finished piece: keeping lighting and shading consistent across objects, using Expand Appearance before scaling shapes with offset or custom bevels, then layering Gaussian blur for a fake depth of field, a radial gradient vignette, and a film grain texture to soften the vector-flat look. These are simple, well-chosen finishing moves, though the composition and layout judgment itself is explicitly pushed off to the instructor's other pattern-design class rather than covered in depth. That dependency is the course's main structural weakness. It assumes familiarity with panels like Appearance, Symbols, and Graphic Styles, and leans on a companion class for both source shapes and design theory, so it reads less as a standalone class and more as the third installment of a series. Viewers coming in cold on Illustrator's non-3D tools will find some steps move quickly. For anyone already comfortable in Illustrator who wants a contained, well-organized tour of what its 3D effects can and cannot do, this delivers exactly that, without pretending to be more than a clever vector trick. The standout The lesson on editing Illustrator's Bevels support file to add hand-drawn open paths as custom bevel shapes, unlocking pyramids, wedges and polyhedrons impossible with the built-in bevel presets. ## What you will learn - · Building 3D forms from 2D paths using Extrude & Bevel and Revolve, and predicting shape outcomes from the base path - · Lighting and shading a 3D object with the surface panel's light sphere, ambient light, highlight and blend-step controls - · Speeding up repetitive styling with Apply Last Effect, Alt-drag appearance thumbnails, and saved graphic styles - · Wrapping custom artwork onto 3D surfaces via symbols and art mapping, including the shade-artwork option - · Editing Illustrator's Bevels support file to create and use fully custom bevel paths for pyramids and polyhedrons - · Finishing a 3D composition with Gaussian blur depth-of-field, a radial gradient vignette, and a film grain overlay Best for: Illustrator users who already know their way around paths, appearance and symbols and want a fast, low-cost way to add geometric 3D elements to flat vector work. Skip it if: Anyone hoping for photorealistic rendering, materials, or the newer 3D and Materials engine, or a total Illustrator beginner unfamiliar with the appearance and symbols panels. Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples Organization of Lessons Actionable Steps [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fcreating-and-using-custom-3d-objects-in-adobe-illustrator%2F1785933369)