Illustrator: Create a 3D bottle

Hi there. The following exercise is a bit of an old chestnut. So I apologise about that. Almost everybody who has ever used a 3D package has begun by drawing the obligatory bottle or glass. I think that maybe I'll be able to show you why.

Digressing slightly: if anyone from the USA is tuning into this, I'd like to personally thank the whole of America for beta-testing the iPhone. It's very thoughtful of you all. Hopefully, when it arrives in the UK in November time, the iPhone will actually work! :)

1. Lets begin: what I kind of like about this exercise is that if you're the sort of person who gets scared by using the Pen tool I can hopefully prove that you don't need to be an expert in Bezier curves to create perfectly acceptable artwork.

Start by drawing two rectangles: one for the neck of the bottle and one for the barrel of the bottle. Align these both to the centre of the artboard. This last step is not essential but it's good practise in my opinion.



2. Select the larger rectangle and copy it – you will need this copy soon. Now go to Effect> Stylize> Rounded corners and turn on preview. Use the up and down arrows to round off the barrel of the bottle as below.



3. Now to use the copy of the rectangle you created earlier: Hit Apple-F to paste the rectangle in front of the rounded edged rectangle. You're going to use this rectangle to create the rounded bottom of the bottle. Once again go to Effect> Stylize> Rounded Corners and use the up and down arrows to round the box so that it looks something like this:



4. Now reduce the rectangle in height like this:



5. Now we're going to merge the two rectangles. The first step in this is to select the two rectangles and go to Object> Expand Appearance. This removes the rounded edges effect and turns the rectangles into editable objects. Now bring out the Pathfinder palette and alt-click the Add To Shape Area icon. Alt-clicking saves you the trouble of expanding the object later on.



6. You can see that the merge has left us with one or two extraneous anchor points. Select the Pen tool and use it to remove these points. All you have to do is hover the Pen tool over an anchor point until you see a '-' sign. You can now click to remove the point.



7. Now to address the neck of the bottle: draw a rounded-edged rectangle for the lip of the bottle and align it to the centre of the artboard as below:



8. Now select the neck rectangle and the lip rectangle and once again use the Pathfinder palette to merge them.



9. Now select the neck and the barrel and merge them in the same way.



10. We're now going to 3D rotate the object. before we can do this we need to cut it in half. Lots of ways of doing this but the way I favour is to first draw a line down the centre of the bottle and align it to the middle of the artboard as below:



11. Now select all and hit the Divide button in the Pathfinder palette.



12. Now we need to remove the line in the centre. Select the Direct Selection tool, click on the vertical line and hit delete. Also remove the top of the bottle – we need to put some wine in this bottle. Then thicken up the stroke a little and in the Stoke Palette select rounded corners and rounded edges.

Now make sure that there is no fill on the object and go to Object> Path> Outline Stroke. This will create a filled object based on the width of the stroke. Very useful, I find.



13. Now go to Effect> 3D> Revolve. Did I say we were creating a bottle? Looks like a glass to me. Weird, huh?



14. Correct this strange anomaly by choosing Right Edge and change the settings in the dialogue box to meet your requirements.



15. Here I've Selected More Options and added a new light. I've also added some perspective. Hit OK and you have a bottle. Tomorrow we'll set about mapping a label on to the bottle.

See ya soon.