For realism, this is the place to go. Forget about fountain fills, drapes, and all of that nonsense—when an object has depth, it reflects light in different ways. That is what the Lighting controls are all about.

The first thing to know about Lighting is that you can create more than one light source, just as would be the case in real life. You determine the intensity of each source (maximum of three). The next thing to know is that DRAW determines where the object would reflect brightly and where not (for instance, which face of the extrusion faces the light sources). This mandates your doing two things for best results:

•  Use Object Fill for the extrusion, ignoring all of the fancy nonsense. You might want to apply a light fountain fill to the control object itself, to show the variance of light on the face of the surface, but don’t get fancy with the colors of the extrusion. Let the lighting handle that for you.

•  Remove the outline from the object—the light that you cast will show the edges. You no longer need a hairline to do that.

So here’s your starting point—a solid-filled object with no outline. Attractive, isn’t it?

Stop laughing. Now do this:

1.  Select the control object of the extrusion and press F11 to enter the Fountain Fill dialog. Go from a very light yellow or gray to a medium tone. For our black-and-white rendition, we chose white to 40% gray. Then angle it at about 25 degrees, so the lighter color is at lower-left gradually darkening as it moves to top-right.

2.  Click the light bulb on the property bar, and from the dialog, turn on light source 1.

3.  Note how you can move it to many different positions around the object and how you can vary the intensity.

4.  Set the source to the lower-left and the intensity to 45%. Here’s what ours looks like.

5.  On your own, add a second light source, move them both around, and vary their intensities.

	WARNING Be prepared to do a lot of experimenting with Lighting. You are likely to discover that turning on the light will often darken object faces, unless the intensity is 100 and the light source is facing the surface directly. You may have to start with the object fill at a lighter color to get the desired effect. A small amount of backlighting often helps also.

Now try adding a beveled edge—you’ll meet with much better results.

Figure 15.4 shows our gear being examined closely on a table. We have placed it on a pedestal (although we have absolutely no idea why anyone would want to do this) and are shining two lights upon it. The lower-left light is bright and directly in its face, while the one at right is dimmer, casting ambient light.

Figure 15.4  Two light sources, a beveled edge, and a bit of rotation creates a faithful rendition of our gear.

Study the areas where the gear is dark and where it is light, and you’ll likely agree that DRAW has created a plausible object in three-dimensional space. You can find this on the Sybex Web site as Gear on Display.cdr.

P.S. Are you wondering how we got the gear to be sitting inside of the stand? That’s not possible in two-dimensional space. Answer in Chapter 19.

P.P.S. We used DRAW 9’s new Mesh fill to scatter light and dark areas around this drawing.

TIPAs with DRAW’s other dynamic effects, you can use Arrange Ø Separate to freeze an extrusion. Separate breaks the extrusion into two components: the original control object and a conventional group made up of all the surfaces generated by the effect. If you want to edit an extruded face beyond the norm—apply transparency, create a cutaway, distort it, zoom in on it—you will need to separate it first.

The (Not So) New Bitmap ExtrusionTool

This used to be called Text Extrusion, and Corel had a decision to make: kill it or expand its breadth. They chose the latter, much to the dismay of its team of beta testers. While Corel’s vision for DRAW 9 is cohesive and refined, the one glaring exception is its handling of 3D. Corel removed Dream 3D from the CorelDRAW box, and in its place expected to offer a tool for creating 3D renderings directly in DRAW. The Text Extrusion tool offered in DRAW 8 was the precursor, and we were supposed to be treated to a more robust tool in 9, and the whole enchilada in 10.

This was the plan...on paper. When development compromises became imminent (as they always do), this tool didn’t get the attention it deserved. We completely understand the realities of application development, and we’re fine with Corel concluding that it couldn’t develop it the way it wanted to. But instead of removing the feature altogether, Corel has left it in its semicomplete state and pretty much buried it on the Extrude property bar.

Only time will tell if DRAW 10 will bring this feature to fruition. Until then, we are not placing much stock in it, nor devoting any further space to it. If you want to experiment with the tool, you can search for “bitmap extrusions” in Help for more information.

Final Thoughts on Extruding

We already told you up front that we are not completely warm to Extrude, and then we proceeded to show you how wonderful it is! No question that Extrude can be useful in any situation in which you need to render an object with height, width, and depth. We certainly made that gear look more realistic.

Our angst is over its misuse. Users tend to get infatuated by, obsessed over, and ultimately in trouble with Extrude. The thought process typically goes something like this:

I think I’ll extrude this headline for a bit more punch...looks cool...but now it is extruded and nothing else is...now everything else looks flat...better add a few more...

And before you know it, your drawing is a train wreck. Objects appear to be floating in space, all sense of perspective is lost, and the drawing shouts, “Look at Me!” before there is any chance of getting its intended message across. (Maybe “Look at Me” was its intended message, but that’s another sore subject.)

We can’t think of any work among the renowned fine artists that includes use of Extrude. When capable CorelDRAW artists want to render depth, they actually create the objects that produce the depth and dimension, they don’t rely on an automatic fabricator. We asked one of our resident artists, Shane Hunt, for a sample of his work with Extrude, and indeed, he had to devise one for us, as he also doesn’t use it much in his work. Nonetheless, his impromptu effort, shown in Figure 15.5, offers a nifty example of how Extrude could be tastefully used.

Figure 15.5  The use of Extrude on the headline adds drama and vitality to this design. The paragraph is being shaped with Perspective.

By and large, Extrude will prove to be not an artist’s tool, but a technician’s tool. If the entirety of the CorelDRAW community understood that, we would be fine with the tool. But they don’t...so we’re not. If you, dear reader, learn to use it in the right situation and for the right purpose, that will be a step in the right direction.