Illustrator CS2 included the welcome addition of a 3D effects module, older timers like me will remember this from the days of Adobe Dimensions. It's a relatively simple 3D app but still fun to use. Here we're going to use Extrude And Bevel to create a simple 3D dice.


1. To begin go to the View menu and turn on Grid and Snap To Grid. Now draw yourself a simple square, adding a fill and removing the stroke. Then draw a simple circle and colour it. Next, alt-drag the circle to make a copy, select the two circles and alt-drag downwards to create two more circles. Finally, hit Command-D to repeat the transformation. You now have a dice with six spots.



2. Now select the dice face and alt-drag to the right. Next select the two dice faces and alt-drag downwards to create two more dice. Finally, hit Command-D again to repeat the last transformation. You now have six dice sides.



3. Now it's time to start removing the spots that you don't want. Moving a few here and there, deleting others. In the end you'll finish up with something which looks like the screenshot below.



4. Now it's time to save each dice side as a Symbol. Select the symbols palette and drag each side into it, one by one.



5. Now delete five of the dice sides and remove all the spots from the final one. Make a note of width of the square. In this case mine is 120px. Select the square and choose Effect>3D>Extrude And Bevel. Turn on the preview and set the Bevel depth to whatever the width of your square is (In my case 120px). Next, hit the Map Art.. button.



6. Now it's time to apply the dice symbols that you saved to each side of the 3D dice. Trawl through each surface and choose the appropriate dice face. Remember to check the Shade Artwork (slower) button and hit OK.



7. The dice is almost done. All that remains is to add a little perspective (everything in the real world has perspective) and light the dice to your satisfaction. Here I've used three lights to do this.

Now start rolling the dice!