Improved 3D effects and Adobe Substance materials
We have introduced new and improved '3D and Materials' effects in 26.0 this year. These effects have been fully rebuilt using modern rendering technology and apart from being much more stable than classic 3D effects, they also allow you to:
* Apply and edit 3D effects conveniently through a non-blocking panel with real time preview.
* Texture artwork using Adobe Substance 3D materials that are highly adjustable. Choose from built-in materials in the panel or upload your own.
* Light up artwork with environment and directional light along with shadows.
* Create smooth and curvy extrusions using the new Inflate option.
* Rotate artwork more easily using the new on-canvas controls.
* Once you've setup your 3D object, render it using Ray tracing with adjustable quality options.
There are more features we're actively working on bringing to these effects. Please share your feedback and suggestions from your experience of using these new effects.
AdminAkshaya Saxena
(Admin, Adobe Illustrator)
shared this idea
There are now several separate requests made, based on the feedback in this thread:
1. Regarding adjustable color and opacity for 3D shadows:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/47054086
2. Regarding presets for each tab in 3D and Materials panels: Object, Materials, Lighting:
http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/47350001
All those who commented on the topic until October 16, 2023, are already added as voters there. If this is something you want to have for 3D and Materials in Illustrator — please upvote it. If possible — create new requests and bug reports about 3D, rather than commenting here inside. This will help the team to better prioritize efforts on making the feature better. As always — thanks for the feedback! It helps.
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Sebastián Viera commented
es muy buna la aplicion de d3
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Simon
commented
Iam having truble with this invisible geometry. It just dont work for cross object. Either Iam doing something wrong or I dont know.
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Tim
commented
Why do shadows overlap if applied to multiple shapes at the same time? shadows are subtractive and so applying the shadows individually to each shape makes no sense as you end up with a darker patch where the two objects' shadows overlap, which is not how shadows work. There should be an option to toggle to apply shadows as one unified "shape" or effect so that this is not an issue.
New idea from comment
This comment was upgraded into a new idea: Make an option for shadows from separate 3D objects to be unified to avoid overlapping darkness -
Giulia De Pompa commented
SI blocca, non mi fa selezionare tasti una volta che premo "Gonfia", i pannelli giù rimangono bloccati e non mi fa modificare i valori.
New idea from comment
This comment was upgraded into a new idea: Problemi con "Inflate", il pannello si blocca, i controlli sono disabilitati -
Varun commented
Why is the preview for lighting missing? And why is the render so slow? Also why is there no undo option to take you back to the previous rotation position??!!!! This is Illustrator 2025! Horrible.
New idea from comment
This comment was upgraded into a new idea: Lighting preview is missing in 3D and Materials panel in Ai 2025, Undo does not work for 3D rotation, performance is slow -
jana zapak commented
This 3D in Illustrator is just a fantasy Kiddish tool, where you cant integrate into any 3D softwares professionaly,
the main reason is all the color totally washed out or totally behaving differently while exporting to GLTF or USDZ..We have tried all the RGB / CMYK color profiles and all color spaces, its totally unusable and couldnt get the colors, so with this we cant use for for professional purposes...
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Kiid Tee commented
I want to be able to use my 3D and materials, I can't edit or do anything that is 3D
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Nadav Meiden commented
What is missing from the 3-D effect in Illustrator (bevel and extrude), is finer control of the shadows. How soft they are, what service they are, a shadow cast on control, etc..
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Huberty
commented
Hi there,
Since I downloaded 3D materials in the Adobe substance online application, and added them to illustrator. The application crashes. I was able to reach the file (Illustrator Application > Show Package Contents > Contents > Resources > Material Resources > Default_Substance_Materials.) But when I delete them, the textures no longer load, impossible to rebot, other versions, uninstall-reinstall. It always appears like that, I don't know what to do anymore. Impossible to reuse the materials. If you have a solution, I'm interested. Thank for reading :)New idea from comment
This comment was upgraded into a new idea: Illustrator crashes after adding 3D Materials from Adobe Substance. Deleting default materials leads to problems -
Andrzej Misiura commented
Unwanted black outline around object. Cannot remove.
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Ben Morris
commented
In the last two updates I haven't been able to use 3D effects at all. 'The operation cannot complete because of an unknown error [Clr?]' is the error message I get. And when I close that error message I get another: 'An error occurred while processing the appearance of an object.'
Update: I downloaded the update (I'm now using 28.7) and I discovered that 3D Classic works fine, but the new version still won't work for me. Anyone any clues? -
andrea
commented
The 'new and improved' Rotate doesn't work well. When it works it doesn't allow to expand, and on bitmap images doesn't work at all, it gives me a strange unrelated message (see attached). I use the classic, which works (see attached), unfortunately the classic is not really precise and sometimes gives strange results, but better than nothing.
New idea from comment
This comment was upgraded into a new idea: Make 3D and Materials effect work with raster images -
Tobi, yep. This 3D effect does not work with raster images as a base object.
But the Classic 3D works still if you need it.
It is not 'was', it 'is' — still in the menu, ready to use.The speed depends on various factors. Since the new effect is raster-based (sigh) it takes more effort to calculate it if the size of your 'simple collection of object' is large, and if your Raster Effects Settings resolution is high.
But perhaps something is just broken. If you want the team to take a look at the collection' you try — please share a doc (or at least show some screenshots). -
Tobi Delbruck commented
It's really bad now, you cannot do simple 3d rotate on a flat raster image. And if use the transform tools it is OK, but trying to rotate a simple collections of objects is SOOOO slow... was much better before.
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Arjun, there is no need to YELL.
I’ve added you as a voter to the feature request about the opacity for shadows here: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/47054086 -
Arjun Thakur commented
SHADOW SHOULD NOT IN NORMAL OPACITY IT SHOULD BE MULTIPLY OPACITY SO THAT THE SHADOW LOOKS REAL.
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Luca Balestra commented
3D SOFTWARE DOESNT WORK AND I CANNOT VISUALIZE THE EFFECT...WHY? PLS HELP
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Peter
commented
Ideally pushing the rendering tasks to a background process would help with using this tool. It's a bit of a pain to have to click and unclick cpu-intensive modes just to make adjustments or wait for 10+ seconds when I could be working on another part of the artwork.
New idea from comment
This comment was upgraded into a new idea: Make rendering of 3D happen in background -
hafiz arshad commented
please share where the map art option is in the illustrator 2023 version.
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Danilo Cruz commented
The extrude effect seems to be extruding along the Z axis in both directions simultaneously. Maybe there should be an option to fix the front face and extrude it backwards (or fix it as a back face and extrude it forward) so that it would be possible to match the same isometric view as the original flat vector in a graphic style.
New idea from comment
This comment was upgraded into a new idea: Introduce an option for for 3D and Materials to extrude only forward or backward instead of both ways at once
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