Flattening 3D Extrude

[Thomas_Slattery@adobeforums.com]

I am trying to reduce an extrusion to it's most basic form so that it will import into Flash without problems. I have tried the "expand appearance" but it still seems to hold on to some 3D aspects like lines that are hidden, or 'behind' the object. I basically want to turn the 3D object into one that was drawn 'by hand'.

Thanks!
TPS

[James_E._Talmage@adobeforums.com]

I don't have CS in front of me where I am right now. However, as I recall, there is an option for turning off rendering of hidden faces in the 3D dialog.

For the smallest SWFs, you will do best to use flat shading. Then add back any grad fills you need natively in Flash.

After Expand Appearance, and depending upon the specific artwork, consisder whether using Pathfinders on the artwork will simplify it further. (I find the Merge Pathfinder invaluable for this kind of thing.)

Finally, if the animation isn't entirely too involved, once you get the frames into Flash, use the Break Apart command to reduce things to their bare essence, and then group the end results. You have to do this frame-by-frame, so it is not always practical.

JET

[Israel C. Evans]

I am trying to reduce an extrusion to it's most basic form so that it will import into Flash without problems. I have tried the "expand appearance" but it still seems to hold on to some 3D aspects like lines that are hidden, or 'behind' the object. I basically want to turn the 3D object into one that was drawn 'by hand'.

Thanks!
TPS

If you go to Object>Expand Appearance, you get a nicely flattened group of vector shapes you can mess with to your heart's delight. I found this via this article.

[Israel C. Evans]

That wasn't a "spam link" I had included, but whatever. I figured some context and credit would be useful to people. And now I don't remember where I had found that original article.