Illustrator envelope/mesh question.

Ok. I know how to do meshes, envelope meshes, and the like in illustrator, but there is one particular thing that still eludes me with them.

When you have an object that has curves in it that you want to turn into a gradient mesh....is it at all possible to give that mesh straight rows & columns? Every time I try this, I end up getting curved rows/columns that flow with the meshed object. Its annoying because I can't get text to be straighter within them.

Illustrator says you can click on a mesh point (the diamond shaped ones), hold down shift, and then you "should" be able to slide it to the destination you want. However, this does not work at all. The point ends up jumping to another point close to it. And this happens even with "snap to point" unchecked.

My work around right now is to start the mesh off as a straight lined object, and then selectively warp it.



BTW. The top mesh isn't a mesh, because I can't get them to look like that without a lot of trouble.

Originally posted by mrbogus
Its annoying because I can't get text to be straighter within them.

The text part is what's throwing me...could you explain (or better yet, show an image of) more clearly what you want to do?

This was copied directly from the Chesire Cat.ai sample that came with illustrator 10.

Example 1 is a mesh without the "column" guide-lines. Just to show you the effect of not having columns/rows in a mesh. The text warps terribly.

Example 2 shows what Adobe had in their sample. They have fairly straight guide lines within the mesh, which straightens out the text.

Example 3 is just the mesh released from the text. Just in case you needed to see it.

I want to do exactly what is shown in example 2 & 3, without having to go through a convoluted method of warping a mesh object with straight points. If you allow illustrator to put columns/rows into a curvy meshed object, the guides stay curved, just like the object, and they are useless for straightening out text.

Now Adobe's people may have done what I do, which is to warp a straight-lined mesh object. OR, there actually is a way to leave the rows/columns created in a mesh straight, and not curved along with the mesh.