the vectorbot's playground

Creating a reflection




Difficulty: Beginner

Sometimes we want a modern and clean look to our design. What should we do? The easiest way to achieve that is to add a reflection at the bottom of it as it was placed on a shiny/reflective surface. In this tutorial we are going to learn how to create a reflection like that in Adobe Illustrator.

Look at a real reflection
Before we begin with the tutorial we should 1st study how a real reflection looks like. We can either do it by placing an object on a shiny surface and study it, or we can just Google for reflection images and study the images we found. After that, please take a look at the following images. Which of the objects here are with a correct reflection? If your answer is "All" then please go back to the previous step and take a closer look at those real reflections.







The correct answer here is 4 of the objects to the left are with the right reflections. In a normal condition, on a flat surface and a low angle/frontal view, the reflection should be in almost the same height as the object. This is a very common mistake make by a lot of young designers when creating reflection.

The following diagram shows how we see an object with the reflection. At the diagram "a", the red line above the surface is (almost) the same height as the one below the surfaces which means that what we see above the surface (the object) is (almost) the same height as what we see below the surface (the reflection). For the diagram "b" we can see that the red line above the surface is very much longer then the one below. This way the reflection will be shorter then the object as in the sample. This will only happened on a card-like object as in the diagram. And we don't usually draw an object in this angle and position. So it will look awkward if we create a 3d object with a short reflection like this.










2 ways of doing it
There are 2 ways to create a reflection for your object/design. One is with gradient fill and the other one is with opacity mask. There are pros and cons in both ways. The gradient fill way, we can be sure of the compatibility to older version down to version 5, but this will be complicated if your design/object is very complex. The opacity mask way is easier to execute but can only be compatible down to version 9. If your illustration is created in submitting to royalty-free stock images site like istockphoto (which only accept eps version 8) in mind then you can only use the 1st way to do it.

Reflection- The gradient fill way
We are starting the tutorial will the simplest object e.g. object from a straight frontal view (as in the 1st example below) or from a low angle view like the following examples.







Tips: The easiest way to see if the object is from a low angle view is by looking at the vanishing point. If it's at the same level as the bottom of the object then it's from a low angle view. In this case, the bottom of the object will appear to be in a straight horizontal line.


We are going to do it by the following steps with the help of the diagrams below.

1. We are going to use an object from a straight frontal view like the diagram #1 below.
2. With the object still in selection, click and hold on the Rotate button and drag down to select the Reflect Tool from the Tools palette. We can also selecting it by pressing the "O" shortcut key. Now with the Reflect Tool click at one of the lower corner point as in the diagram #2 (the lower left corner point is selected here) to set the reflect axis.
3. Then drag the object down across the reflect axis to the bottom with shift+option(Mac) or shift+alt(Windows) pressed to make a reflect copy of the object to the bottom as in diagram #3.
4. Now we have a mirrored but solid object below the original object just like the diagram #4.
5. To achieve the clean shiny reflection effect, we need to lighten and soften the reflected part with the use of the Gradient Palette (Window>gradient or Command+F9 (Mac) or Ctrl+F9 (Windows). So we will fill the reflected part with a gradient starting from white to the object colors. The object in the sample here is in orange and black colors, so we need 2 gradients like this. Now fill the respective gradients to the object.
6. With the Gradient Tool ("G" shortcut key), hold down shift key and drag from the reflection to the object as in the diagram to set the starting and the ending point of the gradient fill to create a smooth fading effect to the reflection.
7. Deselect the object by clicking outside of the object with the Selection Tool or with the Shift+Command+A (Mac) or Shift+Ctrl+A (Windows) shortcut key. Now we can see that we have a nice reflection below our design.

This is the simplest way for creating a reflection with the use of the gradient tool, which only need us to reflect the object to the bottom of it with the Reflection Tool, and fill it with the respective gradients for a fading effect. And remember this is only suitable for the objects with a straight frontal view or low angle view.

Tips: Holding down the shift key while we drag, shear, rotate, draw or reflect an object will limit the movement in the closest 45˚ or in a constraining proportions when scaled. Holding down the option key (Mac) or alt key (Windows) when dragging, shearing, rotating or reflecting will make a copy of the original object. These 2 are very useful modifier keys when using Illustrator.

Reflection of a 3d object
So now we have a 3d object from a higher view (around 45˚) like the sample to the right. This is getting a little more complicated then the previous one. As we can see here, the bottom of the object doesn't appear to be in a straight line, so we couldn't just duplicate a mirrored image to the bottom just like what we did previously. We need to make a little adjustment to the reflected part for it to look right.

1. We are going to start by reflecting a copy of the object down as the reflection like what we see in the diagram #1 below. But it still look kind of "floating" like with only one corner touching the floor/surface.
2. To make it look right, we are going to remove the top part of the reflection (the lowest part now since it has been flipped down) as we are not going to see it in an angle like this. Now select the front panel of the reflection (the one with an A).
   
3. Select the Shear Tool and click on the point where the object and the reflection touches to set a user-defined reference point as in the 3rd diagram.
4. Now click and drag the upper left point of the reflection to the lower left point of the object with the shift key pressed.
5. We can now see the reflection of the front panel looks correct.
6. We are going to shear the side of the object as the previous steps. We select the side of the reflection like the 6th diagram, and click on the the upper left of the selection (the point where the object and the reflection touches) to set the user-defined reference point.
7. Now drag the upper right point of the reflection up to the lower right corner of the object like the diagram.
8. The reflection below our 3d object is now look right.

We can now fill the reflection with the respective gradient fill as what we did in the previous tutorial for a nice fading reflection effect.




















Reflection- The Opacity Mask way
We have already learned the way to create a reflection with the use of the gradient tool. Now lets do it with the Opacity Mask way. The reflecting and shearing part to create the mirrored image to the bottom of your object is the same as the previous tutorial. The only different here is we are going to make the fading effect of the reflection with the use of the Opacity Mask.

1. To create an opacity mask, 1st we need a masking object. This masking object defines the areas, the opacity and the degree of transparency. The opacity mask is fully visible when the masking object is in white and is hidden when it's in black. We are going to draw a rectangle (as the masking object) a little bigger then the object we want to apply the opacity mask to as in the 1st diagram. In this case, the reflection.
2. Now fill the masking object with a gradient from black to white. After that, we select the gradient tool ("G" shortcut key) and drag from the bottom of the reflection to somewhere in the object with the shift key pressed, to set the starting and the ending point of the gradient fill.
3. Now with the selection tool ("V" shortcut key) we drag from outside to the center of the masking object to select both the masking object and the reflection as in the 3rd diagram. Open the transparency palette (Window>Transparency or Shift+Command+F10 (Mac) or Shift+Ctrl+F10 (Windows)), click and drag the palette menu at the top right corner of the transparency palette to select "Make Opacity Mask" from the pulldown menu.
4. Now we have a nice fading reflection effect just like the one we created in the previous tutorial.

This is a simpler way compare to the previous one, because we don't need to change each individual color into a gradient fill. Which is more obvious if we are working on a complicated design with many different colors.

Tips: After the opacity mask is created we can see this 2 square in the transparency palette as in the following diagram. The left side will be the original object we applied the opacity mask to. The right side will be the masking object. In order to edit the masking object we need to click at the square with the masking object (right side). We can change the size, gradient or color of the masking object now. But remember to click back to the square with the object (left side) to continue working with your illustration.











This conclude our tutorial this week. The tutorial is not very hard but I think this is a very useful trick to learn. Just remember, if we are not sure of the look of certain thing, go find the real thing and study. Never create any weird looking reflection anymore.

Once again, hopefully this is useful to you.