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Illustrator CC 2017: Blend Tool does not blend two paths properly

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
February 2, 2017
6 replies
8336 views

Dear Community,

I recently upgraded to Illustrator CC 2017 at work and my blend tool does not work properly anymore.
Every time I try to blend two paths I end up with several edgy, crooked gradation-paths between them.
They stay that way when expand them into seperate paths.
I tried different settings, but it didn't change a thing, downgrading to CC 2015 did not fix the problem either.

Hope someone can help me, because I desperately need that tool to work right now

Thanks and regards,
Saskia

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer carlosgarro

Thank you. That's perfect. How did you get that result? Did you use the smart remove brush?

Yes!

astutegraphics is like a Swiss Knife.

I just took the brush and in less than a minute I got rid of the unnecessary points.

A

annea49050257

Participating Frequently

Here's another example. Notice the squiggly line at the bottom after the blend? Help please, someone!

Doug A Roberts

Community Expert

it's quite difficult to say what might be wrong with a blend without knowing exactly what anchor points there are and having a play around with it. share the file perhaps?

Ares Hovhannesyan

Community Expert

Great!

It's essentially the same technology.

Best regards

Just want to add that such kind of effect with blend we can get if our open path have fill. In this case the button arc have fill.

A

annea49050257

Participating Frequently

I'm having a similar problem. I would like to blend two objects, one outer and one inner to create a blend in between. I end up with a squiggly mess. Can someone please assist? (The last image is what I'd ideally like to achieve and is only there as an example.) Thanks!

MichaelStephens

Legend

The other responses to this problem are correct in regard to irregular points and handles, however the underlying problem is the location of the all the points/handles that the blend is having to calculate.

The image below shows your two paths in the top part of the image and my adjustment to the paths with the points placed at the tangencies of the paths and all the unnecessary points removed.

The blend between the two versions can be seen here.

Expanding both sets of blends you can see the underlying paths that Illustrator is attempting to use in order to create the blend between the paths.

While you did manage to fix the major issue with the large gap near the top in a previous post, the other points on the curve are still contributing the problem areas. Even in my adjusted version you can see that the points and handles of my expanded version don’t create a completely smooth blend either but it's very close. You could continue to modify handles and point placement until you get a result that you like, but because of how the blend is calculated by Illustrator you may never get something that you feel is 100% perfect.

You also have the option of using what you currently have and selecting Option > Blend > Expand, so you could modify the blend steps manually, which is how I got the points for each individual shape. Then you could visually try to correct the imperfections you're seeing, but that would also mean that you're no longer working with an effect so you should create a copy first so you can go back to the original artwork if you needed.

chanaart

Community Expert

Not sure I understand the question.. You want to blend it with certain steps?

Doug A Roberts

Community Expert

do the paths have the same number of anchor points?

AmalieFischkopfAuthor

Participant

No they don't have the same number of anchor points, one has four, the other one five.
I did graphics like this before and it never caused problems, it first appeared after the update.
Other graphics created with this tool in the same file are perfectly fine.

I marked the problems red in the .ai, you can find it here:

WeTransfer

Maybe it's a bug.