5 steps for drawing complex vector sun rays
TweetThis tutorial shows you how you can make sun rays in Adobe Illustrator, I’m using the CS3 version.
Before you start make sure you set your Fill color to None and Stroke color to Black or whatever color you prefer.
Step 1 Your draw a circle. The one I drew was 100 px in diameter.
Step 2 Select Window>Stoke (Ctr+F10) to bring up the Stroke Panel and click on the Show options to view all the Stroke options.
Step 3 Now increase the Stroke Weight until you get something similar to a circle. For a diameter of 100 pixels a weight of 100 pixels should do it.
Step 4 Now Click of the Dashed Line option and… tadam!!! You have your Vector Sun Rays. But what if you want to spice things up?
Step 5 You play with the Dash/Gap Values!
Let’s try a 3-4-1 setting
Now a 5-3-2-1-12 setting
Make sure that before you use your customs sun rays you expand your circle by using OBJECT>EXPAND from the menu bar.
As you seen you can get some real funky, retro vector sun rays for your backgrounds in less than a minute. Your Vector Sun Rays are ready to be used in your backgrounds. You can easily add a Radial Gradient in Illustrator to add a bit of dept. You now have a cool background for your next illustration .
Keep a close eye on our blog for more Drop-Dead Tutorials.
46 Comments
Damir
08.13.2008
until now it took me 20 minutes to do this, hard way :)
Thanx!
Abifahrt
08.14.2008
Great trick, haven´t seen this yet,
I always used one of the preinstalled shapes in Fotoshop, but this ist much better.
Thank you for the info
jon
08.14.2008
Sweet trick! This will make it easy to do cool and precise radiant shapes.
Ressa
08.18.2008
This is wonderful! I love tutorials that make my (design)life easier.
dakeat
08.20.2008
I can’t tell you how many times I have searched for a “quick” tutorial on how to do this in the past, and only found crappy tutorials on it. Brilliant in it’s simplicity. Thanks a ton!
frank
09.02.2008
This kinda makes me really happy and really angry at the same time.
To think of the time I would have saved….
thanks!
Gary Spedding
09.29.2008
Try this in InDesign too for some really crazy designs. More flexibility with strokes in InDesign.
Thanks for this though.
Lukas
09.30.2008
Well just a quick comment, that some RIPS can’t handle it. Had a customer that used this technique about 2 years ago. When a poster was printed the line width got up to well over 2000pt and the RIP went crazy, lotts of ines everywhere. You may need to expand appearance to make sure you get what you see.
JD
10.12.2008
I must be a freakin’ dunce. When I click “Dashed Line,” nothing happens…
chandrashekhara gowda
11.18.2008
hi.. good technic to teach me well,
thank a lot
jessica
01.01.2009
hi
can you tell an easy similar way to do the same in PHOTOSHOP and not illustrator ? I use photoshop 7 …
thank you very much and waiting for your reply curiously.
Jessy
Georgiana
01.02.2009
Thanks for writing Jessica .
It is actually very easy to do this effect in Photoshop as it is in Illustrator…and be sure that you will see a tutorial on this subject in the near future.
Dumie
01.05.2009
A very GOOD tutorial…. I’ve always had a hard time trying to create that in illustrator.
Thank you very much!!
sani
03.19.2009
Very nice. i need like this tricks. thanks
Scott
04.04.2009
WOW! This way is 1 million times easier then drawing each shape out. Thanks a Million!
Kristin
05.12.2009
OMG…this is SO much easier than the other tuts I’ve seen for this effect. You are a genius! Thanks :)
nikita
07.25.2009
Any chance I can get a gradient on this?
n
StevenHou
09.19.2009
I hate to be the clueless one but I need some help. The last line of the tut says to expand with OBJECT > EXPAND. When I do that, the circle turns back to a full black circle. I only get the options to expand stroke and fill, the “object” box is grayed out. What’s wrong? What do I do the accomplish the expand? Thanks!
Mindy
10.28.2009
I get the same results. The same black circle when I expand my radial.
I have CS2 could that be the problem?
Nina
02.18.2011
Tryout Object/Flatten Transperancy if you use CS2. Should work.
Designer Row
09.22.2009
You rock! Thanks so much for posting this. It honestly can’t get any simpler than this. Thanks again.
Sara Czyzewicz
11.27.2009
Wow. Yeah you just saved me a vast amount of time, thanks for posting.
Sara Czyzewicz
11.27.2009
Wow. Yeah you just saved me a vast amount of time, thanks for posting.
Chris
02.14.2010
Jebus man!!! That was too easy. Thanks for the tutorial!
Lyrka
03.16.2010
I did Object>Path>Outline Stroke to get the individual rays and that did the trick.
Thanks for the awesome tutorial!
CCG
03.20.2010
Thank you so very much!
seba
03.31.2010
great!!!! really easy and fast!! thanks again!!!
Logo Design Gear
04.08.2010
Wow. Cool stuff. Like it :)
cygnusx1
07.28.2010
wow, it’s so great and detail tutorial…
Abhinav
10.19.2010
very nice technique !! I had been wasting so much of my energy on this lately.
Respect
Bonita
11.08.2010
oh wow!! ..and here I was thinking of the most complex ways to try and draw sun rays. I’m really glad I found this tutorial.. Thanks!! :)
mrmr
11.27.2010
thank’s Alot
Purses for cheap
12.06.2010
wassup, im really feeling this post but the other links arent working. You might wanna make sure your site works in IE 7 cuz you know that browser is prone to errors sometimes.
L.H.
03.01.2011
Ugh, this is ridiculously simple, I feel ridiculous for having spent hours trying to do this using masks and star shapes and all kinds of complicated Pathfinder tools. Illustrator is such an awesome tool, but so hard to penetrate sometimes. Thanks for making it this much easier!
eikaT
04.06.2011
sooo simple !!! i’ve thinking about ‘arrays’ and stuffs like that….ha ha ! THANK YOU VERY MUCH for sharing
Jessica
10.26.2011
I million thanks for your super efficient tutorial. Clean, simple and brilliant! Sure could have saved me
some time on another recent design project…
bob
10.27.2011
OMG thanks alot!!!! takes seconds and is flexible…
bob
10.27.2011
remember to expand though
oyaoya
12.01.2011
wow, this is way easier to do than the rotate-duplicate method. really cool and super easy steps to follow. thanks!
kate
12.02.2011
luv it
its gr8
by the way it is much easier to draw with steps
thnx u
rudolf
12.08.2011
wooow!
so simple, so sweat
danke!
gracias!
obrigado!
Leo Alexander Barquero
04.02.2012
Thanks… Its a great Tip! XD
Lauren Prueter
04.19.2012
Wow this is the quickest way I've seen. You sir are a genius.
Shelby Burns
05.23.2012
this is genius! simple easy fast! woo
Tim
08.20.2012
Thank you so much! That is genius, and slippery quick. Thanks for sharing.
Nasir Saleem
02.08.2013
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