Creating interlinked letters

[Isis478]

Is there a way to interlink letters together to look something like the picture attached?

[Alfred]

1. Place one letter on the canvas

2. Copy it to the clipboard

3. Position the second letter on top

4. Paste the copied first letter

5. Add a shape to cover the intersection where you want the pasted letter to stay on top. In this case I covered the middle of the S with an ellipse.

6. In the Layers panel, drag the ellipse layer and drop it on the thumbnail of the top S layer. This will crop/mask the top S so that only the part within the ellipse remains visible.

[Isis478]

But what if my text is 3d and embossed? I've attached a picture of what I'm trying to do and the problem. 

[Guest]

Hi Isis478,

For relief shapes, make the shapes that cover the intersections transparent.
If the shapes have an external shadow, once the mask is created, remove the "External Shade" fx from it.

[Isis478]

Hi reglico,

I'm really sorry, but I'm not getting what you mean.

[Guest]

ISis478, in my example I drew the two letters and made two copies of the G, with the following order in the layers from bottom to top: G; S; G; G; G. The letters have a "3D" fx and an "Outer Shadow" fx.
Then I placed two transparent rectangles (which correspond to the blue ellipse used by @Alfred) on top of the set. The fact that they are transparent avoids the relief effect you have on your drawing.
In the "Layers" tab of the studio, drag one of the upper copies of the letter G into the thumbnail of one rectangle and then the other copy into the other rectangle. Then delete the fx "Outer Shadow" on both rectangles.

[Isis478]

@reglico, I did that, though in my case I had: A,C,A.

Then I had placed a rectangle on the section on top and dragged my second A, but the C still stayed on top.

This is what I did.

1. Made the A

2. Copied A

3. Made C

4. Pasted A, and it was on to of the C

5. Made a rectangle and put it on a section of the pasted A, in order to have the rectangle transparent I left the fill and stroke to none.

6. Dragged the pasted A in the "Layers" tab to the rectangle's thumbnail

The picture was the end result.

I hoped this helped in finding out where I'm going wrong.

[Guest]

The position of the layers is good, I think when you moved the A next to the thumbnail of the rectangle you got a blue vertical rectangle just to the right of the thumbnail.  In the layers, select the A you placed in the rectangle and right-click on it and choose "Unblock mask". Then put the A back into the thumbnail of the rectangle but release it only when you get a horizontal blue rectangle in the lower part.

I'm sorry, I should have given that clarification earlier. 

[Isis478]

Awesome thank you so much for everything  It's working now  

[Guest]

Glad to see that it works, thank you for the feedback!

[Alfred]

19 hours ago, reglico said:

The fact that they are transparent avoids the relief effect you have on your drawing.

What actually makes the difference is the use of clipping instead of cropping. When you crop to a shape (as I did) part of the letter is cut off and the 3D effect is applied to whatever is left; when you clip to a shape, you create a ‘clipview’ window which restricts what you can see, but the rest of the object is still there in its original 3D form.

Cropping makes the cropping object disappear, which means you don’t need to explicitly make it transparent (so it’s easier to see what you’re doing while you’re doing it). Clipping keeps the clipview object visible, so you need to include the separate step of making the clipview object’s fill transparent.

[Guest]

Hello Alfred,

Thanks for the explanations, I admit I didn't ask myself too many "technical" questions, I work more on instinct, I test and I see if it works!