Hi everyone. Uh, in this video we're going  to cut hole in the ground using text and an arrow. It's another one of these fun effects  where we're using all the skills that we already know  and just kind of reshuffling them, stacking up the skills. Alright, let's jump in and cut a hole in the ground. Alright, first up, type some text. It looks good with a really bold, thick font.

Okay, I've got something called Basic Sands,  which is my new favorite Sands serif font. I love it. And a Drew Arrow, it's actually just a rectangle  and a triangle, but I use the Pathfinder tool  to kind of smush 'em together. So what we need to do is, first of all, uh,  I'm gonna make a duplicate of it. Always do that just in case things go wrong. I'm gonna select this.

I am going  to do I have to group it first? I think I might have to. Let's get a bit of double check. Let's go, uh, effect down to 3D materials. Now we're using, uh, the classic ones for this trick  because the extruding bevel here doesn't give us  the vector that we need. Okay?

It looks really cool, but it's not gonna allow us  to do the whole cut in the ground. So we're gonna go to the old one  and we're going to go to extrude and bevel. The way I know if it needs to be um, grouped  or not is when I turn it, do they all go together? Can you see? It's all kind of like doing some weird stuff. The arrow is now way back down here,  so I'm gonna cancel that.

Group it. So command G  or control G, go back into it and do it again. That'd be true if you have different chunks of type. Okay? And separate tip boxes. You want to group them first, okay?

Effect 3D materials. 3D, classic extrude. And what you'll find is laying down on the table,  there's some presets in here. So under position, okay, down this one,  isometric top will give us kind of what we need. How deep do you want it to be? Mm, it's up to you.

Okay. I want to mine look like an infinite hole. So it needs to be enough that we can't see the bottom  of it when we clip it in. The other thing you need to make sure you do is  uh, draw hidden faces. Basically you can't see it,  but it's actually drawing all the backs  of the text and that's what we need to see. We're gonna remove this top bits  and we need to be able to see through it.

Anything else you can play around with perspective, let's do  that 'cause it does look much cooler. Just dragging mine up slowly but surely that looks cool. Let's click okay. Now actually before we go  and clip it, um,  you do wanna spend some time getting a good contrast. 'cause remember, see these shadows in here? They're not gonna be very visible.

I'll show you some of the ones that I played around with  before and didn't get a good example. So I'm gonna get rid of ambient light just so  that there's a high contrast. Can you see what I mean? And just play around with all of these. Like where is it coming from? If I drag this  around I can get a really cool um, you know, bit  of graduated color around some of these parts.

But there's a lot of trial  and error, getting it to kind of how much you want. Depends on the colors you've done. But the only thing you need to remember  to do is draw hidden faces. Alright again, I'm gonna make a duplicate of this. Drag it off you. I'm gonna go to object and expand appearance.

Okay? And now it's shapes. I'm gonna ungroup loads  'cause I'm not sure how many I need to do. Just smash it loads of times. Okay? And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab shift,  click all of these top parts,  Okay?

And the way I check  I've got them all is give 'em a wiggle,  then hit undo so I know I've got them all. So for this to work, I need them all  to be attached but not a group. Okay? I'm gonna make them a compound path. There's another one of those weird tricks  where sometimes stick 'em all together. To get it to act as one unit, you need  to make it a compound path.

So command eight or control eight or object. Let's go down to compound path. Let's make it okay. Nothing really happens except I can select all of it. And because it's at the top should be at the top. I can go command seven or control seven and it makes a mask.

And look, we chopped holes in stuff. The background's too dark. Alright, so I've got it locked on my own. But remember I use my sneaky uh, command two to lock it  or control two on a pc. I can right click and say unlock that rectangle  and I'm gonna play around with the color. That's better, easier to see.

There you go. That's how to make it look like there's a hole chopped  in the ground using text. Actually you can use anything. I'll show you my vision. I gave that loads of different goes. Okay, can you see?

It's all about the shadows and how they cast. Okay. And depending on like that one's got a lot more perspective. This one didn't have a lot of shading. This one went overboard with the shading. So there's a little bit of like trial and error.

Well, a lot of trial and error to get something looking  like it's legible and that it's cut in the ground. Am I happy with mine? I think I like it just like that. Oh, I know. All right. Light gray feels better.

There you go. Now it looks like things are cut in the ground  and I'll use that for the intro. It's easy to do. Now that we've got some  of these skills stacks, we've got uh, what have we've got? We know how to make compound pass. We know how to make masks.

We know how to do a little bit of 3D. We can group stuff, lock stuff. We are illustrate heroes. Alright, and that is it. Uh, tips go here. This sign totally doesn't work.

I'm gonna have to rotate it around a little bit. Tips go down there. Still kinda works. Alright, that is it. I will see you in the next video.