I know that many are going to hate me for this tutorial…hehe.
I`m not going to tell you, if such a 3d looking sphere is a good visual idenity or not, I`m going to show you how you can do something like this in illustrator.

I`m gonna create probably more tutorials about the “3d-looking spheres”, hope that you will enjoy them.

Step 1. Creating the symbol.

Create a new standart document.

Using the ellpise tool, create a shape that looks like what i made.

Play with the anchor points, using the direct selection tool.

Select the shape and define a new symbol.

Step 2.Revolve.

Create a circle using the ellipse tool, with the direct selection tool delete an anchor point

Select the shape and go to effect>3d>revolve.

Here are the settings.

From 3d revolve options go to > Map Art… Select the symbol we made and also check “Invisible Geometry”.

This is how it should look like.

Copy, paste, copy paste…

Select the second shape, go to appearence and select “3d revolve mapped”.

New settings for this shape.

This is how it should look like. Now select the third shape.. we will change the settings for this shape too.

Step 3.Preaparing the elements.

Select the 3 shapes and align them.

Expand appearances and ungroup (ctrl+shift+g) (ungrop the shapes 3-4 times)

We need now to delete all clipping paths. Open the layers tab.. and delete them.

Recolor the back of the elements.

Move the black elements .. to the back.

Create a circle between the back and front of the elements.

Recolor the circle, with a radial gradient. Check the image below for exact colors (use the eydroper tool and steal my colors:) )

Now we gonna recolor everyting. See in the pictures below the colors and gradients i have used.

Using the pentool create this shadows. Transparency mode: “Multiply”, opacity 70%. I`ve used a linear gradient..

Now i will create a shadow under our sphere, using the ellipse tool and a radial gradient from black to transparent white.

You can add many more detalis, but i prefer to stop here. It`s your choice.

Download project file HERE