I can try to fill the empty space left manually after doing "reset with mesh" but I want this to be automatic. If I only use text, it will get extended without leaving empty space.
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Hi. Welcome to GDSE. There's no way to automate it. Illustrator knows nothing about anything. It's only a dumb machine. If you distort a group of objects, it distorts the whole group and is unaware of anything contained within it. It knows nothing about the text, or the space around objects, or anything about your design, or what it ought to look like.– Billy KerrCommented Dec 17, 2022 at 11:09
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If it can extend only text perfectly until the edges of the path/shape, as you can see it in the screenshot., why does it leave empty spaces when it's fitting graphics + text?– Adam AllemanCommented Dec 17, 2022 at 11:15
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I already told you. You are comparing its application to a group, versus applying it to text only. Illustrator doesn't know what it is distorting.– Billy KerrCommented Dec 17, 2022 at 11:45
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Perhaps you could distort the text and its container separately, however this is even more manual work, two meshes instead of one. Alternatively with just one mesh, you could manually distort the text by moving the mesh points inside the shape, so there isn't so much space.– Billy KerrCommented Dec 17, 2022 at 11:52
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see example here– Billy KerrCommented Dec 17, 2022 at 12:01
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1 Answer
It does not actually work the way you think it does. It does a transformation from rectangle to shape, not arbitrary shape to arbitrary shape. And the rectangle is just the bounding box of your shape. Since there's no functionality for giving it a rest shape there is no way you can do this on a slanted box.
Image 1: All envelope distort modes start with a rectangular shape. So the things outside the object is most decidedly part of the object as far as Illustrator is concerned.
You can however in this case first slant it to a rectangle, then distort. But that just for this particular shape it will fail in most other cases.
Image 2: If you unslant it first you get a better, though not perfect result.
To recap what you ask can not be done with the tool you ask to do it with. Mainly because it starts out with the bounding rectangle and any non rectangular shape has empty shape.
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Great find, I figured this out already yesterday evening, I forgot to check back here yesterday. Now it's clear. Question still remains though: can Illustrator be fooled to think that the empty areas in the frame are not empty? I would also need a bit theory as to how Illustrator distinguishes frames from paths. Often I have a path inside a frame, if I select it with the direct selection tool, the path is getting selected, if with the normal selection tool, then the frame. Can Illustrator be instructed to ise the shape (the path) for the envelope and not the frame? Commented Dec 18, 2022 at 10:27
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The use case for me is that I am filling "empty" areas in large spread size images with text. So I want graphical text boxes with text background and illustrative vector parts, that will adapt to the free space available in images that were assigned for text. I am more an author than a graphic artist (making magazines) so I am buying the graphical text boxes, I just need to mold them to take up the shape of my free spaces in my images. I have not seen this much, just got this idea. Commented Dec 18, 2022 at 10:38
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@AdamAlleman No theres no functionality to start with other than recrangle. Your goal however does not seem to require envelope distort for anything.– joojaaCommented Dec 18, 2022 at 12:59
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Then how do you fill an arbitrary area with a graphic that has a totally different shape originally? Anything else than envelopes? Commented Dec 19, 2022 at 19:01
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@AdamAlleman you draw it. Alternatively you don't. Depends on your onlook on life really. Theres no magick mechanism. But in this case drawing it is hardly a really big deal.– joojaaCommented Dec 19, 2022 at 19:02