Color blend without creating intermediate object

Question

I suspect the answer to this may be painfully obvious, so please put any "Doh!" thoughts on hold.
I have two overlapping objects of very different shapes, each with a gradient. I want to smooth the color transition between them so that it looks as if there's a single surface.
When I use the Blend tool Illustrator not only blends the colors, it creates an intermediate object as well. Is there a way simply to do the color without creating a new object?

Answer 1

Blends, by definition, create intermediate objects between the original key objects. A Blend creates objects. It does not create color ramps independent of objects. That's what a graduated fill does, but grad fills are very limited in AI compared to just about all of its competing programs.
Mesh Gradients can create multi-directional grad fills. But using the feature can easily become very tedious depending upon the specifics of what you are trying to do.
You need to describe what you are actually trying to do.
It sounds like you may be trying to build simple highlights and shadows to "model" what is to look like 3D surfaces. Using ordinary Blends is the most common way to do that. If that's what you are trying to do, the following may help:
-To avoid the unsightly sawtooth or twisting or spiking "giveaways" of highlight / shadow blends, they should be made between paths which contain the same number of points.
Using paths with equal number of points may require stacking two or three separate blends, instead of assuming the whole start-to-end color ramp has to be accomplished in a single Blend. For example: Start with the underlying shape, and create a Blend that goes from the outer color (rearmost) color to a midtone color (frontmost). Those two paths have the same number of points. Then, create a separate pair of paths (again with same number of points) for a separate highlight. That blend goes from the midtone color (rearmost) to the highlight color (frontmost).
-Make sure the two paths used in the Blend have the same direction.
-You can "index" two corresponding points on the two paths being used for a Blend by directSelecting a point on each path before creating the Blend.
-Realize that Blends are not limted to paths that have solid fills. You can Blend between paths that have Gradient Fills. Many seemingly complex shading problems can be accomplished with simple Blends by just blending between two paths that have the same number of points, but have slightly different grad fills.
-Specified Steps is almost always the best Blend option to use for modeling highlights/shadows. But use common sense. Do not assume that 256 steps are required to get the "smoothest" color transition. For example, if the start-to-finish color ramp of a highlight only spans 10% of a spot color, nothing is gained by using 256 steps. A mere 10 steps will probably do just fine. (Can your eye discern a smaller-than-1% change in halftone dot size?)
Similarly, even if the colors are radically different, 10 or 20 steps may be just fine if the
distance spanned by the Blend is small. (Can your eye detect 256 different different-shaped edges within a quarter-inch span?
JET