From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

745 Tessellating your type 15 pentagon

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

745 Tessellating your type 15 pentagon

- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to perfectly tessellate your Type 15 pentagon, and as you're about to see, there's only one way to pull this off. Alright, so if you've opened this exercise file, go ahead and press Control + Shift + Page Down, that's Command + Shift + Page Down on a Mac, to advance to the final artboard, and then you want to go ahead and click on this blue pentagon right here, with the Black Arrow tool to select it, and then press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac, to copy it. Alright, now I'm gonna go ahead and turn off this pentagons layer, and I'll turn on the patterns layer, so that you can see how the tile repeats a total of 12 times, in a very different pattern than anything we've seen before. So just for the sake of comparison, here's Type 14, here's Type 13, here's Type 12, and so forth, whereas Type 15, has a lot of additional stuff going on. And so I've gone ahead and created this assembly diagram, and so you can see that we've gotta repeat this tile in this kind of crab claw shape. And so you can take a look at these instructions if you like, but I am gonna be performing each and and every step, so I'll just go ahead and turn those layers off. I'll select the patterns layer, there inside the Layers panel, to make it active, and then I'm gonna zoom out from my document by pressing Control + Minus or Command + Minus a bunch of times, so I can see my entire pattern. Alright, now I'll go ahead and press Control + F or Command + F on the Mac, in order to paste that copied pentagon at the front of the stack, and I'm gonna quickly check in the View menu, that my Smart Guides are turned on, which I definitely want. And now I'll go ahead and drag this shape by its bottom right anchor point, and for this to work, you'll need your bounding box to be turned off, and I'll go ahead and drag this guy down to this location right there, which is cheating a little bit, but I happen to know that this is gonna work out. And then I'll go ahead and select that original crab claw, and I'll press the Backspace key or the Delete key, to entirely get rid of it. And now, I want to be able to see my artboard, so I'll go up to the View menu and choose Show Artboards, in order to bring 'em all back. And I'll go ahead and select my Type 15 pentagon once again, and I'm gonna reduce its size by selecting the scale tool, which you can get by pressing the S key, and then I'll Alt or Option + Click on that bottom right anchor point to bring up the Scale dialogue box, and I am indeed looking for a uniform value of 20%, at which point I'll click Okay. Alright, now I'm zoomed out way too far, so I'll go ahead and zoom in, quite a bit actually, to right about there, and the fact that I'm out here in the Paste Board is not a problem. In fact it's a good thing, because it gives me plenty of room to work. Alright now I'll press the V key to switch back to my Black Arrow tool up here at the top of the tool box, and I'll drag a copy of this guy. By dragging it once again by its bottom right anchor point, until it snaps into alignment with this bottom left anchor point, and then I'll press and hold the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, so I get my Double Arrow tool cursor, which is telling me that I'm gonna create a copy of this shape, and it's entirely white, which is showing me that I'm snapping one point into alignment with the other. And so you should see in your heads-up display, that your DX value is negative 80 and your DY value is zero. That's very important, at which point I'll drop the shape in place. Alright now I'm gonna change its fill to the second shade of blue, down here at the bottom of the Swatches panel, which is a global swatch that I've created in advance. And now I'll press the R key to switch to my Rotate tool, which is located right here, and what I want to do is rotate around this anchor point. But it's gonna be a little bit hard to see what I'm doing, so I'm gonna switch to the Outline Mode, by going up to the View menu and choosing the Outline command, or you just press Control + Y or Command + Y on the Mac. And now with that origin point selected, I'll go ahead and drag this anchor point down until it snaps into alignment, which happens at 30 degrees, as you can see once again in that heads-up display. Alright, so we now have two perfectly aligned shapes. Now we need to create a shape at this location up here, and we're gonna flip it by switching to the Reflect tool, which you can get by pressing the O key if you like, and we're gonna flip it across this axis right here. The axis that's defined by this long side of the shape, and to make that happen you just click at this anchor point, and then you press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, and click on this one, and the fact you had the Alt or Option key down goes ahead and creates a copy of that shape. And now if I press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac, to bring up the Reflect dialogue box, which is gonna mess things up if you have the Preview check box turned on. Don't worry about that. Notice that my axis is now set to an angle value of 15 degrees. So you can reflect around any axis you like inside Illustrator, and believe it or not, this is a feature that comes to us from Illustrator 1.0, back in 1987, before the Type 15 pentagon was even discovered. Alright, so I'm just gonna Cancel out, I just wanted you to see what that looks like, and I'll press Control + Y or Command + Y on the Mac to switch back to the Preview mode, and I'll fill this shape with this third shade of blue. Alright, now I'll press the V key to switch back to the Black Arrow tool, and I'll Shift + Click on that second shape right there, so both of these two shapes are selected, the first one is not. And now I'll switch back to the Rotate tool, which again you can get by pressing the R key, and I'll Alt or Option + Click on this anchor point, the top left one, to bring up the Rotate dialogue box, and I'll change the Angle value to negative 90 degrees, and press the Tab key, and because the Preview check box is turned on, I can see what I'm doing right there, but I don't want to click Okay, because that'll go ahead and rotate the originals. Instead I want to click Copy in order to rotate a couple of duplicates, and then I'll press the V key to switch back to my Black Arrow tool, and I'll go ahead and click on this shape, and I'll change its fill to this fourth shade of blue, and I'll click on this guy and change it to the fifth blue, and I'm doing this just so I can keep track of my progress. Alright, now we wanna grab this guy right here and you want to drag it by its top right anchor point until it steps into alignment right here, and you need to make sure, absolutely sure, that your cursor turns white in order to indicate that you have a snap. If you're not able to get a white cursor, then here's what you do, just go ahead and undo your movement, zoom in a little bit, and try again. So we'll go ahead and drag this guy down, until it snaps into alignment like so. And so often times your zoom level is gonna make a big difference, especially when Smart Guides are turned on. Alright once you get a snap, go ahead and press and hold the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, so you get a Double White Arrow head, and then release your mouse button or what have you, in order to create a duplicate of that shape. I'm gonna press Control + Y or Command + Y on the Mac in order to switch back to the outline mode, so I can better see what I'm doing, and then I'll once again grab the Rotate tool, and I'll go ahead and click on that anchor point in order to set the target, which represents the origin, or the stationary point for the rotation, and I'll drag this anchor point, until it snaps into alignment, which once again happens at 30 degrees. Alright, now I'll press Control + Y or Command + Y on the Mac in order to switch back to the Preview mode. I'll zoom out a little bit as well and I'll change the fill to that final sixth shade of blue. Alright, now I'll press the V key to switch back to my Black Arrow tool. I'll go ahead and partially marquee those shapes to select all of them, and then I'll press the R key to switch back to the Rotate tool. I wanna rotate all of these shapes 180 degrees, and so I'll Alt or Option + Click right about there, to the right of the shapes, and I'll change the angle value to 180 degrees. I'll press the Tab key to update the preview, and then you can either click the Copy button, or you can press Alt + Enter, that's gonna be Option + Return on a Mac, in order to create a copy of those shapes. And now I'll press the V key to switch back to my Black Arrow tool, and I'll grab this anchor point right there and snap it into alignment with this one, and I'm havin' problems makin' that happen, so I'm gonna zoom in, and I'm gonna grab this guy again, and drag it until I get a white snapping cursor, very important if you wanna get proper tessellation. Alright, now I'll zoom out again and I'll click off the shapes. I'll select this guy and I'm gonna recolor them all with the equivalent shades of orange, so I'll go ahead and make this guy Lead Shape Two, is the name of the swatch. I'll select this guy and make him the next swatch. I'll select this guy, next swatch. This stuff's a little bit boring, but it is gonna help us better keep track of what we're doing, and then I'll finally grab this guy right there, scroll down the list, and select that final shade of brown, which is called Sixth Two. Alright, now that I've created the base pattern, I'll go ahead and zoom out here, and I will marquee all the shapes, and I'll group them by pressing Control + G or Command + G on the Mac, is the easiest way to work. Alright, now I wanna repeat this guy, over, and over, and over again, but I wanna do so dynamically, because that way, if I change my mind about a color or things aren't lining up correctly, I can make adjustments on the fly. Here's the thing though, if I go up to the Effect menu, choose Distort and Transform, and choose the Transform command, and then I think, gosh, I guess I'll move them about a hundred points, and then another hundred points. I don't know, and then I turn on the Preview check box, and I go well that's wrong, but I do have the ability to make a bunch of copies, so that's cool, but it's going in the wrong direction. How do I figure out exactly, exactly what these values are gonna be. I don't wanna eyeball it after all, because then I'll just end up making some mistake, which will get magnified over time. So here's what you do, cancel out and then grab this anchor point right there, and drag it up to this location. You want to make sure you get a snap, and then press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, and release in order to make a copy of that guy, and then with total disregard for common sense, I'm gonna press the Backspace key or the Delete key on a Mac to get rid of it. And so what I've done here, is I've just registered those movement values, and now click on that crab claw once again, in order to select it, and then with my Black Arrow tool active, I'll just go ahead and press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac, to bring up the Move dialogue box, which contains my exact coordinates. Now am I gonna tell ya to write these down, no I'm not. With the horizontal value selected, just press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac to copy it, and cancel out. Now you want to return to the Effect menu, choose Distort and Transform, and choose the Transform command to bring up this dialogue box right here, and then tab your way down to the move value, and press Control + V or Command + V on the Mac to paste that value that you just copied into place, and then just click Okay. Now it's not gonna look right, 'cause we've only performed the horizontal movement, so now what you wanna do is press the Enter key again, to bring up that Move dialogue box, press the Tab key to advance to the vertical value, and copy it. Then cancel out and now go up to the Window menu and choose the Appearance command to bring up the Appearance panel, which has that last transform effect. Go ahead and click on it to bring up your horizontal move value, Tab down to the vertical move value, and press Control + V in order to paste in that value, and then turn on the Preview check box, and you should see things move into the proper locations. Alright, now click in the Copies value, and press the up arrow key a few times, in order to increase that value. Now I'm zoomed in too far to see what I really want, so I'll just go ahead and click Okay, and then I'll press Control + zero or Command + zero on the Mac to center the artboard, and I'll go ahead and zoom out a little bit, so that I can take in fragments of all these other patterns, as well as the entire artboard. And now I'll click on the Word Transform once again, to revisit that dynamic effect, so all my values are still in place. And now I'll turn on the Preview check box, click in the Copies value, and press the up arrow key in order to take that value up to 12 perhaps 13 copies would be good, and then I'll click Okay. Alright, now we need to create another copy of this row in the other direction, and so I'll go ahead and zoom in here, so I can better see what I'm doing, and what you wanna do is grab this anchor point, the bottom left one, go ahead and drag it, once again with the Black Arrow tool, until it snaps into this location here. You need a perfect snap once again. You can't be slightly off, so you're looking for that White Arrowhead, you gotta have it, and then go ahead and press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, so you see a Double White Arrowhead, and then release, in order to create a copy, of all of those paths by the way. So you're copying all 12 of the shapes, as well as the dynamic transformations. Alright, that went ahead and recorded all the move values, and the reason we created the copy by the way, and we're deleting it, is so we don't have to undo, because if you undo, you lose your move values. Alright, now just go ahead, and select that original crab claw again, and press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, to bring up the Move dialogue box. The horizontal value is now 413.2051 points. I would never remember that, so I'll press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac to copy it, then I'll cancel out, and now, as opposed to modifying the existing Transform effect, you wanna heap on another one, by returning to the Effect menu, choosing Distort and Transform, and choosing the Transform command, at which point Illustrator may ask you if you really wanna apply a new effect. The answer is you do, so go ahead and click on that button, and tab down to the Horizontal move value and press Control + V or Command + V on the Mac, and click Okay. Again, that's not gonna look quite right, because we've only performed the horizontal movement, so now you wanna press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, to bring back the static Move dialogue box, and then Tab to the Vertical value, press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac. Click cancel and then go ahead and click on the second Transform, which is not the one on top, it's the one on the bottom. And so dynamic effects for whatever reason, are listed in opposite order. The oldest one's at the top, and the newest one's at the bottom, so I'll go ahead and click on that second guy right there, and I'll Tab down to the Vertical value and press Control + V or Command + V on a Mac, and then I'll turn on the Preview check box, and you can see that we have registration. We do not have enough copies however, so I'll click in the Copies value, and press the Up Arrow key, to restore the original, and then I'll press the Up Arrow key one more time, to create a second copy, which goes ahead and fills up the entire artboard, at which point I'll click Okay in order to accept that effect. And then I'll press Control + Zero or Command Zero on the Mac in order to center my artboard, and I'll go up to the View menu and choose Hide Artboards in order to reveal the final pattern in all of its glory. And that is how you perfectly tessellate, the so called Type 15 irregular convex pentagon, here inside Illustrator.

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