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

917 Quickly change the number of steps in Illustrator

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

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917 Quickly change the number of steps in Illustrator

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to "Deke's Techniques"! Today, we're inside Illustrator where we'll begin the process of taking that Type 3 Lantern tile from last week, the one with the scalloped edges, and we're going to turn it into this seamlessly repeating tile pattern that I'm calling Ice Fold. (flutters lips) In this specific movie, we're going to start things off by duplicating getting the scallop and creating this very basic, very boring four-step object blend. Now I'm guessing that many of you already know how to blend path outlines inside Illustrator, which is why along the way, I'm going to show you you a few tips and tricks that should make your life easier complete with the assistance of the very old, very boring Blend Tool. But keep in mind while you're sitting there yawning and nodding off to sleep, that it's all in the name of creating this custom, almost organic-looking gradient. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, here's the final version of that colorful, seamlessly repeating scallop pattern, just so you have a chance to see it open inside Illustrator. We're going to start by creating a multi-step blend, as you can see depicted by the Blend thumbnail here inside the Layers panel. And so I'll go ahead and switch over to that scallop tile that we created last week. And just to make sure that we don't mess up this tile, I'm going to duplicate it's layer, once again, here inside the Layers panel, which you can do by selecting this scallop layer and then clicking on the flyout menu icon in the top right corner of the Layers panel and choosing Duplicate scallop. Or if you prefer, you can just go ahead and drag this layer and drop it on little plus sign down here at the bottom of the panel. In older versions of Illustrator, it looks like a tiny page icon. At any event, if you drop a layer onto it, you'll create a copy of that layer. All right, I'll go ahead and turn off the original and double-click on an empty portion of the new layer, and I'll call it Blend because that's what it's going to be. And I'll change the color, let's say to gold, and then I'll click OK. Now what I want to do is create a duplicate of this scallop down at the bottom right here so that it can blend between the two shapes. And so I'll go ahead and select the shape with my black arrow tool, the one that Illustrator calls the Selection Tool, but it's got a keyboard shortcut of V, which looks like an upside down arrow. Now I'll drag it by its top point, and incidentally, if you want to do this, your Bounding Box needs to be turned off, and you can turn off the Bounding Box by going to the View menu and choosing this command, which will appear as Hide Bounding Box. In my case, it reads Show Bounding Box, because it's already hidden. In any event, I'm going to drag this guy by its top anchor point until my cursor changes from black to white like so, which indicates that I have a snap. So I'm snapping to the bottommost anchor point in the shape. If I want to create a duplicate of that shape, I press and hold the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, so that seeing a double arrowhead. At which point, I'll go ahead and release to create a copy of that shape. All right, now I want to blend between the two shapes, so I'll Shift + Click on the first shape so that they're both selected. Then I'll go out to the Object menu, choose Blend and choose Make, which has a keyboard shortcut of Control + Alt + B. That's Command + Option + B on a Mac, which I think makes a lot of sense, because after all B is the first letter in the word blend. Now, in my case, that ends up creating a single step between those two shapes. I want a total of four steps, and you may wonder why. Well, notice over here in the Swatches panel, which I have up on screen, that I've created this group in advance called pond colors, for what that's worth. And it contains a total of six swatches, from color 1 to color 6. And that way I can change the colors anytime I like. And because they're global swatches as indicated by those little white wedges in their bottom right corners, then anytime I update a swatch, I will update any object colored with that swatch inside my illustration. Now, if I want to use every single one of these six colors, then I need a total of six shapes, which is to say a beginning shape, an end shape, and four in between. Well, you can change the number of steps by going up to the Object menu, choosing Blend once again, and then choosing this command, Blend Options, which by default has no keyboard shortcut, or at least no shortcut is listed. The thing is, I use this command all the time, and I hate searching through menus and submenus in Illustrator, and so what I prefer to do, I'll just go ahead and Escape out there, is to select the Blend Tool over here in the toolbox and then press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, to bring up the Blend Options dialog box. So that's your shortcut. But the thing is you have to remember the shortcut for the Blend Tool, which is W. And that doesn't make a ton of sense unless perhaps you think of it this way, I'm going to turn off the Blend Layer for a moment and turn on the Why W? layer right there. And I'll go ahead and switch back to my black arrow tool, which again, I can get by pressing the V key. And I'll just go ahead and grab this shape right here, which is the right half of the letter B. And I'll go ahead and drag it down to a different location and press the Alt key, or the Option key on a Mac, to make a duplicate of it. Now, also like the Rotate Tool, which you can get by pressing the R key, and I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac to bring up the rotate dialog box. And I'll enter a value of -90 degrees and click OK. Now press the V key to switch back to my black arrow tool. And I'll grab this L right here by its bottom point, and I'll drag it here until it snaps into alignment with what is now the bottom of the W. And I'll press the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, to make a duplicate of it. And then I'll do that again. Press and hold the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac to make a copy. And now I'll go ahead and marquee these two shapes right here, and then I'll go up to the Object menu, choose Blend, and choose Make, which we'll go ahead and make a blend with one step. And now if I wanted to change the number of the steps, I would tap the W key in order to switch to the Blend tool, which makes a lot more sense now, I'm hoping, and I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, in order to bring up the Blend Options dialog box. Turn on the Preview checkbox. And I'll go ahead and click inside that Specified Steps value right there, and I'll press the Up arrow key a couple of times in order to increase the number of steps to three, which fills out that object so that we're seeing a kind of W in negative space. Now, click OK to accept that change. So maybe that helps. Maybe it doesn't. But in any event, that is the keyboard shortcut for the Blend Tool. So I'm going to go ahead and turn off that Why W? layer and turn on the blend layer once again. Press the V key to switch back to my black arrow tool. Go ahead and click on the blend in order to select the entire thing, then press the W key to switch to the Blend Tool, and press the Enter key, or the Return key on a Mac, in order to bring up the Blend Options dialog box. Go ahead and turn on the Preview checkbox. Make sure Spacing is set to Specified Steps, and then go ahead and click in that steps value right there, and press the Up arrow key. And each time you do you'll increase the number of steps like so. In the end, I want four steps. So that's one original for color 1. That's one ending shape for color 6, and then these four swatches in between, at which point, I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that change. And that is my trick for changing the number of steps associated with any object blend inside Illustrator. All you have to do is press the W key to switch to the Blend Tool and then press the Enter key on the PC or the Return key on the Mac. Wake up, because if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have two, count them, two follow-up movies in which I show you how to infuse colors into a custom gradient by creating a new object blend inside an existing one! And then I'll show you how to reverse the stacking order of the various steps inside the blend. Looking forward to next week, well, that's when we take our custom gradient and turn it into a seamlessly repeating tile pattern! "Deke's Techniques" each and every week! Keep watching.

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