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

933 Using the dynamic Free Distort filter

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

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933 Using the dynamic Free Distort filter

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland, welcome to Deke's techniques. This marks the third and final week in the creation of our captivating, free floating, vector-based triangle face man set against a photographic background all inside the virtual creative landscape that is Adobe Illustrator. What's in store? Well, a lot frankly. The idea is that we want to distort the existing triangle face in 3D space while sticking inside what is fundamentally a 2D drawing program. Now, the traditional Adobe certified way to achieve such a distortion is to use Illustrator's relatively modern Free Transform Tool. The problem with this tool is, well, you're about to see the problem. Which is why the better approach is to use Illustrators altogether dynamic, if admittedly old and creaky, free distort filter. Old and creaky? That's just another way of saying infinitely wise and sporadically arthritic. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, here's the final effect So you have a chance to see it inside Illustrator. I'm going to switch over to a document from last week and here inside the Layers Panel, I'm going to duplicate this fill's layer because after all I want to protect the original objects. And so I'll click on a Flat Menu icon and choose duplicate fills. And then I'll turn off the original layer once again, so I don't hurt anything. And I'll double-click on this new layer and I'll call it effects and then I'll change the color to let's say gold and I'll click okay. All right, now I'll go ahead and select all the objects by pressing Control + A or Command + A on the Mac. And because the image layer is locked down, I select just the vector-based shape outlines. And now just for the sake of demonstration, I'll switch to the Free Transform Tool which gives you this transformation boundary right here as well as these various controls in this vertical strip. And now I'll switch to free distort which allows you to drag the corner handles independently of each other. And I'll drag this guy up into the right like so and that's obviously too much. So I'll drag it back a little bit in order to create this effect here. Now what we're seeing here is dynamic to a certain effect. And so notice if I were to switch back to the Black Arrow Tool and move this guy around let's say and then switch to the Free Transform Tool once again, we have our original free transform boundary which I can continue to modify by switching to free distort here and then dragging this corner handle or any of the others for that matter. All right, I'm going to drag this guy back just a little bit and I appear to have invoked an auto scroll. So I'll press Control + 0 or Command + 0 on the Mac in order to center my zoom. Now here's the thing, if you modify these objects using a different tool, things can go quite wrong. So notice if I switch to the Rotate Tool, a time-honored tool inside of Illustrator and then for whatever reason I decide to rotate the heck out of this guy like so. And now I'll press the control key or the command key on the Mac to temporarily get my Black Arrow Tool and I'll move this guy down a little bit. Now if I switch back to the Free Transform Tool and I see the original boundary, it is not updated to account for the rotation. So if I were to switch back to the free distort mode and drag this guy let's say down a little bit and maybe drag this one up in order to account for what I've done, I am going to make a total mess of things. Also worth noting is that the Free Transform Tool works its magic such as it is by grouping all of the objects together. And so if I were to go up to the Object Menu and ungroup those shape then that's going to reset the boundary for one thing. And you'll also see if you switch back to the Black Arrow Tool and let's say press Control + Shift + A or Command + Shift + A on a Mac in order to deselect your shapes and drag any one of them. It is permanently modified which is why it's such a great thing that I duplicated that fills layer because I don't like anything that I've done to this new layer. And so I'm just going to press Control + A or Command + A on the Mac and get rid of everything by pressing the backspace key or the delete key on the Mac. Then I'll turn this fills layer back on, I'll click on it's top right corner right here in order to select the contents of that layer. And then I'll duplicate all of these path outlines by alt or option dragging this little purple square. And notice that my cursor appears as a hand with a little plus sign next to it. And that's because I have the alt or option key down which means as soon as I release I go ahead and duplicate those path outlines to the effects layer. At which point I'll go ahead and turn off the fills layer so that it remains protected. So that's how the Free Transform Tool works. Let's compare it to the dynamic method which is to go up to the Effect Menu, choose distort and transform and then choose this guy free distort. Now, initially you're not going to be amazed by this command for a couple of reasons. First of all, it does not preview the effects on the fly. It just shows you this very lame preview inside the dialog box. And it's only showing you the top most object which is this guy right over here. And so it's hard to predict what the effect is going to look like. But notice if I go ahead and drag up on this top right handle here and I click okay then I dynamically adjust every single one of these objects. And just so you can see what that looks like. I'll press Control + H or Command + H on the Mac to hide all of those anchor points. And then I'll go up to the Window Menu and I'll choose the appearance command in order to bring up the Appearance Panel which is going to show free distort as a dynamic effect which means if I click on that guy then I can change my distortion by dragging one of these handles. You really have to get your cursor exactly on it to drag these guys around. But in any way I'll go ahead and click okay. And you can see that I have newly destroyed all of my triangles. Obviously that's not what I want. So I'll go ahead and delete this effect which is something you can do. You can't do that except by undoing with the Free Transform Tool. Whereas with free distort you can just go ahead and select that effect and then click on the little trash can icon in the bottom right corner of the Appearance Panel. All right, so obviously that's not the way to work either. Let me show you the right way to work which is to go to the Layers Panel once again and target the entire layer by clicking in this circle over here in the right hand column. And that way you're distorting the entire layer altogether. At which point, if I switched back to the Appearance Panel you can see that the layer is targeted up here at the top. And so if I were to now return to the Effect Menu and choose the second command free distort dot, dot, dot that's going to bring back the free distort dialog box along with my first applied setting here, notice that. And so what I want to do is drag this guy back a little bit and I think you're going to be able to get more or less the same effect as I do if you align things properly. So notice this little dotted box right here you want this diagonal line to cut right through its corner. And then you want this corner of the shapes to align to the top of that boundary like so. And notice by the way that we are seeing all of the shapes at the same time because we're targeting the layer and not the individual objects. At which point I'll click okay to apply that change. And you can now see that we have a dynamic effect which you can turn off if you like and then turn back on. And if you don't feel like you've gotten things exactly the way you want then you just have to click free distort in order to bring back the dialog box. Unfortunately, there's no way of previewing the effect inside the document window. So that is the obvious downside. And that's because this feature is much older than the Free Transform Tool. In any event I like what I have, so I'll just go ahead and cancel out. Now the last thing you want to remember to do is to press Control + H or Command + H on the Mac to bring back your selection handles because having them hidden is a saved attribute of the file. And it can be very confusing in the future if you've hidden those anchor points and it feels as if you just can't select anything inside your document. After which point I'll press Control + Shift + A or Command + Shift + A on the Mac to deselect my artwork. And that friends is how you take advantage of the dynamic free transform filter here inside Illustrator. If you're a member of LinkedIn Learning I have a follow-up movie in which we complete the creation of our floating triangle face man with the addition of two more dynamic effects inside Illustrator. If you're looking forward to next week prepare yourself to create this both vector-based and pixel-based cat's eye just in time for Halloween. Deke's techniques each and every week. Keep watching.

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