- [Voiceover] Alright, in this movie,
we're going to create our cube of cubes,
and we're going to do so entirely dynamically.
So, all we have here is three path outlines,
those same three paths that we created
in the previous movie.
Everything else is a dynamic effect.
Alright, so I'll go ahead and switch over
to our base cube right here,
and I'm going to zoom out by pressing control zero,
or command zero on a Mac.
And then I'm going to start off by
adding some custom guides.
So go ahead and turn on your guides layer,
and select the layer as well.
Make sure that it's active,
if you're working along with me.
And then, go ahead and grab your line segment tool.
And you want to click right there,
at the bottom of the cube,
in order to bring up this dialog box.
And this time we're going to set the length value
to 600 points, so it's very big value, indeed.
And we're going to set the angle value to 30 degrees.
And the reason it's 30 degrees
is because remember, we started straight down,
which is negative 90 degrees,
and then we rotated up, to 120 degrees.
And so, if you were to enter those values,
120 minus 90,
and then press the tab key, you would get 30.
At which point, click OK and you can see that sure enough,
we now have a very long line in the same direction
as the bottom edge of the cube.
Now in my case, it has no fill or stroke,
and so just because I want to be able to see it here,
I'll set the line weight to one point.
Alright, now we want to create another line
in the opposite direction,
but because I have this wonderful
dynamic line tool function here,
which I actually hate,
I'll first need to deselect the line
by pressing control shift "A",
or command shift "A" on a Mac,
and then I'll click at that same point.
And this time, I'll leave the length value
set to 600 points,
and I'll set the angle to 180 minus 30 degrees,
because, after all, we want it to go
in the opposite direction up 30 degrees.
And if I press the tab key,
I'll see that that reconciles to 150 degrees,
at which point, if I click OK,
I end up getting the desired effect.
Alright, now press the "V" key
to switch back to my black arrow tool,
and I'll shift click on that first path right there.
And then I'll right click
anywhere inside the document window
and choose Make Guides.
And that gives us a couple of custom guidelines.
Alright, now let's just go and zoom in a little bit.
And what you want to do is return to your cube player.
And notice how we've got three separate paths.
We really want to assemble them into a single object.
And so, because they have different fills going on,
we're going to have to group them,
as opposed to creating a compound path, for example.
And so, go ahead and marquee those paths, like so,
and then go up to the Object menu
and choose the Group command.
Or, of course, you can just press control "G",
or command "G" on the Mac.
And then, try experimenting with
dragging along this edge
in order to figure out a point where you want to put
a duplicate cube.
And so, let's say I want it right about there.
Or, let's imagine that I have a specific distance in mind,
which I do, so I'll just go ahead
and press the backspace key,
or the delete key on the Mac, to get rid of that guy.
And I'll re-select my cube, and this time,
with my black arrow tool active, I'll press the enter key,
or the return key on the Mac,
to bring up the Move dialog box.
And this is pretty near exactly what I want here,
but I was looking for a distance value of 82 points,
and of course an angle of 150 degrees.
We know that from when we created that
previous guideline right there.
And now, you just need to note the
horizontal and vertical values.
Now, the horizontal value is quite complicated,
so I'm just going to select it
and press control "C", or command "C" on a Mac,
to copy it, and I'll write down the vertical value
which is -41.
At which point, I might go ahead and click the Copy button,
just so that I can see what things look like,
but I already know that this is going to look pretty good.
But I want you to notice something.
Notice how when I apply static duplication,
the old shape is in front of the new one.
And so, to put it in back,
I would have to right click, choose Arrange,
and choose Send to Back.
And that's going to help me get a sense
for whether this is what I want or not.
But of course, I already know that in advance,
so I'll go ahead and select this cube
and press the backspace key or the delete key on a Mac,
to get rid of it.
And you might think so far I'm just wasting time, because
I haven't really gotten much of anything accomplished,
but watch this.
I'll go ahead and select this grouped cube,
and then I'll go up to the Effect menu,
choose Distort & Transform,
and choose the Transform command.
And I'll select that Horizontal Move value right there
and press control "V", or command "V" on the Mac,
to paste that value that I copied from the Move dialog box.
And then I'll change the Vertical value to that other value,
which was -41 points.
You don't want to rotate the cube.
It's very tempting to use this value
as an indication of the angle of movement,
but that's not what it is.
That's the angle of rotation, so
leave it set to zero.
And then turn on your Preview checkbox,
and you should see that cube move along the guideline.
At which point, click in the Copies value
and press the up arrow key one, two, three times
for a total of three copies,
which when added to the original,
gives us a total of four cubes.
And then click OK.
And notice, one of the difference between
dynamic and static duplication
is that instead of putting the new cube
in front of the old one,
Illustrator puts the new cube in back,
which is exactly the effect that we're looking for.
Alright, next what you want to do
is switch to the appearance panel
by going up to the Window menu
and choosing the Appearance command.
And then, select that Transform that's applied to the group
and drop down to the little page icon
in the bottom right corner of the appearance panel
and click on it to make a copy of that first transform.
And that's going to make some more cubes
up and to the left.
That's not what we want, but it's going to be
a terrific jumping off point.
And you'll see that's the case by clicking
on the second instance of Transform,
so remember that dynamic effects are organized top down,
so the first one's at the top,
and the last one's at the bottom.
And we'll see more examples of that as we work along here.
But what I want you to do is turn on the Preview checkbox,
leave Copies set to 3, leave Vertical set to -41,
that's just fine, but you want to take
the horizontal value and just get rid of it's negative sign.
Then press the tab key
and notice that works out brilliantly.
So you're creating three more copies
of that first row of cubes.
So one, two, three more rows,
which gives us the top of what we'll be in just a moment,
our cube of cubes.
At which point, click OK, and then
create a duplicate of this guy
by clicking on the little page icon.
And so our first Transform effect is at the top,
then the one we just assigned is in the middle.
And now our newest one is at the bottom of the stack.
Go ahead and click on the word Transform
at the bottom there.
And this time you want to change the Horizontal value to 0,
and change the Vertical value to 82,
because remember, we were moving it 82 points
along a 150 degree angle.
And so now, if you press the tab key
and turn on the Preview checkbox,
you're going to create three more copies
of that top group there,
which is going to fill out the cube of cubes.
At which point, click OK to accept that change.
And so, I just want to make sure you understand this,
because this, to me, is a little bit confusing.
But the first effect is on top,
and the last effect is at the bottom.
But just to demonstrate that's the case,
I'll turn off the first Transform,
and you can see we no longer have those rows
going off to the right, but we have everything else.
Whereas if you turn on the first Transform
and turn off the middle one,
you're going to miss the duplication
going up and to the right.
And then if I turn on that one and turn off the last one,
that is, the one at the bottom of the stack,
I'm going to see the very top plate of cubes,
but none of the ones below.
And so, it takes all three
Transform effects working together
in order to create that cube of cubes
as an altogether dynamic effect,
here inside Illustrator.