- [Voiceover] Alright, now the downside
of working dynamically here is all of the duplicates
are, of course, clones of the original right here,
which is to say they're all colored the same.
What I want is to color my cubes differently,
which is why is why in this movie,
we're gonna bust up the dynamic effect
in order to gain control over the individual cubes.
And you'll see, because we've set things up
using tints of a global swatch,
it's gonna make the job a lot easier.
Alright, so I'm gonna switch back to the Layers panel
and I'm gonna turn off that guides layer
because, at this point, it's just a bunch of visual noise.
I'm also gonna turn off my Smart Guides, because otherwise,
we're gonna get a bunch of flashing on-screen.
Alright, now I want you to notice over here
the cubes layer is twirled open
and we've got this single group, if I were to twirl it open,
it contains nothing more than those three path outlines
that we created a couple of movies ago.
Now we don't wanna mess any of this up
because we might want to come back to this effect later.
So I'm gonna go up to the layers panel fly-out menu
and choose Duplicate "cubes"
to create a duplicate of the cubes layer,
and I'll go ahead and twirl the original one closed
and turn it off in order to protect it.
And now, I'll go ahead and double-click in an empty portion
of this layer to bring up the Layer Options dialog box
and I'll call this guy "blocks",
just to indicate that it's now static.
And I'll change the color to, let's say, violet,
and then click OK.
Alright, in my case, I'm seeing that bug
where we continue to see the old color
next to the expanded contents of the layer.
But I can fix that just by twirling the layer closed
and then back open.
Alright, now let's gain control over the individual cubes
by going up to the Object menu
and choosing Expand Appearance.
And notice now that we once again have a group,
but that group contains a bunch of other groups.
So right now, we're looking at each one of those plates
of 16 cubes, and so to break those up,
go up to the Object menu and choose the Ungroup command,
or you can press a keyboard shortcut of Control + Shift + G,
or Command + Shift + G on the Mac,
and that does indeed break up the first group,
but it leaves us with the interior groups.
And so we need to bust them up
by pressing Control + Shift + G
or Command + Shift + G on the Mac
and now we're seeing each one of the rows.
That's good, but we need to dig down farther,
so press Control + Shift + G or Command + Shift + G again
and you will see that we now have,
if you were to count them,
a total of 64 orthogonal cubes.
Alright, now we need to color them.
And so, I'm just gonna go ahead
and twirl closed that layer right there,
so that we can focus our efforts inside the document window.
And so I'm gonna start things off
by clicking off the shapes to deselect them,
and then I'll click on this front group right there,
and I'll go up to the Object menu
and choose Hide Selection,
or, and this is what I'm gonna be doing in the future,
you can press Control + 3 or Command + 3 on the Mac.
And that's gonna expose this first sort of clump of cubes
here in the background.
And to select them, you need to click
and then shift + click
with the black arrow tool several times.
And you wanna get this guy as well right there.
So you'll have a total of one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven cubes selected, at which point,
go ahead and click on that first color swatch,
the one that represents the fill over here
in the far left side of the control panel.
And if you have access to my color group,
go ahead and click on the Cube 2 swatch.
And by virtue of the fact that we're working with tints,
all of those different colors survive.
At which point I'll press the escape key
in order to hide that panel.
And this next step is very important.
You wanna go up to the Object menu
and choose the Group command,
and I know there's a certain degree of irony
associated with having ungrouped these things so many times,
and now trying to reassemble groups of groups,
but our original groups were totally different
than the ones we're looking for.
And so go ahead and choose that command,
or press Control + G or Command + G on the Mac,
and then we wanna once again hide that selection
by going to the Object menu,
choosing Hide, and choosing Selection,
or again, you've got that keyboard shortcut
of Control + 3 or Command + 3 on the Mac.
Alright, now, this is the most tedious step
because we have a lot of cubes
and the only way you're gonna get them
is by clicking and shift + clicking,
and that's because there's cubes behind these cubes.
After all, this is a faux 3D effect.
So a click here and then shift + click like so
around this edge right here
and then I'm gonna have to shift + click
on the interior guys as well, as you're seeing me do.
And then finally,
you gotta get this guy right there in the middle.
So, there's a lot of them, I don't know how many,
but there's quite a few of these guys that are now selected.
And to make sure you selected the right stuff,
go ahead and click on that first color swatch
up here in the control panel,
and, if you're working along with me,
select the Cube 3 swatch
in order to apply these shades of blue.
And then, go to the Object menu
and choose the Group command,
or press Control + G or Command + G on the Mac.
You're gonna need those groups in the long run.
Alright, now I'll hide these guys by pressing Control + 3,
or Command + 3 on the Mac, which is that keyboard shortcut
for the Hide Selection command.
And now, I'll just go ahead
and marquee everybody that remains,
or I could've just pressed Control + A
or Command + A on the Mac.
And let's go ahead and group them, so we don't forget,
by choosing the Group command, or pressing Control + G,
Command + G on the Mac.
And then I'll click on this first color swatch
and apply the Cube 4 swatch.
Again, it's a global swatch, so all of our tints survive.
Alright, now you can click off the shapes to deselect them,
and then to bring everybody back,
just go up to the Object menu
and choose the Show All command,
or press Control + Alt + 3
or Command + Option + 3 on the Mac.
And then I'll once again
click off the shapes to deselect them.
And that is how you bust up all of your cubes
and then assign them colors based on their stacking order,
with all the background cubes totally intact,
here inside Illustrator.