- In this movie, I'll take you on a tour
of smooth and corner points inside of Illustrator,
both of which you can create using the Curvature tool.
So for example, if I were to click four times
with the Curvature tool here,
in a kind of elliptical pattern,
then I would create a somewhat elliptical shape,
as we're seeing right here.
If I'm not happy with that shape
then I can move one or more points around.
Each of these points, by the way,
is known as a smooth point.
That's because the segments continue through the point
in a smooth, continuous arc.
One of the great things about the Curvature tool
is that it allows you to create ellipses at angles,
as we're seeing right here,
as opposed to having to first
draw them with the Ellipse tool,
and then rotate them into the proper position.
But ultimately we're getting
a very similar effect to the Ellipse tool
by laying down four smooth points,
which is exactly what the Ellipse tool does.
Another thing that you can built out of smooth points
is yet another variety of custom spiral.
Again, I think this experience is a lot more intuitive
than working with the dedicated spiral tool.
You have a lot more control and flexibility as well.
But what you have to bear in mind
is this is an open path, and if you keep clicking
then the Curvature tool is going to want to
continue to add to that open path outline.
If that's not what you want to do,
then go ahead and press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac, a couple of times,
in my case, in order to undo those points,
and then press the escape key.
That will go ahead and discontinue that open path outline
so that you can begin creating another.
All right, I'm going to go ahead and click down here
a couple of times like so.
As always, your first segment is going to look straight
until you move your cursor away from it, like so.
Now let's say after creating this third point right here
I decide that I want to create a corner
right at this location
in order to make a kind of smile.
In that case, you have a couple of options
that are open to you.
I'll let you choose how you want to work.
But one option is to press the Alt key,
or the Option key on the Mac,
and click on that point that you just created,
and that converts it from a smooth point to a corner point.
You can now see that we end up with a corner
at that location.
You also have the options of creating
a corner point on the fly,
and you do that in the same way,
by Alt clicking or Option clicking on the Mac.
Notice now if I move over to
that very first point that I created,
I'm not only seeing my closed cursor,
but I'm also seeing that I've created a corner point
at that Alt or Option click location.
All right, another way to create a corner point,
just so you know all your options,
is to double click.
That will also result in a corner point.
Even though it still looks like a circle, it is a corner,
and you can see that's the case
by creating more points like so.
Now I'm going to keep creating smooth points,
just by clicking.
That's all you have to do for a smooth point.
And then I'll revisit that first point and just click on it
in order to close the path outline
with a nice, sharp corner.
That, very simply, is how you create and modify
smooth and corner points,
as well as press the escape key to create
open path outlines using the Curvature tool.