- In this movie, we'll take a look
at the next kind of anchor point that's available to us,
which is the smooth point.
Now we saw a whole bunch of smooth points
in the previous chapter, but there's a lot more to them
than I've shown you so far.
And when you're working with the Pen Tool,
you can't help see smooth points in all their glory.
So I want to give you a sense for how they really work.
So the first thing I'm going to do
is rename this layer here, corner points,
and then I'm going to go ahead and turn it off
so we can focus on the smooth points,
which I will put on an independent layer
by alt or option clicking on the little page icon
at the bottom of the Layers panel,
and I'll go ahead and name this guy smooth points,
and then I'll change it's color to gold.
After which point, I'll go ahead and click OK
to create that new layer.
All right, now the best way to get a sense
for how smooth points work, is to take a look
at the smoothest shape there is, which is an ellipse.
So I'm going to go ahead and click and hold
on the Rectangle Tool, and then select the Ellipse Tool
from the fly out menu.
And if you swapped out your keyboard shortcuts,
as I suggested a couple of chapters ago,
then you'll see a shortcut of shift + m.
All right, now I'm going to draw a big ellipse
across this entire document like so,
and it doesn't have to be centered or anything.
I just want it to be large, so we can see what's going on.
And now you can see that it has a total
of four anchor points, all of which are smooth points.
And as you may recall, a smooth point
ensurers that we have a smooth transition
between two neighboring curved segments.
Now to see what those smooth points look like,
go ahead and switch to the White Arrow Tool,
which you can get by pressing the a key.
And then go ahead and click on any one of the anchor points.
At which time, you will see
not only this square anchor point,
but two circular control handles on either side of it
connected by straight levers.
These control handles attract the segments.
They're responsible for the curvature.
And so they're basically like magnets
where the segments are concerned.
And so notice, if I drag this control handle
a little bit farther away, the segment bends toward it.
And by the way, you want to drag on the circle,
not on the lever itself because if you try to drag the lever
you'll just marquee nothing, like so.
All right, I'm going to go ahead and click
on the point once again to select it.
Also notice as I drag this control handle
over on the right of the anchor point,
I also move the one on the left,
and that's because the two are linked into alignment
with each other.
Now one control handle can get shorter than the other,
but it's going to remain at the same angle,
as we're seeing here.
And that alignment is what defines a smooth point
in Illustrator.
All right, now we saw that if you drag the control handle
farther away from the segment,
the segment is going to bend out toward it.
But if you drag the control handle toward the segment,
it's going to start flattening out, as we're seeing here,
and that's because were no longer requesting
as much curvature.
If you go ahead and drag the control handle
to the other side of the segment,
it's going to bend in the other direction,
and it's going to bend more and more
the farther you drag that control handle.
And now, you can see that we've got
an awful lot of curvature
because the other control handle has moved across
its segment and farther away as well.
All right, let's say I like this amount of curvature
but I don't want my path outline going outside the artboard.
Then I would just go ahead and drag the square smooth point
inward like so.
All right, now I'll just go ahead
and center my zoom once again.
Now just because you're working with smooth points,
doesn't mean you might not get lumpy results.
Notice in this case, for example,
I'm getting an extremely lumpy curve,
and that's because the control handle
affects the way the segment exits an anchor point
and how it enters the next one.
And so in this case, both of the control handles
on either side of the segment are requesting
a ton of curvature, and that's creating
a kind of wavy segment, as we're seeing right here.
And so the solution is to just go ahead
and bring the control handles in
so that we get smoother results as we're seeing right here.
Now another way to see your control handles
is to click on a segment, in which case,
you'll see the control handle that's directing
the way the segment exits an anchor point,
as well as the one that defines how it's entering
the next anchor point.
Now watch what happens if I take a control handle
and bend it totally in the other direction.
We're going to end up with a loop
inside of our path outline.
That's rarely desirable, and so the solution
is to just go ahead and put things back the way they were.
You also have the option, when you're working
with the white arrow, of dragging directly on a segment
like so, in which case, you're going to modify
the bending of that segment.
And you have a lot of latitude these days.
You can drag that segment just about anywhere you want,
and the control handles will come along with it.
You can also constrain the drag by pressing and holding
the shift key, in which case,
those handles are going to lock to the nearest 45 degrees.
You can also lock your control handles
by shift dragging directly on them, like so,
which is great if you're looking for absolutely vertical
or horizontal alignment.
And so I'll go ahead and make these guys up here
exactly horizontal like so.
Now you're going to be doing a ton of work
with control handles inside Illustrator.
And you're going to run into situations
where you're not getting smooth results.
And any time that happens, I want you to take a look
at an arc.
So go to the Line Segment Tool,
and then select the Arc Tool.
And just go ahead and draw a big arc.
And in my case, I want to flip it
just for the sake of demonstration here.
And after you draw the arc, then press the a key
to switch to the White Arrow Tool,
and go ahead and click off the line to deselect it.
And then click on its segment, and you'll see
how the control handles are arranged.
And I want you to notice that we have two control handles
for curving segment.
That's very important.
You don't want to have just one control handle like this
because you'll end up with a kind of flat tire effect.
So you definitely want two handles for every curving segment
and you want those handles together
to occupy about 2/3 the length of the segment.
So in other words, about 1/3 of the length of the segment
is not covered by handles; and the other 2/3 are.
That is not to say that they have to be even in length
by the way.
One can be longer, and the other can be shorter,
and you can still end up with very smooth results
like this.
And that friends is how smooth points really work
inside Illustrator.
In the next movie, I'll show you how to draw smooth points
with the Pen Tool.