- In this movie, I'll show you how to round the corners
of any shape that contains corner points,
regardless of how you draw it.
So, as you can see here, I've given
my rounded rectangle a little bit
of a thicker stroke just for the sake of appearance.
But now I'm going to go ahead and click on it
with my black arrow tool and I'll press
the Backspace key or the Delete key on a Mac
to get rid of it.
And now I'll go ahead and select the pen tool,
which, of course, I can get by pressing the "p" key.
And I'm going to draw a zigzag shape.
Now, if you're working along with me,
I recommend that you don't draw the shape too quickly
because what happens often times when you just start
click, click, clicking all over the place,
is that you accidentally drag
and you create a very tiny smooth point
as a result.
Anyway, I've just gone ahead and created
a few zigzags here and then I'll go ahead
and press the "a" key in order to switch
to my white arrow tool.
Now, for a very long time, you've been able to take
zigzag shapes like this and turn them into loops
just by alt or option clicking with the white arrow tool
on that path out line.
And then what you want to do is Shift click
on one of the end points in order to deselect it.
And so long as at least one point in the path out line
is not selected, you'll see these convert icons right here,
which allow you to convert smooth points
into corner points or convert corner points
into smooth points.
And notice as soon as I click on the second icon,
I get this wonderful looping shape
that would've taken a lot more effort to draw.
And then to make this last endpoint
a smooth point as well, I'll go ahead and click on it
to select it and then click on this smooth points icon
in order to get this affect right here.
So, that's one way to work.
I'll go ahead and press Control + Z
or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change.
Another way to work now, and it's going to give us
very different results, is to round off the corners
by dragging on these round corner widgets,
which will show up at each and every corner point,
except for the end points in an open path outline.
And now notice if I go ahead and drag one of these widgets,
I'm going to round off the corners like so.
And you also have the option, of course,
of just rounding off some corners.
So, for example, let's say I marque these corners right here
and drag back outward, then I'm going to make them
less round, as we're seeing here.
All right, but things get even more interesting
when we start with a more interesting shape.
So I'm going to go ahead and press the Backspace key,
or the Delete key on the Mac, a couple of times
to get rid of that path.
And I'm going to drop down to the shape tool icon
right here.
Click and hold on it and choose the star tool.
And then I'll go ahead and click at the intersection
of my two center guides in order to bring up
the star dialogue box and I came up with these values
right here.
That is, I want to set the first radius value to 300 points
and the second one to 80 points and I'm looking for
a total of 10 star points.
And now I'll go ahead and click OK in order to create
this path outline.
The line weight's a little thick,
so I'll go ahead and take it down to four points,
let's say, and then I'll change the fill by clicking
on this first color swatch up in the control panel
and selecting this shade of orange,
which is R251G176B59,
but obviously, you can go your own way.
All right, now I'll press the Escape key
to hide that panel and I'll click on the word Transform
or on the X, Y, W, or H
on the right side of the control panel.
And I'm going to dial in a rotate value of 18 degrees,
which happens to give me this effect right here
as soon as I press the Tab key.
All right, now I'll go ahead and press the Escape key
in order to hide that panel and I'll switch
to the white arrow tool by pressing the "a" key.
And you can see that we now have all of these
corner widgets here and so, if I drag outward
from one of the interior points,
then I will increase the roundness of the corners.
I'd have to drag inward from one of these exterior points
to increase the roundness or I can drag back outward
to achieve these nice, sharp points.
All right, but what I want to do
is just round the interior corners
and so, I'll go ahead and marque the inside points
in order to select them independently of the outside points.
And now notice that I could convert them to smooth points
if I want to by clicking on the smooth points icon
up here in the control panel and I'd end up with this.
Pretty interesting effect, actually.
It's not what I want however, so I'll go ahead and press
Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change.
And I'll drag down from this top point
until it snaps into alignment with the center guides.
And then I'll go ahead and drag upward
on this corner widget right here
in order to achieve this effect,
which is unlike anything we've really been able to do
in Illustrator in the past.
And if that's not quite what you're looking for,
then you can change this corner's value
up here in the control panel.
And I'm just going to change it to 36 points
and press the Enter key, or Return key on a Mac,
to apply that change.
And that's how you round the corner points
associated with any path out line,
regardless of how you draw it,
using the white arrow tool combined with
the round corner widgets, here inside Illustrator CC.