- [Instructor] In this movie,
I'll show you how to create a perfectly waving line
that will exactly translate
to a seamlessly repeating pattern.
I'm going to leave this diagram opened up,
because I expect you to memorize all these values,
but because I'm going to be referring back to it
over the course of this movie.
I'll start things off by going up to the File menu
and choosing New From Template,
and then I'll go ahead and load the template file
that I created way back in chapter 5
of the fundamentals course,
which provides us with a couple of center guides.
Now I'll select the Line tool,
which we'll use to draw the baseline
and with my Smart Guides turned on,
I'll go ahead and position my cursor
at the intersection of those two guidelines,
and I will drag outword, and also press and hold
the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac,
so that I'm creating my line from the center out
and I'll go ahead and snap it into alignment
with the horizontal guide.
And I'm looking for a length of, well,
I don't really know at this point,
but 750 should be fine.
And then I'll go ahead and release.
Now we want to waive the line
and the best way to waive things
in Illustrator is to go to the Effect menu,
choose Distort & Transform, and choose Zig Zag.
And just as you can see what I mean,
I'll turn on the Preview checkbox
and you can see that my line is waving up and down,
albeit with corners, I want it to be smooth
so I'll set the points to Smooth, like so,
and you can see we get these nice smooth waves now.
I want them to be a little taller
so I'll crank the size value up to 20.
Now I want you to notice
this Ridges per segment value right there,
by default it's set to "4"
Let's see what that means.
I'm going to count from the crest down to the valley,
and each one of these transitions
right here represents a single segment,
so from the crest to the valley is a segment,
from the valley to the crest is a segment, and so on.
Which means that we have a total starting at zero here
of one, two, three, four, five segments.
For our purposes, where the segments are concerned,
we have to add one to the Ridges per segment value.
And to make sure that's true,
I'll go and crank this value up to 10,
and now notice that we have one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eighth, nine, ten, eleven segments,
which is okay, that's going to work out great.
So I'll go ahead and click OK.
Now let's switch back to the diagram.
Remember that we're looking for a distance
from the crest to the valley of 150 points.
And so to make our line long enough,
we have to multiply a 150 times 11.
So I'll switch back to our document so far
and I'll click on the word Transform,
up here in the control panel,
and you want to make sure that the center point
is selected here inside the Reference Point matrix.
You also, and this is very important,
you want to turn off Scale Strokes & Effects
because otherwise you're going to scale
that first Zig Zag value, which is going to mess things up.
And having done that, I'll go ahead and change
the width value, which in our case represents
the length of the line to 1650,
and I'll press the Enter key,
or the Return key on a Mac, to apply that change.
And now, if you were to measure the distance
from the crest right here to the valley,
you would see that it's exactly a 150 points wide.
All right, now, when I was first working
through this project, I decided I'd get clever
and create a calligraphic brush.
Because, after all, what we have here
is a calligraphic brushstroke that gets 10 points thick
at its thickest point.
I'll go ahead and switch back to my artwork,
and I'll go to the Window menu
and choose the Brushes command,
and then I'll drop down to the little page icon
at the bottom of the panel, I'll click on it,
and I'll go ahead and accept Calligraphic Brush,
which is the default setting, and I'll click OK.
Then, I'll set the Angle value to negative 45 degrees,
so that we're angling the brush against the line.
I'll set the Roundness value to "0%",
so that we have the highest degree of contrast,
and I'll take the Size value and crank it up to 10 points.
And then, I'll go ahead and name this guy,
let's say skinny 45 degrees,
I don't really know how to enter
the degree symbol offhand on the PC,
so I'll just copy this one
and paste it in there and click OK.
And now I'll apply that brushstroke
by clicking on "skinny 45°" here inside the Brushes panel.
And if I hide the panel and zoom in,
you can see that this should give us
exactly the effect we're looking for.
The problem is that calligraphic brushstrokes
are a little bit random, meaning that this crest
isn't going to exactly match this one
and that's going to result in seams.
and I only know this because I worked
through this entire project and found it to be true.
Which means we're going to have to find a different approach.
So, I'll press Control + Z, or Command + Z on the Mac,
to undo that change.
And so I'm going to duplicate this edge
to create another using a Transform effect,
and just so that we can see the values I'm going to enter,
I'll switch back to the diagram,
notice in order to create a line
that's up to 10 points thick,
we have to move this edge seven points
to the right and seven points down.
And so I'll return to the Effect menu,
choose Distort & Transform, and choose Transform,
or if you load the D keys you have a keyboard shortcut
of Control + E here on the PC, or Command + E on the Mac,
and now I'll just change both of these move values
to seven points, I'll take the Copies value up to one
and I'll turn on the Preview checkbox,
and you can see we get exactly the effect
we're looking for, at which point I'll click OK.
Now, the only problem is I want this brushstroke
to be centered at the guidelines,
and that's just going to make for a more predictable effect.
And so I'm going to move the brushstroke back into place
by returning to the Effect menu
and choosing the second command, Transform,
which will bring back the dialog box
with its previously applied values.
Now, it's very possible you'll get
this alert message that's asking you do you really
want to apply another instance of this effect?
You do, so click the Apply New Effect button,
and then turn on the Preview checkbox
just so we can see what we're doing.
The fact that we have three lines,
or what appears to be three lines now,
is because of this Copies value,
so I'll take it back down to zero,
and then you want to change both of the move values
to negative, like so, that's just going to move
that bottom edge back where it was.
So what you want to do is enter "/2"
after each one of these values,
and that's going to translate to a movement
of three and a half points, both up and to the left,
which is going to center the stroke nicely,
at which point click OK.
All right, now I'm going to go ahead
and rename this layer "live FX",
because that's what we've applied so far.
Ultimately, however, we need to expand this wave
and so we might as well do that right now
by first duplicating this layer,
so that we keep the live FX
in case we have to reference them later,
and you can do that by clicking on the flyout menu icon,
in the top right corner of the layers panel,
and choosing Duplicate "live FX".
Now turn the originals off,
just so you don't end up messing them up,
and double-click on an empty portion of this new layer.
Let's go ahead and call it expanded
because that's what it is,
and I'll change the color to Violet,
which will make the edges easy to see,
and then I'll click OK.
All right, now, you want to go up to the Object menu
and choose Expand Appearance,
or if you load the D keys,
you've got that elaborate keyboard shortcut,
which I find to be handy,
Control + Shift + Alt + Right Bracket,
that's Command + Shift + Option + Right Bracket on the Mac,
you may find it useful as well.
That's going to result in a group,
as we can see on the far left side of the Control panel,
so I'll go up to the Object menu and choose Ungroup,
or you have that keyboard shortcut
that I'll be using a just a minute, of Control + Shift + G,
or Command + Shift + G on the Mac,
and the reason I'll be using it is we still have a group
because we had some nested groups, for whatever reason.
And so I'll press Control + Shift,
or Command + Shift + G, again,
at which point I can see Path on the far left side
of the Control panel, which means everything is A-OK.
Now, I'll change the stroke to None,
and I'll click the fill swatch and change it
to the stark shade of orange that begins "R=241".
And that's giving us this kind of weird double fill effect
and that's because we actually have
two path outlines at this point.
If you want to join them together,
then go up to the Object menu,
choose Path and choose Join,
or you can press Control + J, or Command + J on the Mac,
and that's going to join two of the endpoints.
If you want to join the other two endpoints,
press Control + G, or Command + G, again,
at which point you will have a filled Path outline.
And notice now we have matching points,
both at the crests and at the valleys,
so these two anchor points right here
are going to match up nicely with these two anchor points here,
which is exactly what we want,
and also exactly what we wouldn't get
if we had accepted the calligraphic brushstroke.
And that my friends is how you create
a perfectly waving line that will result
at a seamless tile pattern
here inside Illustrator.