- [Instructor] In this movie we're going to begin
work on the hood right here,
and along the way I'll show you how to delete
invisible, unwanted mesh points
which are a real nuisance inside the program.
And they can be extremely confusing at first.
In fact I would go so far as to say
they are extremely confusing always.
In any event I'm going to switch over
to the project file so far,
and notice this hood path right here.
It is another compound shape
as we can see on the far left side of the control panel,
and so what I've got
is this path right here cut out of the hood.
Alright so that's not going to work.
I can't turn a compound shape into a mesh object,
and so what I'll do is go to the Window menu,
and choose Pathfinder to bring up the Pathfinder panel.
Again, with any luck, you'll see the Expand button.
If not, click off the path, and select it again.
And, once again, if you have that checkbox
turned on inside the preferences dialog box
you're going to have to click on the
path outline then click Expand,
and that will go ahead and convert the compound shape
to a static path outline as we are
once again seeing on the far left side of the control panel.
Alright, I'll go ahead and hide the Pathfinder panel,
and I'm going to zoom on in.
And I could go up to the Object menu,
choose Create Gradient Mesh,
and then enter something like, let's say,
seven rows and seven columns at which point
you're going to see the various row segments
bending into the bottom of the path outline.
And that's because Illustrator is
trying to match the contour.
Which, you know, makes sense.
The way it's doing it though is highly bizarre,
and so what I'm going to do, to make this clear, is cancel out.
And then I'll go ahead, and grab the Mesh tool,
and I'll click let's say right about here
in order to add a new row.
Notice that it's kind of lumpy.
See how it goes down at first then back up
then down, up, and then down again
even though there are only two control handles?
That should just make it arc upward, and nothing more.
It gets even worse if we click someplace down here.
For example I'll click in the bottom right corner someplace
in order to add this guy.
There's no world in which this control handle,
and this control handle right there
result in a path that goes above
the control panel for one thing,
and then has a couple of corners in it,
and then starts arcing again.
But what I want you to notice here
is if I press the A key to switch to the white arrow tool,
and I hover over this corner there's a point there.
Notice that I can see that there's a point,
but if I click on it I can't select it.
And even if I start dragging that point around
I end up moving the entire segment,
and making a huge mess of the path outline, and so forth.
What's going on is Illustrator has created
a bunch of invisible mesh points,
and to see what those look like I'll press Ctrl + Z,
or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that chance.
And then you want to click,
and hold on the Pen tool right here,
and select the Delete Anchor Point tool
from the fly-out menu.
Or you've got the keyboard shortcut which is the minus key,
and the second you select that tool
you will see all of those invisible mesh points.
None of which you want.
They are not things that you can manipulate
so they are just going to get in your way.
And so what I recommend you do
is painstakingly click on every
one of these interior points.
You don't want to click on the one
that initiates the segment.
You want to click on these guys, for example,
and if you get this error message
all it means is that you missed the point.
Just click OK, and try again.
You can even zoom in if you want to
because, notice here, I've got a couple
of mesh points right next to each other.
So I'll get rid of this guy,
and then I'll get rid of this corner point there,
and I'll get rid of this corner point
in order to smooth out that segment.
And now we have a couple more right here, and here.
Alright now what you want to do
is the same thing where this top guy is concerned
so I'll click here to get rid of that segment.
To get rid of that point I'll click here.
I'll click on that one, and that one,
and that one as well,
and then, finally, you want to click on this guy.
So leave the two extreme points
on either end of the segment,
but get rid of everything else,
and it looks like I've got something going on here.
I don't actually.
I'm going to leave that one alone
because it's appearing along the path outline.
Alright now if I were to zoom out
just by pressing Ctrl + Minus,
or Command + Minus on a Mac a few times.
Now I can switch to my white arrow tool,
and I can go ahead and select this point right here,
and I can drag this control handle,
and I can drag this control handle as well
in order to more reliably,
and predictably modify the curvature of this segment.
And the same goes for this guy as well.
I'll bring out this control handle,
and drag it out quite a bit like so,
and I'll do the same with this one here.
And you could even give it a
little bit of a wave if you want.
Now after this point you could
switch back to the mesh tool,
and you could add more rows if you like
between
those existing rows like so,
and they're going to end up looking smooth.
You can't really create rows down below.
For example, if I were to click here,
I create a column line,
and that column is extremely messed up.
If I click over here then I create a new row line
that is a kind of compromise between the one above it,
and the curvature of the path outline down below.
So, in other words, I'm still going to struggle
with this path because of its shape.
That's not what I want
which is why I'm going to show you
an easier way to approach this object
in the very next movie.