- [Instructor] In this movie, we're going to take
our simplified path and we're going to add
a bunch of rows and columns to it.
And along the way,
I'll show you how to take cusp mesh points,
which sometimes occur
when you're creating complicated meshes,
and turn them into more organic smooth points.
Alright, so with this path selected, I'll go ahead
and switch to my mesh tool,
which of course you can get by pressing the u key,
at least by now I've said that enough times
that it doesn't really make any sense.
And now I'll go ahead and zoom in on this right headlight
and I'm going to click just above
this bottom-right anchor point,
right at this location there, to add a row.
Now, the interesting thing about this row
is it almost looks like a duplicate of the bottom segments
and that's because it's trying to match the contour
of that segment.
And so what you need to do
is switch to the Delete Anchor Point Tool,
which you can get by pressing the minus key,
and then you want to hunt down any of those points
and notice we've got one here
but we don't have as many as we had before.
We also have this guy and I think that might be it.
This guy next door right here is some kind of point
but if I click on it to get rid of it
then Illustrator complains, so
I'm just going to leave it where it is.
Alright, now we want to add another row up here at the top
and you can do that by switching back to that mesh tool.
And then I want to zoom out here a little bit
so I can see more of what I'm doing
and I want to add a point right about here
and because I'm clicking on something
that I guess resembles a column,
we end up getting a new row.
And then I'll press the minus key to switch back
to my Delete Anchor Point Tool
and I'll make sure that there aren't any
extra anchor points visible
which in my case there aren't.
Alright, so this looks awfully darn good.
I am going to make a few modifications here.
I'll press the a key to switch to the White Arrow Tool
and then I'll click on this segment,
the first one I created
and I'll drag this control handle way down like so
and then I'll drag this control handle over here
on the right hand side up until I get sort of this
waving path outline right here
and I really want it to wave close to the grill
but I'm not going to get it too close until I add a column.
Now I should say, by the way,
if you didn't want to add any columns,
you could get some more control by switching
for the Delete Anchor Point tool
to the Add Anchor Point Tool.
You can do that and you could just go ahead
and add a point right there in the middle if you want,
after which point I can press the a key to get my
White Arrow Tool and I can actually select
the point I added and drag it to a different location.
That's not what I want to do however,
I want to control the location of all my mesh points
using rows and columns.
It's just a cleaner way to work.
And so, I'll press control z or command z on the Mac
a couple times to get rid of that point
and I'll go ahead and switch to the mesh tool once again
and I want to add a new point,
let's say right about here
and that's going to add this crazy column
and it turns the point white
which is in no way what I want.
So I'll go over here to the Swatches Panel,
make sure the fill is active and select blue one
one again.
Alright, now I'll press the a key to switch
to the White Arrow Tool and I want you to notice
this point right here.
I'll go ahead and select it and notice that
it's kind of a crazy cusp point
in which the two opposite handles
are locked into alignment with each other.
That is not going to do us any good.
So, what I'm going to do instead is click and hold
on the Add Anchor Point Tool right there
and choose the Anchor Point Tool
or you can press a keyboard shortcut of shift c
in order to select it
and now what you want to do is just drag out from this point
and that's going to create a total of four control handles
as we're seeing right here
but this time they're all symmetrical,
which means we have a smooth point.
Alright, now I'll press the u key
to switch back to my Mesh Tool
and I'll go ahead and drag this point
while pressing the shift key so that I'm dragging it along
the row line like so and that'll just make for
a more consistent effect in a moment,
after I've fixed things of course.
Anyway, I went ahead and shift dragged this guy over as well
and I'll drag this control handle up a little bit
and then I'll drag this control handle down like so
and I'll press the a key to switch back
to my White Arrow Tool so I don't inadvertently
add a column or a row and I'll click on that mesh point
and I'll drag this control handle up,
perhaps not that far
and then I'll drag this control handle back
and I'll once again press the u key to switch
to switch to the Mesh Tool and I'll drag this guy over
while pressing the shift key in order to
constrain that row and I'll drag this guy up a little more
and so forth.
So you may find yourself needing to drag the points
and control handles around several times
in order to get the effect you're looking for.
Alright, once you have a column line
that looks nice and smooth, you really want to get it
as smooth as possible, then go ahead and add
another column over about here.
So click near the top of this octagonal logo
in order to create this column line.
It's not perfect but if I drag this point
while pressing the shift key
I can move this over to a better location
and I'll go ahead and drag this control handle down
like so and that actually looks pretty good.
Alright, now I want to move this mesh point down.
So I'm going to drag it while pressing the shift key,
so again, I'm working with the Mesh Tool.
The Mesh Tool's the only one that allows you
to constrain a mesh point
along a column or row line and then I'll just go ahead
and drag this guy up ever so slightly.
Alright, now we need to add two more columns
and a bunch more rows and so I'm going to click right here
and because we're working in between these two
smooth columns, things should look pretty darn good.
They might not be prefect, in which case
you're just going to have to modify the position
of the mesh points or the control handles
until you get the effect you like
and then I'll click right about here
to add another column like so.
Alright, now I'm going to add four more rows,
I just found that this works nicely
and so I'm going to create a row just above the bottom one
like so and it's looking super smooth
as we you can see right here.
One problem is I want to lift these curves a little bit
so I'm going to press the a key to switch to my
White Arrow Tool and I'll just click this segment
and I'll drag this control handle upward
so that it's mimicking the angle of this line right here
and I'll go ahead and do the same with this control handle,
the one that's associated with the bottom row
and I'll press the u key to switch back to my Mesh Tool
and I'll grab this point and drag it while pressing
the shift key upward
so that I'm dragging the point along the column line.
Alright, now let's add a few more rows, three in all
and I'll start with one right there
and one just slightly above it
and then I'll go ahead and create another row
right about at this location here
and I'm going to go ahead and grab this mesh point
and shift drag it downward so that we're more or less
matching the control of the grill
and I'll shift drag this guy down a little bit as well
so that this portion of the line is running parallel
to the other ones and I'll go ahead and drag this
control handle up a little bit.
And you can play with these things all day but ultimately,
this is the effect I'm looking for.
So notice that I have one, two, three, four, five,
six rows, at least six rows that we're seeing
and then one, two, three, four columns.
And that's how you add a bunch of rows and columns
to your simplified path outline
as well as how you convert rouge cusp points if need be,
to smooth mesh points using the Anchor Point Tool
here inside Illustrator.