- [Instructor] In this movie,
we're going to take on the rocker panel
down here underneath the doors.
Or to be more exact, it's the piece of trim
that's covering the rocker panel
and it's going to present a special challenge
because it bends.
So notice that we have effectively two regions
of this path outline.
We have this area down here
which is traveling at more or less a 45 degree direction,
and then this region over on the left hand side
is nearly vertical,
and that means that the mesh is going to have to bend
along with the path, which is not necessarily something
that Illustrator deals with very effectively by default.
Alright so I'll go ahead and switch over
to our document in progress,
and I will zoom in on that detail like so
and then I'll click on it with the black arrow tool
in order to select it.
And I want you to notice how the anchor points are arranged.
We've got three points along the bottom edge
and then we have a couple of additional smooth points
along that top edge,
and that's going to make for a little bit
of additional confusion on Illustrator's part,
but there are ways to address the problem.
So let's start things off by going up to the Object menu
and choosing create gradient mesh,
and notice that I've set the rows value to three
and the columns value to four.
And with the preview check box turned on,
you can see that that gives us two row lines
and three column lines,
so you're always getting one less line
than either of the values.
And that's because, for example,
two lines here breaks this path into three rows.
Anyway, that's where we're going to start.
So I'll go ahead and click okay,
and then I'll zoom in on the path outline.
And we might as well reinstate the stroke very first thing,
and so I'll go ahead and switch over to the appearance panel
and with the entire mesh selected,
I'll drop down to the add new stroke icon and click on it
and then I'll go ahead and change that weak black
to a nice rich RGB black like so.
Alright now what you want to do
is select that delete anchor point tool
from the pen tool fly out menu.
Just so we can see if we have an extra points,
like this guy right here, don't want him,
so I'll just go ahead and click in order to get rid of it.
And that's it, which is actually not too bad.
Now you can see there's another
weird little point right there that's been added,
but if you click on it,
you're going to reshape the path outline,
which is not what we want, so I'll undo that change.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and press the A key
to switch to the white arrow tool
and I'll select this mesh point right here,
just so that we can see the control handles
which are turning into something
of a big jumbled mess here.
And that's a function of the fact
that this path is bending so dramatically at this location.
And so I'm just going to grab a control handle here
and hope for the best,
and it turns out to be the right one.
So just so you can follow along, it's this guy right here.
So it's the one that is to the left of the big cluster,
and so I'll go ahead and drag that down
and I might drag this guy down as well.
Alright now what I want to do
is move this point a little higher
and I'm going to do that by pressing the U key
in order to switch to the mesh tool.
And then I'll drag this guy upward
while pressing the shift key.
And that way I'm moving the mesh point up the column.
So again, I don't end up reshaping the path outline.
Because if you take a look at how things are structured
here in the layers panel,
you can see that this mesh's layer
accounts for the body of the car,
and well below that we have the wheels layer,
so if I were to make a modification
to the shape of this path outline,
we would most assuredly see it.
Alright so I'll go ahead and press control Z
or command Z on the Mac to undo that change
and I might drag this guy a little down as well.
I'm going to leave this point where it is for the moment.
But I am going to move this guy up.
So I'll go ahead and click on it to select it.
You have to be very careful
that you don't accidentally add a row, like so.
So make sure you click directly on the point
and then drag it upwards
while pressing the shift key as well
and then just go ahead and drag this guy down.
So again, very important,
we're making all these modifications with the mesh tool.
Alright I'm going to drag this guy down
while pressing the shift key
so that we're traveling along the column,
and I'm going to drag this guy up while pressing shift,
and let's see about these guys here,
I'll just go ahead and drag this guy up
while pressing the shift key.
This guy, I'm just going to drag free form
because I'm not very happy with the shape
of this column line right here,
and it is functioning as a column line by the way,
even though it is more horizontal than vertical.
And I'll go ahead and drag this guy down
a little bit as well,
and I might now drag this guy while pressing the shift key
so that we're dragging the point along the row.
Now I don't want this transition
to be super harsh like this,
so I'm going to move these control handles
farther away from each other.
And now this guy needs to be moved as well,
so I'm just going to drag him free form
to let's say, about here,
and now we have some control handle problems
as you're seeing there,
but before I deal with them,
I want to move this guy up like so
and this time I am pressing the shift key, incidentally,
in order to move the mesh point along this column line.
And that has the added effect
of moving these control handles farther away from each other
which is great.
Alright, now let's supply some color
so that we can tell what's really going on here.
Because I'll just press the A key
to switch back to my white arrow tool
and notice this point right there.
If you take a look at the swatches panel,
and I'll go ahead and click on a fill to select it,
Illustrator's telling me
that the color of this point is white.
Which is not actually true.
Notice if I try to change it to black, it has no effect.
And so if this were an interior point
I would press the minus key
to get my delete anchor point tool
and I would click on it to get rid of it.
Now initially, it looks like everything's still fine,
but if I press the B key to switch back
to the black arrow tool,
then Illustrator goes ahead and updates the screen preview
at which point you can see
that I've reshaped the path outline.
Don't want to do that, so we'll just press control Z
or command Z on the Mac to undo that change
and I'll press the A key
in order to switch back to my white arrow tool
and I'll move over to this mesh point,
which is a legitimate point by the way,
and I will change it to blue four.
So you need to make sure once again
that your fill is selected up here in the swatches panel
and then I'll go ahead and select these guys.
So I'll click on this one, shift click on this,
and you just want to select every point
along the top edge here,
so I'm just shift clicking on each one
with the white arrow tool once again.
You can't select multiple points with the mesh tool.
And then I'll change all these guys to white, like so,
and I am not changing this color, incidentally,
this guy up here is still set to blue one.
Alright but we've got some pretty harsh transitions
and that's because this line right here,
this column line, falls outside of the path outline.
And so what that means is we need to move
some points and control handles around.
So I'll go ahead and drag that mesh point down there
and I'll drag this control handle inward like so.
We still have a very harsh transition going on
and that's most likely because
this control handle right here
is crossing the neighboring column line,
and so what I'm going to do is
click on that line to select it,
and I'll just drag out this control handle, the top one,
and I'll drag this control handle out
away from this guy as well,
and so far that's not making a ton of difference,
and so I'll just go ahead and move this guy in a little bit.
And that's still going to give us something of a harsh edge,
but I think it's looking better.
And so now I'm going to select this point right here
and I'll shift click on this one
and I'll also go ahead and shift click
on this guy down here.
And I'm going to change these guys to blue three,
and that's going to soften things a little bit as well,
but now we have another sharp reflection over here,
which I think is going to work out fine in the long run.
Alright, so I'll go ahead and select this bottom point
and I'll change it to blue four.
And then I'll select this guy
and I'll change him back to blue three.
And I'll leave this final bottom point here,
the bottom right point, set to blue one.
And to see what that looks like,
I'll just go ahead and click off the path outline for now
and I'll press control minus a few times
in order to zoom out,
and the result is this effect right here.
Alright now my only real problem with this
is that these white points up here
aren't showing up very well,
and so what I need to do
is move one of those row lines down a little bit,
and so I'll go ahead and click on the top of the path
to select it, and then I'll grab these to guys right here.
So click on one, shift click on the other
with the white arrow tool,
and I'll just drag them down a little bit.
And now, just so I can see what I've done,
I'll press control H, or command H on the Mac
to hide the selection edges.
And to my eye, that looks pretty darn good.
Alright so now I'll just press control H
or command H on the Mac
so I don't run the risk of saving the document
with the selection edges hidden,
which can make things pretty confusing over time.
And then I'll just click off the path to deselect it.
And that is how you apply a gradient mesh
to a bendy path, one that curves around on itself,
here inside Illustrator.