- [Narrator] In this movie, I'll show you how to
essentially paint using gradient mesh and
a great thing about mesh objects is
because you're transitioning colors
in two opposing directions
you can paint very soft or out of focus elements
such as these reflected clouds,
in this left hand window.
Now again I have a diagram opened here
inside Photoshop that shows how things are going to work
and so were painting every single point with
blue three or blue four.
So all the threes appear in white,
all the fours appear in black,
and we also have a few white points up here
in the top right, down left, and down here
at the bottom behind the rear view mirror.
All right, I'll switch back to Illustrator
and here we are in the document so far
I'm going to go ahead and zoom in here
and notice if I try and select the window
right at this location there,
I end up selecting this frame group instead.
And so what I'm going to do is select that group
and I'm also going to shift click on the outline
of the rear view mirror
as well as this bottom panel right here
and then I'll go up to the object menu
choose lock and choose selection
in order to lock those objects
and now I can go ahead and select this window.
Now, the first thing I'm going to do,
is make sure my fill is active here
inside the swatches panel
and then I'm going to change the fill to white
because white is a good place to start.
Then I'll go up to the object menu
and choose create gradient mesh
and I decided I needed a total of five rows
and four columns.
The problem is that everything is equally spaced,
which is not what I want
and you can tell we have some very wavy lines,
which means that we have those
unwanted hidden points.
So I'm going to cancel out
and I'm going to work with the mesh tool instead.
And then I'll go ahead and zoom in
and then I'll click at this spot right here,
to add my first row, and I'll click right about here
to add the top one.
So this is going to be the bottom row
and this is the top row
and this will give me a chance to
clean these guys up
and create smoother rows in between.
Now, if you ever need to test
whether there are extra points
and there usually are, by the way,
then just tap the minus key in order to
switch to the delete anchor point tool
at which point you'll see that
we do indeed have some extra points.
So I'll click on each one of them
to get rid of them
and that's going to kind of flatten the curve
but that's okay
it will give me way more control as well.
And I'll click on this guy to get rid of it as well
and then I'll press the A key
to switch to my white arrow tool.
I'll click on this mesh point right there
and I'll raise this control handle
and I'll go ahead and raise this guy as well
so that we have a little more curvature
and then I'll click on this segment,
and I'll go ahead and drag this control handle way over
like so, and I might drag this one inward just a little bit.
All right now let's create a couple more rows
by switching back to the mesh tool,
which you can get by pressing the U key
and then I'll click on this right hand edge
a couple of times, like so, to add two more rows.
And this time around if I press the minus key
I can see no extra invisible points,
which is very good news.
All right now let's add some columns
by pressing the U key to switch back to the mesh tool
and I'll click, let's say right about there,
and that is tragic to say the least.
I'm going to go ahead and undo that column
and I'll click up here instead,
which will at least put the top point in the right location
but all the other points are out.
Now notice if I press the minus key
the problem is not access points
the problem is that the points that we have
are located in the wrong place.
So I'll press the U key to switch back to my mesh tool
and I'll shift drag this guy
so it's very important,
that you are working with the mesh tool
so that you don't reshape the path
and then I'll go ahead and drag this
control handle up and then I'll drag this guy
while pressing the shift key
and it'll drag the control handle over a little bit
and I'll drag this guy
while pressing the shift key.
So that I'm dragging along the row line
and I'll go ahead and move this guy
and I'll move this one as well.
And it looks like this one
wants to come over a little farther,
so I'll shift drag it
then I'll shift drag this guy
to right there
that's looking actually pretty darn good
then I just need to adjust these control handles
until we have everything nice and smooth.
And, by the way, I haven't mentioned this
in a while but if you find that
your control handle are snapping into
undesirable positions
than you can go up here to the view menu
and turn off smart guides.
In my case they're already off
so I'm able to work pretty freely here.
All right, now I still have the mesh tool active
and so I'm going to go ahead and click right about here
near the center of the rear view mirror
and that gives me another lumpy column
and so I'll try to unlump it here a little bit,
if I can, by dragging these guys around
and of course I'm shift dragging the mesh points
to avoid messing up my pristine rows,
they look absolutely great so, I don't want to harm them
and I'm going to drag this control handle over a little bit
so this stuff can be a little maddening
over time
and this is, by the way, on of the great things
about starting with a gradient
is that you don't have to go through
a lot of these early mashinations here.
But the problem with starting with a gradient
is that instead of working directly inside a mesh object
you're working inside of a clipping mask,
which is often times not the way you want to work.
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and shift drag
this guy over to about there
and then I'll drag this control handle down.
And now, with any luck, if I click over here
to create one more column
it won't be all lumpy.
And sure enough,
it's kind of unlumpy,
it's got a little bit of lump up here at the top,
so I'll just go ahead and select this point
and shift drag it with the mesh tool once again
so I don't reshape the path outline.
And then I'll drag this control handle
into a better position.
Now we still have a little bit of lumpiness going on
but that's not the end of the world.
This is still going to work very nicely,
for our clouds.
All right, now press the A key
to switch to the white arrow tool
and I'll go ahead and marque these points right here
these first four points,
over here on the right hand side.
And if you end up selecting something,
that you don't want to select
just go ahead and twirl open the meshes layer right there
and I'm going to lock that second object from the top,
which is the windshield
because after all I don't want to mess it up
but it looks like I still have the interior path
of the car selected.
We'll get to that, in actually,
the next movie and I don't want to ruin it
so I'm just going to re-marque these two points
and then shift marque these two
and I'll go ahead and
make sure the fill is selected here in the swatches panel
and I'll select blue four,
in order to turn those points light blue.
Now I'll marque these two points up here
and I also want to shift marque these three points
in order to select these five mesh points in a row
and I'll change them to blue four as well.
All right now we are going to add some blue three to the mix
but clicking and shift clicking on these two points
shift click and shift click on these two,
so notice that we are skipping a row,
and then shift click and shift click on these two.
Next you want to shift click on this point right here
and shift click on this one.
So in each case we are skipping a row,
on the right hand side
we are skipping row lines
one, three, and five.
On the left,
we are skipping row lines two and four.
And now I'll go ahead and select blue three
in order to paint those mesh points like so.
All right now I'm going to select the other points
so this guy and this guy
so click and shift click
and then shift click on each of these two
and shift click on each of these two
and change them to blue four.
And you'll end up with this effect here
and that's all there is to it
and so there you have one possible way
to paint soft or out of focus image elements
using a gradient mesh
here inside Illustrator.