Transcript:
Hey, everyone today. I’d like to show you how to create a honeycomb pattern in Illustrator using a single hexagon and then applying a series of effects to it in this case, the distort and transform effect, so I’m going to show you how to achieve this using three effects and then an even more streamlined version using two effects, but the first thing we should quickly do is show you how to actually draw a hexagon inside of Illustrator because it’s not necessarily obvious. So if I come down and hover over here, This is my rectangle tool, click and hold and I can find the polygon tool. If I click and drag out on the page, I have got hexagons by a default adjust here, But in case you didn’t know you can actually change the number of sides of the shape that you have here. So if I press the up arrow, I’m increasing the number sides, the down arrow to decrease the number of side’s. Quick sidenote. This is one of the best ways of the quickest way, certainly to draw a triangle inside of Illustrator. In this case, we want a hexagon, Of course, so lets press the up arrow a couple of times until we get our six sides, and if I hold down the shift key, that will constrain it to give us a nice horizontal base there, and when I release, there’s my X again just there now I have got the default colors of a black stroke and a white fill you can, of course change that using the swatche’s panel or the appearance panel, just here the stroke and the fill. And that’s pretty much it guys. I’m ready to dive in to actually show you how to generate the Honeycomb Just now so over here inside of the honeycomb three effects file. I already have the initial hexagon’s drawn just here and also everything which I’m going to show you today. All the files which I show you the two files, you will be able to download those, and also any of the effects all of the numbers, which I’m putting into the effects. I’m including those in the description as well so with the hexagons selected just here, and you’ve got to be paying close attention to the appearance panel because this is where all these effects are going to start staking up in just a moment, so with my hexagons selected just here in my properties panel. I just wanted to point out that this has a width of ninety two point, three seven six pixels and a height, a nice round height of 80 pixels. I’m just pointing that out because if you’re playing along at home and you’re using the same numbers that I’m about to use in the effects, it’s going to be important that you start with a shape the same size as me. So ninety two point, three, seven six pixels wide and eighty pixels high. I’m also using an art board of 1000 by 1000 pixels, but that’s not critical, but the shape size is so let’s dive in goes with my hexagon selected just here, let’s pop up to the effects panel, the effects menu, big, apart, distort and transform transform and this is allowing us to transform the original shape without actually harming it. So you can see. We have lots of options in here. Scale move rotation and a bunch of options is down here and we’re mainly going to be using these move options. Just in here and one little trick, just down here a little bit later as well. So you can see if I drag this slider just down here. Nothing happens because my preview checkbox is not turned on and so now I can drag this around vertically and horizontally, So I can move this wherever I like. Now, why, of course? I’ve done this a little bit ahead of time, so I know exactly what numbers I want to be using, so I’m going to be using 77 and 45 for horizontal and vertical move values. Now all this is done is actually move the shape what I actually want to do is retain the original shape, but just create a copy and move that copy, so that’s. What this little copies guy is just about down here? So if I said that to one press the tab key to commit that there, it is just there. There’s my original shape, and this is my copy just down here. So if I choose OK at this point here in my appearance panel, there’s my transform effect, so you can see that if I turn that off and on, that’s my new copy, just there one thing to be very aware of very careful of guys, and this has tripped me up before in the past. When you have your shape selected, you don’t want to have either the stroke or the fill selected, because if you do, and you apply an effect to it, it will apply it to whatever it was that you have selected so you can actually transform you can apply transforms to try the stroke or the film or to the shape as a whole so because we want to do this for the shape as a whole, we make sure neither of these is selected, so let’s add our second effect, so our shape is still selected, so let’s go to effect distort and transform transform. Now we get what looks like an error message at this point, but everything’s still, okay, It’s essentially saying. Hey, look, you’ve already got a transform effect in play. Are you sure you don’t want to be editing that? Are you really sure that you want to apply a new effect? Which is what we want. In this case, so let’s just choose apply a new effect. So in this case, we want to start moving our little pair of hexagons down the page so the way. I’m going to do that is just by making sure. Our previews turned on darling in some vertical movement just there and let’s just add one copy just here, so we can see exactly what’s going on. And in this case, 90 is exactly the number that I want. So if I start to increase the number of copies, we start to get this pattern running down the page just like so, so I’m gonna have 8 copies with a vertical movement of 90 pixels. Giving us this kind of choose, okay. I just want to point out. We’ve now got two transforms going inside the appearance panel, which is great. This is exactly what we need and so let’s apply that third effect, so effect, distort and transform transform again apply a new effect. And let’s turn our preview on and lets. Move this horizontally this time, so I’m just going to start moving this out here and actually let’s just pop in one copy here, so we can see what’s going on now. I’m gonna move this all the way to the end. Now we get all the way to the end of the slider guys, and it maxes out at 100 pixels, but we haven’t got it all the way across to where we need it to go, not a problem. We can actually click inside of this box and then use our up and down arrow keys to change the number you could, of course type in a number or what I generally like to do is hold down the shift key and press this up and down arrow keys to move things around quickly. Now, in this case, the exact number that I want is 154 which is what we have just here now, and I’m gonna actually increase the number of copies to fall. There is just there, and there it is, Our effect is now complete, So I’m gonna click away and I just want to show you up and the view menu. If we go to the outline mode, you can see that in reality, we actually only have one hexagon, which is the original shape that we drew if I come out of that mode again. This is what it looks like, but in reality, we only have one hexagon, so the beauty with this, Of course, is these effects are all still live, so we can actually turn off individual. Excuse me! I should actually select my shape. Of course I can turn off individual effects. Give you some crazy patterns, and I’m not going. To course. Just click on any of those titles Just there, so Ive. Just cancel out of there. If you single, click on any of these, you will get you back into that effect, and you could actually dial in any numbers that you like just going to cancel out of that so guys, that’s how you can generate an effect using excuse me a honeycomb effect, using only three distort and transform effects. But I want to show you a slightly more streamlined version of how to do this using only two effects. So let’s jump in here. I’ll move a lot more quickly through this one. Now that you’ve got a good idea of how this works. I’m selecting our hexagon’s. Effect, distort and transform transform. Let’s like we did before. Let’s move this across 77 and down 45 turning on my preview just here and let’s pop out one copy just here, so nothing really different so far the one thing. I want to point out this time reflect X, So if I come down to copies and I free increase this to say, 3 4 5 you can see it’s just growing diagonally down the page, but look what happens if I actually turn on reflect X, It’s actually making a copy, and then it’s reflecting about the X, so it’s just going to keep dancing down the page, and if I increase the number of copies, this is great. This is giving us what we were only able to achieve before using 2 effects, using just a single effect, So 17 is exactly what I need. Choose, OK? Let’s dive straight back into effects, distort and transform transform apply a new effect. And this time I want to move it horizontally 154 and this time we’re going to make four copies. Cheers, okay, and we are done and I’m just going to jump back and forth now between these two files. So this is the one using three effects. We can see just out here and this is the one using two effects and again jumping back and forth. You can see that honeycomb pattern is identical, but we’re able to achieve that using two effects as opposed to three, so there’s nothing wrong with three, but it’s always nice to one use less effects if we can get away with it. So that’s pretty much it guys. I hope you got something out of this. Thanks for sticking around. Cheers!