Creating transitions with blends in Illustrator CS2
Table of Contents
Editing a blend
Once you’ve created a blend, you can edit it in a variety of ways. It should come as no surprise to you at this point to learn that blends are live in Illustrator, meaning you can adjust them even after the blend is applied. To do so, using the Direct Selection tool, click a key object and change its color, shape, position, attributes—whatever—when you do, Illustrator simply redraws the blend to incorporate the change.
You will notice that you can’t select or edit the intermediate steps that Illustrator creates to form the blend. This is an attribute of the live functionality of the blend—you can only access the steps by expanding the blend. However, you can control how Illustrator draws blend steps by selecting a blend and choosing Object > Blend > Blend Options. In the Blend Options dialog, you have two general settings: Spacing and Orientation:
- Spacing. The Spacing setting determines the number of blend steps that are created. When Smooth Color is chosen, Illustrator creates as many steps as are necessary to display a smooth and gradual transition between key objects (Figure 6). The Specified Steps setting allows you to define exactly how many blend steps Illustrator creates. Using a higher number of steps results in a smoother transition, whereas a lower number allows you to see the individual steps in the blend (Figure 7). The Specified Distance allows you to specify how far apart each step appears from the next.
Figure 6: When you want to create shading techniques using blends, the Smooth Color option provides the best results.
Figure 7: By specifying a particular number of blend steps, you can control how visible the individual steps of the blend are.
- Orientation. The Orientation setting controls the baseline angle of each step in your blend. With the Align to Page setting, each blend step aligns parallel to the bottom of the page, even if the path is curved or diagonal. With this setting, all blends steps share the same orientation. In contrast, the Align to Path setting aligns the baseline of each blend step to the angle of the path itself. With this setting, you’ll see that each blend step has a different orientation (Figure 8).
Figure 8: On the left, the blend is set to the Align to Page option. The blend on the right is set to the Align to Path orientation option.
Replacing the spine of a blend
As we briefly mentioned earlier, you’ll notice a straight path that connects the key objects in a blend. This path is referred to as the spine of the blend. The individual steps that are created in a blend follow along the spine as they connect the two outer objects. The spine is an editable path, and you can use the Pen tool and the Direct Selection tool to edit the path if you want to alter the direction of the blend steps. In fact, the position of the control handles on a spine can control how the individual steps are distributed along the spine.
Additionally, you can perform a delicate operation—a spine transplant. You can draw any vector path, open or closed, and use it as the spine for an existing blend. To perform this surgery, select both the blend and the path you’ve created, and then choose Object > Blend > Replace Spine. Illustrator then uses the path you created as the spine for the blend, allowing you to customize how blend steps appear.
Reversing blends
With a blend selected, you can choose Object > Blend > Reverse Spine, to reverse the order of the key objects in your blend. This function is helpful for when you want to flip the blend so that it travels in the opposite direction.
Additionally, you can reverse the stacking order of the key objects in a blend by selecting the blend and choosing Object > Blend > Reverse Front to Back. This setting is especially useful for when you are using blends to create animations, which always travel in one direction. To have your animation play in reverse, you use this feature.
