Blend Between Defined Anchors

In the blends you ve explored so far, you ve learned to blend between two objects. You can fine-tune blends and create some interesting deviations on those blends by basing a blend on selected anchor points in the blended objects. The result of blending from anchor points instead of objects produces very complex and intriguing effects.

Tip  

You can use the Direct Selection tool to select individual objects within a blend. Stay away from that tool for now because the goal is to select the entire blend.

You can use anchor blends with either step or smooth blends. Often the most interesting and useful anchor point “based blends use smooth color transitions to tweak shading and 3-D effects.

Follow these steps to create a blend between anchor points on two different paths:

1. Double-click the Blend tool to open the Blend Options dialog box.

2. Choose Smooth Color in the Spacing drop-down list and click OK.

3. It s easier to define anchor point blends if you can see the anchor points. Use the Selection tool to select both objects involved in the blend ”making their anchor points visible.

4. Now that you can see the anchor points in both selected objects, choose the Blend tool. The anchor points remain visible.

5. Click an anchor point in one of the objects.

6. Move the Blend cursor over an anchor point in the second object. As you do, the anchor point and the Blend cursor display together as a black square. Click to generate the blend, as shown in Figure 12-11.

   
   Figure 12-11: Blending from one specific anchor to another

The main rule for creating anchor point blends is to experiment! After a while, you will almost be able to anticipate the effect you ll produce with various anchor point blends. Keep the Undo option on the Edit menu handy as you experiment.