Hey everyone. Uh, this video we're gonna look at something called an  envelope mesh, different from an envelope. Distort gives you more control, very custom. We're gonna go from stripe lines to 3D ribbony thing. Ignore all the kind of like pink edges around there. I'll explain what I did accidentally later on.

But the mesh is relatively easy to uh, get going. Um, and then later in the video we'll start combining some  of the things we've learned earlier in the course. My favorite parts will, we start kind  of combining techniques and becoming even more. Awesome. Alright, let's jump in. Hey everyone, uh, to get started, open up envelope mesh.

Okay, we've done envelope distort. We're gonna do the mesh part now. So, uh, make sure they're all grouped. Okay? Um, if you're doing it on your own, okay,  these should already be grouped and we're gonna go to object  and we're gonna go down to envelope Distort. We're gonna go to the one that says Make with Mesh.

So Warp is kind of predefined. Mesh let's us do super custom stuff. So the default, I think is four by four. Um, let's leave it at four by four. Let's click Okay. The mesh like this is quite a dense mesh.

The mesh is the kind of grid that's over it. And what it is, is if you grab the direct selection tool  and click on any one of them, you can start distorting it. Cool. A okay, and this is like full custom stuff. Now the only trouble, well there's two parts really. There's these little anchor points which actually force,  you know, the, the shape to follow it around.

And then there's these handles like we have when we've got,  um, like the pin tool or the curvature tool. Okay? These kind of like define like little gravity, kind  of pulls the, um, the shape along, not exactly along  with it, but like directionally with it. So a four by four, um, mesh is pretty hardcore. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back to my black arrow. Okay, click off, click back on.

What you can do is you can go to uh,  either reset envelope shape boop,  and it goes back to add your own sound effect. Um, uh, you can just reset it to start again  or you can go reset with mesh. Okay? And what I want to do is just one by one all you do,  I like this one because you only get, um,  anchor points in the corners. You can't really see them yet. But watch this click okay,  grab my direct selection tool and you'll notice that.

Can you see the, just in the four corners? Okay? And you get these massive handles that stick out. And I find especially for this ribbon,  obviously it's just nice and flowy  and limited control, but smooth, okay? And what I wanna do is make it kind of a ribbony thing. Can you see this mesh doesn't work sometimes  like the pen tool.

So if you're like, Hey, this feels weird. It is weird. I don't know why, just is a little weird. Okay? So there's a little bit of like, okay, what do I do? Um, every time I use it I'm like, man,  I feel like I'm starting again with Illustrator.

So there's a little bit of like messing around going, oh,  what is, what is this doing? Okay. If it's like that for you, it's just like that. It's this, um, this mesh thing. So often I'll have to click off or reset with mesh. Actually no, uh, reset envelope shape  and just be a little bit more, I don't know, deliberate.

It doesn't like lots of fine adjustment. Okay? That's kind of the vibe. I'm going for kind  of this flicky thing. I'm gonna tuck these in a little bit  so it looks like it's whipping in the wind. Maybe just bulge that out a little bit.

That's gonna be good enough for now. Actually, I say that you wait there anyway. That seems good enough. Yeah, that's an envelope mesh. You can do it with anything type. We did it with a ribbon here.

Everything else we're gonna do is kind of building on some  of the skills that we've learned already. First one, I'm gonna fix my ribbon weight there. Alright? You can spend ages getting that right? So what I wanna do now is I'm gonna move it down. I am going to create a second one.

So I'm just duplicating it. And what I'm gonna do is make it darker. 'cause it's gonna be underneath this first one,  like you sort of the beginning because  what we can do is we can use our recolor for some reason,  the contextual task bar decided  to disappear doing an envelope mesh. Okay? So I'm gonna go to Recolor this way  and I'm gonna say maybe this  before, you could just go grab all the colors  and say, I'm gonna drag the Huon situation down to be dark. Okay?

Um, so it looks like it's behind. Alright? Um, next uh, thing I'm gonna do is kind of get it lined up. Um, so that's envelope meshes by the way. Um, everything else I'm gonna do is kind of, you know,  building on um, the tools that we've learned so far to kind  of, I don't know, beat them into you. And so you kind of like alternative use cases.

So this is kind of on top, perfect. And I'm gonna get it some, I'm gonna get roughly on the top. I got my smart guides on,  so it's snapping, which is perfect. I'm gonna go into my envelope to store it. And you just have to go to the um, direct selection tool. Click on this and I'm gonna just start with this bottom one.

And I want it to be like this, right? You down there, you down there  and maybe you over there over there. And what I'm gonna do is, I know that's kind of it. I'm gonna send it to the back, okay? And that's kind of, could be enough,  something not quite right about it. But hey, that'll do for now.

Um, I'm gonna show you, actually wait there. I keep saying wait there and we jump  around and do some more. Alright? Um, I'm gonna show you  how to build on some of the other things. Like I want a kind of a shadow where it goes  around the corner 'cause it doesn't look quite right. Um, so what I'm gonna do is just,  I'm gonna grab my shift o okay?

From my output tool, make a duplicate  of this holding down option  or alt the background is actually locked. Um, so I'm going to unlock the background layer,  duplicate it across just so I've got one  to go back to in case I wreck this. What I also wanna do in this one is I'm gonna duplicate that  and what I wanna do, envelope meshes can be really weird. We talked about 'em before, they're just a bit strange. So what I'm gonna do is I am going to go up to object. I'm gonna go to expand, okay?

I am gonna expand it all  and then I'm gonna try and group it all. Okay? It ends up with this like little line in the middle. It's not gonna matter to me. See if I do it with the, um, sheet builder tool, okay? And I go and it's still left little  bits, I'm gonna smosh 'em together.

There's a line through the middle. I'm gonna ignore that. There are just weird things that happen with the envelope. Distort. You can go through  and delete all the anchor points. It's not gonna make any difference to the thing I'm doing.

The one thing that might do is let's tie together,  see all these anchor points around the edges. Who remembers the tool? You're like, Ooh, I know how  to get rid of lots of anchor points that aren't necessary. Okay, so I've got it selected. Let's go to objects. You know where it is.

Go to path. And there's one called Simplify. Let's have a little look. I'm on my direct selection tool now look at that. Just a couple of anchor points. Anyway.

Um, so what I want to do now is with the selected,  I'm gonna add a gradient. Who removes the shortcut? Adding in gradient? Nobody. Okay? But it is the, remember down the bottom you've got, uh,  forward slash which gives it the fill nothing.

So make sure the fills at the front. Okay? So it's not at the X key fills at the front. And you've got those three keys down  by the M there's the comma period and forward slash  and it's the, not that one, it's the second one, okay? The period that adds a gradient or just use a gradient tool. What I wanna do is I want, I think these are flipped around.

It's weird, huh? The purple's on this left hand side  and it's over here on, you know,  it's on the right hand side here. I'm not worried too much. I just want to go through  and say, all right, I want you to be black. I want this side to be black. This is a little trick and I want one side of it, okay?

To be the opacity right down. So there's kinda like transparency through it  and I'm gonna overlay it here. Okay? See what I'm doing here, okay? And what I want to do is I want to do a couple of things. I want grab my ingredient tool.

Okay? So geeky drag this out to be, I just want it to be kind  of smaller and the right angle, alright? And what you might do as well is with it selected,  you might play around with the opacity slash blending mode. Mine's not gonna do much, um,  because there's not, you know,  I actually quite like it at normal. Maybe you might end up playing with the blending mode  or play around with the opacity of this thing in general  as well as the like gradient, um, opacity as well. So find something that you like.

Um, what you're gonna notice is,  I'm gonna pretend I did this on purpose. Can you see this gap here? Like see ignoring the giant fluorescent pink gap. Any guesses why that is there? Have a little think, pause the video. Like, oh, where did that come from?

If you paused it and you can't dunno. Um, congratulations. If you do, it's the simplify. Um, I'm gonna go, well I should go back in time  and say don't you simplify it. Just adjusted it, right? Remember it got rid of a lot  of detail and it's trying to smooth all this out  and that is one of the like problem.

Well this is the problem where it comes into here  where you're trying to exactly match the thing underneath. It's removed a lot of that control. So yeah, don't use simplify,  especially if you want this thing to um, you know,  kind of blend over there. Alright, that is,  it looks cool except we're gonna ignore the  glowing bits around the corner. You might add one at the end there. Another one underneath there in terms of the dark gradient.

There you go my friend. That is the envelope  mesh gives you full custom. You can decide how dense that mesh is  and you can do some pretty cool stuff. There's something wrong with the bottom part of my ribbon. Is it? Oh yeah.

It needs to be thinner. That's what it is. Can I cheat? Oh, it's kind of cheating. Totally cheating. Yeah, that looks better.

Oh, actually, and one last little tip  before we go is, um, sometimes you're trying  to work on this thing behind here  and you, it's hard to grab that anchor point 'cause it's  Top one. Remember the tip we  known before? Okay, I'm going to select everything. So the background in this top bit  and just hit, uh, command two  or control two on a PC just to uh, lock that part. Okay? And now I can kind of really easily, uh,  work on this thing underneath it  without accidentally selecting the top.

And remember, if you wanna unselect bits of it,  you can right click this  and say, unlock the compound path, which is the, um,  gradient over the top. Okay? And I can right click and unlock  and say, unlock the envelope  and leave the rectangle, which is the background. Look at us adding lots of the tools together. That's why I love this part of the course. We start kind of combining stuff, power moves,  ignore all the bits coming around the side.

Alright, that's it. I'll see you in the next video.