Hi everyone. This video, we are going  to look at something called live shape effects. It happens on some objects where you get  to do cool Pacman stuff. No, no, no. Okay. Uh, some polygons where you say, Ooh, triangle, no, octagon,  polygon, dunno, all the GOs but they're all in there.

Okay? Same with the star tool. Okay? You can say, actually I need it to be more pointy,  less pointy, less sparkles. Okay? Live shape effects.

They're really cool. They can be super useful,  especially when we'll make this like little pie graph here. This Pacman probably more useful as a pie graph. Alright, let's jump in. Alright,  I've got a file called live shape effects Open. You don't need it, it's just got some nice colors in it.

So we're not on a white  background all the way through this course. Okay? Now live shape effects. It applies to anything under this little dropdown. So the rectangle tool, uh, lips tool, polygon tool,  star tool flat tool doesn't work. Okay?

Some of them have it, okay? And what it is, let's use the ellipse tool, okay? And I'm gonna draw on a lips. I've got some colors in this file down  here that you might use. Just, I dunno, again, just to look cool. Now this little target here is gonna do the live  shape effects, okay?

And let's give it a go. Ready click hold and num. Okay, it looks like a little Pacman Adrian. Sound effects. Okay, it is more like a bar graph. Okay, well PA bar graph, pie graph, okay?

And that is one of the perks of using live shape effects. These are easily broken. Watch this. If I grab the direct selection tool and I click on this  and I move it around and I go back to,  can you see it says shape expanded. Okay, flashed there. Okay?

It just says all those cool features, the little  Pac-Man version, it's gone. So they're easily broken  and they only appear when you draw them with these tools. So I'm gonna go back. So just hit undo. Now you can use the features on this. So we'll look at the ellipse one first.

So the Pacman version, you can use both sides. Often when I'm using this for say a pie graph, um,  I'll use the uh, transform panel. So go to a window and open up transform. Okay? You can kind of do bits of it here in the properties panel,  but I find the big transform panel is a lot better. Can you see here ellipse properties.

So I can change the uh, heighten the width. Not that useful. This one is, can you see the degrees of  where the pie starts and where it ends? You can kind of be more mathematical. Okay? You can type stuff in here.

Don't set them both 90, okay? And see this option down here, you can flip them. Okay? So live shape effects have some options. We'll make it into a pie chart in a second. Let's look at some of the other ones actually  before we do to clear them off.

You can just a double click, um,  the little target and we will clear it out. I'm gonna undo that. So the one I use probably the  most is the polygon. So grab the polygon tools, click  and hold down the rectangle tool or the lips tool. Grab the polygon tool. I'm gonna kind  of move over here which says if I start dragging out, okay,  I'll get the default um, fill.

I'm gonna pick a new color 'cause I really want to. And you can see down here it has the same sort  of target looking thing and I can grab it  and actually it's the wrong one. That's the um, corner widget. It's this one down here. A bit weird. Everyone  Looks a little different.

The third one I'll show you is in a different space as well. But watch this. I can click hold and drag and look. I can go from, I don't know, Pentagon, dunno my go octagon. No hexagon, I dunno. Um, what I tend to do is just do it for triangle  and just kind of drag it down to three sides.

You get a perfect triangle. Everybody tried to do that. Hands up in the comments. Trying to draw a perfect um, triangle with the pen tool. It can be tricky. So it's really easy just  to grab the polygon tool and just  drag it down to the minimum.

And then you get this a triangle. Let's look at the last one. Let's look at the startle. Okay, so if I draw out a stung  and pick a new fill, you also look different from mine  'cause I was being messing around with my one. And so when you draw it out in the past an illustrator  or maybe that's what you've been doing,  you've been drawing it and then you think, oh it's wrong. I have to draw it again.

What you used to have  to do is grab the star tool and you click once  and you could type in this stuff and you type in 20  and then that was it. If you did it wrong, you're like okay, I want  how many points I want to be six now. Okay, so you kind of do that once. But now because this is a live shape, okay,  we can adjust that afterwards. I'm gonna deselect these. Okay, let's go this one here.

And this one's slightly different. Again, look, there's this kind of different looking uh,  widget on the edge where you can hit up  and down where you can drag this left  and right to add points, remove points  or you can type it in over here in your transform panel. And this one's handy because like the starburst here,  do you want it to be a starburst  or kind of like, like a star or that's the rounded corners. So there's two options in this one. Can you see there's this little target here  that does the rounded corners. That may be what you want.

But there's this inner radius  and this full white circle here with the outer radius. So if I can grab the inner radius  and just make it bigger, more like a sun, more like a,  you know, I don't know,  guaranteed 30 day moneyback type sticker  or I don't know how I buy my wine. If there's a label on it that says gold medal award winning. I have no idea if it's true or not. Where the medal came from, if it was self awarded. But anyway, so these live effects can be handy on these  shapes and you either drag them on the art  or with the transform panel open.

You can see all of these options in here. The inner radius here, I can lower it down  to 50 K and I get more of a star. Weird little bonus tip about stars. This used to be like my really like awesome trick  to show people but the live effects  have kind of got rid of it. But hey, if you've got a colleague  that's looking at you making  something, impress 'em with this. So I've got my star tong, I'm gonna click and drag it out  and before I let go, so I'm  still holding it down with my mouse.

Use my up and down arrow. Ooh, okay. So you can kind of do it quite visually. I'm just using my keyboard up and down. All right? If you hold it down long enough, you get so many of them.

But anyway, that's my little uh, trick. Very star bursty. And because it's a live shape, I can still go through  and say actually you know, there we go. Lovely. Alright. There's normally not a time where I'll go  and break this live trace.

Sometimes though if I'm exporting something to  like an old school, you might be a signwriter sending this  out to like an old plotter kind of cutting out the vinyl. Sometimes you might need to expand the shape. See over here. Okay. And it just converts it to a thing  that looks like a star but doesn't all have those lovely  Um, uh, live shape effects anymore. Okay?

Sometimes you might need to do that. I'm gonna undo that 'cause I liked all the shape effects. And let's do that graph that I showed you at the beginning  just 'cause I wanna show you some extra stuff with the math. And this is how I make easy uh, pie graphs in Illustrator. So often we can't just drag these  around for the graph, right? Let's say we need something that says 15%.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to double click this  to get rid of it, gonna copy it and paste it. So I've got another version kind of hanging out over here. Let's do this chunk. So we're gonna say you are, first  of all, I'm gonna pick a different color  and I need it to be 15 um percent. I find math tricky. It goes on tricky with my head,  but I've got some tips that I use that I'm gonna share.

Um, so over here, okay, I need 15%. I know that there's 360 degrees in a whole circle  and if I times it by using the little asterisk by point,  whatever the um, percentages by point 15,  that will give me my 15%. There you go. There's my little pie graph. It needs to be at the front. So I'm gonna use command shift  and square bracket to bring it  to the front control shift square bracket.

Okay? Bring it to the front and then just,  it often just lines up as long as you got uh,  view smart guides on it should line up. Okay? If I need another chunk of this,  I'm gonna copy and paste this. So I'm gonna say you are just a different color  and say I need the other number in here is 30 degrees. So again, I just go through delete all this 360 times point,  whatever the number I need, okay?

30 degrees, okay 30% and that's my 30%. I'm gonna line it up in there and I'm gonna rotate it around  ju and it should snap 'cause my smart guides are on. That's an easy way to make a pie graph. I'm gonna make mine a donut before we go. That's it for live shapes. I'm gonna make mine a donut for no good reason other than my  brand is a donut so I'm gonna kind of make it a donut.

So to drag us an ellipse from the center  of something, anybody remember? That's right. Hold down the option. KE mac all keana PC to drag from the center  and if you hold down shift as well, you'll get it  to go as a perfect circle. So I'm gonna select it all, grab my uh, shape  of the tool shift W  and I'm just gonna hold down the option key on my Mac. Oh that's the width tool shift M.

Okay, hold down my option key. Hold down my option, key A Mac O key, a pc  and just kind of like delete all that. Here we go. It's my little donut ring bar graph. I keep saying bar graph. It's a pie graph and that's it.

Live shape. That's why some  of your shapes have these extra little things in the corner. They are awesome. They do go away  and you can't add them back again  but they can be super handy. Alright, that is it. Live shape effects in Illustrator.