In this tutorial, I will show you how to easily create quick, repeating patterns. I'll take the star tooland drag it to (1).
I would now like to copy this very often. Of course, I could do this with the Alt keyand the right arrow key (2), but that's far too time-consuming.
I can do this more quickly by clicking on the star and going to Effects>Distort and transform filter>Transform....
There are all kinds of setting options here, including Copies. I'll take 8 (1), my favorite number. And now I don't select Scale, but Shift (2). The best way to do this is with the preview (3), then I can see what happens straight away. That looks pretty good.
Of course, I can now also say that I want the stars to be a bit more dynamic, for example (4). OK.
And now comes the "top kick": I duplicate this effect again in the appearance control panel(1). I click on it once and drag it onto this symbol (2). Now I have it again (3), and I double-click into the effect (4).
This time I want the whole thing to be shifted vertically rather than horizontally (1). The important thing here is to remove y mirror (2), only then will I have several copies. I'll make the distance a little smaller. By the way, this also works well if I click in and then rotate with the mouse wheel (arrow at 1). And that's it already. I've now finished my pattern. Lots of stars without constantly copying anything.
It works with all kinds of shapes, so not just stars, but also circles, dots, squares, whatever. So just try it out, it's a really great thing.
