How to access the pressure curve of a path
Hey! I want to make a tapered dotted line where the space between the circles also reduces.
I have found three ways to create a dotted line which can then be tapered.
First one is a simple stroke where I define a dashed line in the stroke panel and then adjust the width with the width tool. It works but it looks like the spacing between the circles increases when the size shrinks.
Second is by making a blend between two or more differently sized circles. Again, it works but as in the first example the spacing is not "equal". I have noticed that I can adjust the spacing between the circles if I use the handles. With a bit of time one can get it to look like I want on a straight path but if you have a pre-defined curve you often can't just drag the handles where you want.
The method where I see most potential has to do with pressure. With a tablet and a pressure sensitive brush I draw a line starting with almost no pressure and increasing. Next I make a new brush from a circle shape as a scattered brush. In the settings I adjust size and spacing with pressure (both from small to big). This results in the effect I am looking for: the spacing between the circles stays pretty much the same no matter their size. I can also go and edit the drawn path, remove most of the anchors and that way making a more simple path.
Somehow the pressure is baked into that path and I can use it to adjust the size and the spacing. Is it possible to edit the pressure? And also, is it possible to add pressure to a path without a tablet? Right now I draw a quick line with my tablet and my desired pressure and then continue working with that path with the pen or direct selection tool. The pressure attribute is a very useful one but to my knowledge can only be added with a tablet.
I would just want to skip the tablet altogether and create those kind of lines with precise tools directly.
Posted Jan 14, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC
If you could apply a width profile to a scatter brush that would work just fine, but scatter brushes won't accept a width profile.
I thought perhaps doing a pattern brush with a width profile would work but NOPE, that just scales the width of the whole pattern and keeps the same size.
Try this:
Keep a copy of the original blend around (I like to make a layer called 'construction' for this sort of thing), duplicate it to make versions for different lengths of lines; you can speed up making the duplicate brushes by duplicating them in the Brush palette, then alt-dragging new art over their icon to keep all the other settings, if you're not going with the defaults.