How to Duplicate Objects Around a Circle | Illustrator Tutorial

hey everybody this is Spencer from pixel & bracket and this is hands down the best way to duplicate objects around a circle in Adobe Illustrator I'm not kidding you're gonna want to subscribe after this to get all is the one sign of oxidation when you use default that intro was a lot to live up to but I can do it here we go let's start a new document and make it 1920 by 1080 all the rest of this just leave as default create here we go alright so let's pretend that we have a circle that we want to duplicate objects around you don't have to have the circle path if you don't want to but a lot of people probably will so I'm going to grab my ellipse tool and then hold shift while I draw a circle on my artboard now I'm going to switch over to the selection tool and then I'll just give this no fill and we'll have a little bit of a stroke on it just one pixel stroke I'm going to zoom in here for this tutorial alright so this is seriously it's the best way watch this whole thing you guys are going to see so much and make sure you pay attention to the end where we expand everything because that's how you finalize your shapes and stuff alright here we go so what I want to do is let's say I want to here I'm going to create with the polygon tool I'm just going to click on my canvas and select a polygon 50 pixels is fine and make it three sides we're going to create a triangle it okay there's our triangle alright let's give that some kind of a color you guys can see how about a hot pink yeah that's a nice one alright and then no stroke on that so we just have this triangle shape right and let's say we want to take this triangle shape mode duplicated around this circle just like every other tutorial out there right this one's different trust me all right what we need to do is create a smaller circle so I'm going to grab that ellipse tool again and then I'm just going to hold shift and create this little itty-bitty circle down here all right let's do man let's zoom in so we can we and actually see this guy all right so we got a tiny little circle down here I'm going to make sure he's a different color than my shape so that I can point him out you see him very easily next thing I want you guys to do if you haven't already go to the view drop down and turn on smart guides this will make this a heck of a lot easier to line up command U on a Mac take this circle and you see all these pink lines showing up those are the smart guides I'm going to line him up to the very bottom of the triangle and the very center of the triangle I want to make sure you intersects right there perfect all right we're going to leave him there for now I'm going to grab both of these and group them together right click right click and then group so now I have this group this triangle or whatever shape it could even be an image like a bitmap image but I've got this shape and then I've got this circle here's what the magic starts to happen I'm going to click on this group go up to effect and it's very important that those two are grouped together or else this effect will apply to each of them individually instead of the group as a whole so make sure those are grouped together and then go to distort and transform transform this is the panel you're going to love all right we've got all these different things I'm going to ignore the scale I'm gonna ignore the move right make sure that's 100% hundred-percent zero pixels zero pixel for now I'm going to ignore the angle 0 degrees and then just keep what I have checked here one important thing here is this is the reference point that we're going to rotate around make sure you click the very bottom that'll change where we rotate from the middle of our group to the very bottom center of our group ok I'm going to go ahead and checkmark preview so we can preview this and a lot of you guys are probably gonna be like oh my gosh you can preview it that's awesome it gets even better so let's say we want who knows I don't know I want 15 copies or I want 15 shapes around my circle right I'm going to type in 15 here if you ever want to commit a number in any of these dialog boxes without accidentally hitting OK just hit the tab button alright so I'm going to hit tab nothing happens because we haven't actually rotated it yet so here's the supercool part this is the part that all you people who don't like to do math this is the easy part right 360 degrees in a circle so most of the tutorials you actually have to do the math yourself just type in 360 / use the little slash symbol 15 and then hit tab it does the calculation for you 24 degrees if I wanted 17 shapes I could do 360 divided by 17 boom 21.18 degrees in it's perfect that lines it up perfect obviously it rotates around this tiny circle it doesn't look like what we want it yet but just hang on last but not least remember that this is copies so if I want 17 shapes without having a duplicate shape on top of my original I want to subtract one from this only 16 copies plus one my original so I'm gonna have 16 copies it's going to be this 21 this weird angle that we did really easily and that's it hit okay cool we're done right no because we want to put them around this circle not these little circles and what did this do why do I only have one group let me talk you through this all right so you have this group this original group and you transformed around using an effect so it's previewing that effect still now I could go up to object expand appearance and I don't want to do that yet here's the super super duper cool part take this group and I can move it around that everything moves around and line him up so that the bottom of the circle lines up with the center of the circle we want to transform around and I'm gonna let go right there so he's in the center and he's rotated around you know the very center point because this is a group I can double click into it now I'm in isolation mode of the group and I can actually click on each of the objects separately super cool part are you ready click and drag and hold shift on that triangle up to the top of our circle and let go a whole look at that it actually adjusts our copies every other copy adjusts I could I can click and drag that out even more super cool super editable and we aren't done yet I can actually still click into this group and go to the appearance panel if you don't see it over here to the right go to window appearance it'll pop out and in this appearance panel we still have that transform transform effect applied to that group so not only can I double click in and edit the individual triangles and then which then edits all of them out there I can actually go in and edit the transform so let's say this was like too many triangles right there too close to each other I'm going to do maybe ten triangles so up here I'm going to do 360 divided by ten hit tab that's 36 degrees hit preview and I can see how many triangles that is already I want ten shapes so that's nine copies plus the original let make that nine before I exit out I hit OK and now I have ten shapes around here I want to see something even cooler double click back into that let's say I don't like the shape of this triangle I can actually use my direct selection tool grab a point on it oops grab a point here and just edit that point click shift drag it up boom I can actually edit its editable the whole thing is editable this is super super awesome there's like no guessing with this right one more thing before I show you how to finalize your design I can double click into this with the with the selection tool the regular selection tool right so I got this group can double click into it I can move this around look what else I can do what if I grab the ellipse tool and create another circle watch what happens we can create multiple objects within the same transformation that are duplicated around the circle now be careful with this it needs to be directly centered on that and then I can move that in and out just like any other object and that's you know that works with that transformation perfectly but be careful if it's off-center even a little bit it will affect the entire transformation notice how like everything sort of moving and shifting all sorts of weird ways because one of my objects is off that center mark so you're going to want to make sure that these are exactly aligned in the center of each other all the way up and they will provide a perfect duplication around that circle so you could add you can add multiple multiple shapes so cool this is like I don't know this is above and beyond any other method that I know of that's why this is the best method I'm going to go ahead and get rid of these two circles I'm going to show you guys how to finalize this this whole group right now we have a trade we have an effect so I can't even I can't click on the movies because it really just leaves like preview things that are showing up so what I need to do is grab this group go up to object expand appearance expands all of them so that now that they are now they are all actual shapes not just they don't just appear they're there they're real shapes that you can go in and transform and do things - they're all grouped together so what I want to do is right-click on that group hit ungroup and now I have all these little separate groups of that original group we created which isn't the most helpful of things but all you need to do is select everything hold shift and click on that circle I don't want that circle selected so now I have all these selected these individual groups I can right click on them again it hit ungroup one more times and now I have all these individual elements and pieces that I can move around and change select those make sure you don't have that circle selected so you can unselect that circle of shift and then I can delete those out all my guide circles are gone now that's it you guys uh there's so many awesome things that you can layer on top of each other inside of this effect you can apply effects to the object inside of the effect and then expand it all it's really cool there's a lot of awesome things you can do with this I think this is hands-down the best way to duplicate objects around the circle if you guys have any comments suggestions or if you disagree with me let me know in the comments section below like this video if it helped you and don't forget to subscribe for more tips and tutorials thanks for watching take care and I'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Pixel & Bracket

Views: 1,511,867

Keywords: pixel and bracket, how to duplicate objects around a circle, repeat shapes around circle, how to copy shapes around circle, duplicate objects around circle illustrator, illustrator tutorial, repeat shapes illustrator, illustrator around circle, how to repeat objects around circle, copy shapes around circle illustrator, repeat shapes around circle illustrator, transform effect tutorial, transform effect illustrator, how to distribute shapes around a circle, rotate objects circle

Id: eUdw9-8wctc

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Thu May 18 2017