While it's widely known that the blend tool is great for creating ribbon effects and slightly more complex gradients that bend to a curve of the ribbon. The blend tool can also be great for creating dividing lines in a perspective piece of art. Take the below tennis court. The top and bottom horizontal lines where drawn by hand with the line tool. But how can one find that center line that runs in the middle of the court? Well you could use rulers and try to measure or you could eye it.....or.....you can use the blend tool. With the blend tool selected, click on the anchor point on the right hand side of one line, then the other. Then double click the blend tool in the tool bar and you'll see options. If you only want a line up the middle select the specified steps and put in the number 1. Now while the blend tool doesn't take into account that the far side of the court will be smaller than the near side, the line is draws down the middle is exactly to the perspective of the two lines. So all that you need to do is nudge the line up to make the bottom larger in area than the top. Pretty neat eh. You can do the same thing to contrive the service lines and where the net should go.



Now it could be just as easy to draw out perspective lines perhaps on the tennis court itself as apposed to using the blend tool, but what about the tennis net? That would be a very tedious job. This is where the blend tool shines. All you need to do is draw the top and bottom lines then use the blend tool with the specified number of steps and you're done. I needed 20 from top to bottom, and 100 from right to left. Notice the blend tool accounts for the contour of the net, where it sinks in, in the middle. All in all the blend tool is a very special tool in my humble opinion. I hope you found this little trick helpful.

Posted by: --gpowell