This is what we will be making today.
You can set up your artboard to any dimension you want. I'm using the default letter size set to landscape (792 px X 612 px).
Make sure your smart guides are on by going to View > Smart guides and make sure it's checked.
Set your fill color to any color you like with no stroke. I'm using black.
We're going to be drawing a triangle. Select the star tool (hidden under the rectangle tool)
Click on the artboard once and a dialog box will pop up. Leave Radius 1 and Radius 2 alone (we'll be adjusting the size later) and under points type in 3 and press okay.
With the delete anchor point tool (hidden under the pen tool) and delete the three anchors highlighted.
With the selection tool (black arrow) make your triangles height longer then the width a little bit smaller. You should end up with a long, skinny triangle.
and a dialog box will pop up. Make sure the preview box is checked and select Horizontal and press okay.
Before we do anything else we need to figure out how many times we would like our triangle rotated around the page. The easiest way to do this and do this evenly is to base it on a circle which is 360 degrees since our triangle will rotate around in a circle anyway. I decided that I would like my triangle repeated 20 times around. I will then divide 20 in to 360 and get 18 for the degrees I will need to put into the rotate dialog box. You can choose whatever number you would like just do the math. I'll have a chart below at the end of this tutorial.
***A little birdie named T told me that if you type in 360/20 it will figure out the degree of the rotation for you. It's basically 360 degrees (a full circle) divided by / the number of copies you want. You'll type that formula into the Angle Degree box. I did not know this and if you didn't know this either, now you do. That makes doing this a lot easier than the chart below.***
With the selection tool roughly drag your triangle to the middle of your artboard. With it still selected click on the rotate tool then hover your mouse over the top point and press alt (option) there will be a plus sign with a dashed underscore symbol (although for some reason the screen shot isn't showing it)
while holding alt click your left mouse button and the Rotate dialog box will pop up. Since I already know what degrees I want to rotate at I'll type in 18 in the Angle box, make sure my preview box is checked then click on copy.
You can then press ctrl+d (cmd+d) repeatedly until you reach your first triangle.
Select all of your triangles either with the selection tool and drag a marquee around it or go up to Select > All
then Object > Group
If you don't already have this palette open go to Window > Align to open up the Align palette.
Go to your align palette and click on the flyout menu and select Align to Artboard.
Select your grouped triangles and Vertical Align Center
then Horizontal Align Center
Now your triangle group is centered on the artboard.
Zoom out the artboard to 60% so you can see your triangles and the artboard is smaller on your monitor we will now resize the triangle group so the outer edges overlap the artboard just a little bit.
Holding down shift+alt (shift+option) to constrain the proportions of your group drag holding your left mouse button to resize the group. I click and drag the bottom right square on the bounding box on the selection but you can use which ever one you would like. Just make sure that the entire triangle group is outside of the artboard.
We will now make a clipping mask to get rid of the parts that are outside of the artboard. Make sure your pathfinder palette is visible by going to Window > Pathfinder
We're going to draw a rectangle that is the same size as our artboard. Select the retangle tool in the same area as we got the triangle tool and click once on the artboard. The Rectangle dialog box will open and we'll input the size of rectangle we want. In my case my artboard is set up to 792px X 612px so I will enter those numbers in the appropriate box and click okay. With the rectangle you just made still selected align it to the artboard the same way we aligned our triangle group. Go to Select > All as described before to select your triangle group and the rectangle. Go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make
This is what you will see once we click on Make.
You will now see that everything outside of our clipping mask is now invisible. You can leave it like this if you like but I like to take things a step further.
On the pathfinder palette click the Trim button.
What that does is trim off the excess that's outside the artboard leaving you with your triangle group in the artboard
You're now left with a sunburst background you can do pretty much anything with. You can make it into a symbol to use in a later project if you'd like.
You can set up your artboard to any dimension you want. I'm using the default letter size set to landscape (792 px X 612 px).
Make sure your smart guides are on by going to View > Smart guides and make sure it's checked.
Set your fill color to any color you like with no stroke. I'm using black.
We're going to be drawing a triangle. Select the star tool (hidden under the rectangle tool)
Click on the artboard once and a dialog box will pop up. Leave Radius 1 and Radius 2 alone (we'll be adjusting the size later) and under points type in 3 and press okay.
With the delete anchor point tool (hidden under the pen tool) and delete the three anchors highlighted.
With the selection tool (black arrow) make your triangles height longer then the width a little bit smaller. You should end up with a long, skinny triangle.
and a dialog box will pop up. Make sure the preview box is checked and select Horizontal and press okay.
Before we do anything else we need to figure out how many times we would like our triangle rotated around the page. The easiest way to do this and do this evenly is to base it on a circle which is 360 degrees since our triangle will rotate around in a circle anyway. I decided that I would like my triangle repeated 20 times around. I will then divide 20 in to 360 and get 18 for the degrees I will need to put into the rotate dialog box. You can choose whatever number you would like just do the math. I'll have a chart below at the end of this tutorial.
***A little birdie named T told me that if you type in 360/20 it will figure out the degree of the rotation for you. It's basically 360 degrees (a full circle) divided by / the number of copies you want. You'll type that formula into the Angle Degree box. I did not know this and if you didn't know this either, now you do. That makes doing this a lot easier than the chart below.***
With the selection tool roughly drag your triangle to the middle of your artboard. With it still selected click on the rotate tool then hover your mouse over the top point and press alt (option) there will be a plus sign with a dashed underscore symbol (although for some reason the screen shot isn't showing it)
while holding alt click your left mouse button and the Rotate dialog box will pop up. Since I already know what degrees I want to rotate at I'll type in 18 in the Angle box, make sure my preview box is checked then click on copy.
You can then press ctrl+d (cmd+d) repeatedly until you reach your first triangle.
Select all of your triangles either with the selection tool and drag a marquee around it or go up to Select > All
then Object > Group
If you don't already have this palette open go to Window > Align to open up the Align palette.
Go to your align palette and click on the flyout menu and select Align to Artboard.
Select your grouped triangles and Vertical Align Center
then Horizontal Align Center
Now your triangle group is centered on the artboard.
Zoom out the artboard to 60% so you can see your triangles and the artboard is smaller on your monitor we will now resize the triangle group so the outer edges overlap the artboard just a little bit.
Holding down shift+alt (shift+option) to constrain the proportions of your group drag holding your left mouse button to resize the group. I click and drag the bottom right square on the bounding box on the selection but you can use which ever one you would like. Just make sure that the entire triangle group is outside of the artboard.
We will now make a clipping mask to get rid of the parts that are outside of the artboard. Make sure your pathfinder palette is visible by going to Window > Pathfinder
We're going to draw a rectangle that is the same size as our artboard. Select the retangle tool in the same area as we got the triangle tool and click once on the artboard. The Rectangle dialog box will open and we'll input the size of rectangle we want. In my case my artboard is set up to 792px X 612px so I will enter those numbers in the appropriate box and click okay. With the rectangle you just made still selected align it to the artboard the same way we aligned our triangle group. Go to Select > All as described before to select your triangle group and the rectangle. Go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make
This is what you will see once we click on Make.
You will now see that everything outside of our clipping mask is now invisible. You can leave it like this if you like but I like to take things a step further.
On the pathfinder palette click the Trim button.
What that does is trim off the excess that's outside the artboard leaving you with your triangle group in the artboard
You're now left with a sunburst background you can do pretty much anything with. You can make it into a symbol to use in a later project if you'd like.