Thought I would do this in a new thread, here's a link to the original thread started by Judi ... Sparkle Challenge.
Although the method is quite simple the problem in explaining it is that there are various ways to use the basic sparkle objects, to create different looks. So I figured the easiest thing was to explain a specific example from the graphic I posted in the sparkle challenge thread; with some extra stuff on exporting options. So here's the details for the 'Sparkly Stuff' text.
1. Create a dark coloured flat filled rectangle with no transparency, as a background. Create some text, I used a gold bitmap fill for the original, but a flat orange fill for this example is fine.
2. Clone the text and using the contour tool create an outer contour - please see attached graphic for an idea of the relative kind of size (I used a round join for this), click on inset path in the contour infobar to create a single shape.
3. With this shape selected open the fill gallery (shift+f11). Find and select culttext.jpg (downloaded from Xara.com - in misc folder) and apply this bitmap as a transparency using the 'transp' button at the top of the fills gallery. (Default start 0% - end 100%).
4. Still with this shape selected, click on the transparency tool and in the transp infobar change the dpi to 270 - type this in and press return (you may need to click on the shape away from the tranparency handles to display the dpi box). Click on the transparency profile icon in the infobar and type 0.5 in the top profile box and -1 in the bottom box and press return key (or use sliders). Note: it might pay to stay in 100% view when working with this, as it can look quite different at other zooms.
5. Okay it's beginning to look glittery, but I wanted to add some brighter and more defined sparkles ... Clone the orange sparkly shape and change colour to yellow. Contour this shape outwards some more, with round join and inset path as before. Using the transparency tool click on the centre transparency handle and move it, so that the yellow sparkles are in a different place to the underlying orange ones.
6. Go into file menu > page options > view ... and click on never smooth checkbox to stop Xara X smoothing bitmap type objects, click ok. You should notice that the sparkles will now look more defined. Although I wanted brighter yellow sparkles here, they are a bit too defined and have lost their twinkly look. So a way to regain that in never smooth mode is ...
7. Using the transparency tool select the yellow sparkly shape, copy it to the clipboard first, and in the transparency profile menu increase the top box to 0.6; removing some of the brighter yellow sparkles.
Paste in same position the yellow object from the clipboard (ctrl+shift+v) (which should still have a top transp profile of 0.5) - click on centre transparency handle and move it so the sparkles are again in a different place. Increase the start transparency to something like 60%. This replaces some of the lost fainter yellow sparkles and increases the twinkly look.
8. Select the two yellow sparkle objects and group them (tip: holding down alt+shift selects objects below each other accumulatively). Open arrange menu and select create bitmap copy (ctrl+shift+c). I created this as a true colour+alpha bitmap copy in case I wanted to move it around later. Hold down shift and press create button (using shift will create the bitmap in the same place as your vector objects).
Send the original yellow vector sparkles to the back below the background rectangle, out of view. Finally, in page options switch off never smooth mode, which resets the orange vector sparkles back to being more twinkly and creates a softer effect ... Adjust fill to the text as required.
Exporting:
To export and retain the defined sparkly look you have several options and it depends on what objects are in your drawing and/or personal preference as to what you do. The way I exported the sparkle challenge attachment graphic was to use a screen capture (with bitmap smoothing on), paste this into Xara X, crop it, then export as a gif (jpg can be used, but it tends to desaturate coloured sparkles, most noticeable with the fireworks).
If you don't want to do screen captures to export with, then ALL your sparkly objects will need to be never-smoothed bitmap copies in your drawing (like the two yellow objects), or have a never-smoothed bitmap copy fill/transp etc. Any sparkly object that is left as the original culttext.jpg transparent vector, will export blurry (like lint on velvet) when in bitmap smoothing mode. Alternatively of course, you can do your final export of everything in never smooth mode (ie ignore step 8), although this will have varying affects on other bitmap type objects, possibly creating some unwanted rough rendering.
Anyway that's the basic technique ... this is fairly similar to how I did the glittery pen lines. Like I mentioned above, you can use different settings, amount of objects and methods to create different looks, (more or less sparkly etc) or experiment with using other bitmaps than culttext.jpg as a transparency.
The fireworks are again the same sort of thing, in a blend, which I will do a mini-tut for as soon as I can.
Hope this is helpful, sorry it's quite a bit of info but I wanted to explain it clearly for newer users as well. However, if there is anything that anyone isn't sure of or is having difficulties with, then please let me know.
Regards
Su
"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life." - Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks