creating brushes

[Hellenic43]

Hi to all. Just decided to dabble a bit in creating brushes. Specifically I have imported several varieties of flowers and want to be able to paint different shapes using the brush tool. Problem that I can't figure out, if I group the items to keep the relative positions then when I draw a line the items don't follow the line, but if I don't group them they follow and drawn line exactly but then I lose my relative positions to each other. What button am I not pushing or clicking. Your help would be much appreciated.

Manny

[Egg Bramhill]

Manny

You need to create your brush with the objects ungrouped. As you correctly state, they then follow the path correctly.

To avoid ' loss of relative positions to each other ' click 'Edit Brush', click on the 'Spacing' tab, and adjust the object spacing to suit. (Before this step I also suggest you click on the 'Scaling' tab and put the 'Pressure' value to 100-100%)

Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

Reading your question again, perhaps I misunderstood.
If it's regarding the relative position of one shape to the next, this is dependant on each shapes individual stacking position WITHIN a layer.
To ensure your brush creates the shapes in the same order as they appear left to right on the screen, start from the left-most object and Ctrl-B (Put to back), continue along the line Ctrl-B'ing each shape, finally doing Ctrl-B to the right-most shape. Now create your brush and they will be in the correct sequential order.

In the attached image line A does not follow the correct sequential order (1,2,3,4 & 5). By doing the Put to Back routine above, and creating the brush, line B creates the shapes in the correct sequential order.

Egg

[-=Drifter=-]

Well, I for one just learned something new. Thanks Egg.
(Now if only I can remember that.....)

[ivan louette]

I usually cut ant paste my shapes in the order I want to place them into the brush. And if you want relative placements, you have to place each item at the place you want on top of an individual fully transparent quadrangle and group the item with its quadrangle.

kindly,
ivan

[Hellenic43]

Egg, thanks a lot for the advice. It worked perfectly. I guess I didn't really explain myself that well but am still too unsure about using forums. Interesting to note that if you follow the instructions in the help section of xaraxtreme I think they're kind of misleading or at least I'm not interpreting them correctly. You see basically all I wanted to do was create a very simple brush comprised of several different roses that I wanted to repeat along a line or shape that I wanted. The hlep insturctions said that if you want to maintain the relative position of the group that you have to group them together but when I did this if I drew a random pattern the flowers didn't follow the line, but when I used your advice and control B'd each item then selected and saved them, they came out perfectly so cudos to you and thanks for helping me out on what must be a mundane issue for you. Thans again, Manny.