Contour question

[Ross Macintosh]

I spent many hours playing with this technique after seeing it on Jonathan's website. It is amazing what can be achieved.

Jonathan - I understand you used to work at Xara Ltd. Hows life been treating you since? When at Xara Ltd. what did you work on?

Regards, Ross

[Ross Macintosh]

Here is the original thread about this technique. It is a fairly slow loading page. Note that there is a warning that the technique can crash your computer if you make things too complicated.

I attach below a graphic (previously posted) of a image I made using the technique. I still find it hard to believe that classy background was created using the contour tool!

Regards, Ross

[gwpriester]

Ross

I believe Johathan is long gone.

Not sure if I read the answer for rotating the fill. If so, forgive my being repetitious.

Click on the top element of the contour twice to enable rotate/skew mode. Rotate the fill.

Now, press Tab to select the bottom contour shape. The rotation handles will be available for the bottom shape and you can rotate it.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person


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www.gwpriester.com </a>


<a href="http://www.xaraxone.com">
The Xara Xone </a>

[Ross Macintosh]

Gary - Jonathan is following this thread. Note his posting above!

Regards, Rossy

[Jonathan Payne]

Hey Gary http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif - I am not 'long gone'. I haven't posted much recently but I do still read the forums to see what is going on.

As you may have guessed I (and all the other people who worked on Xara X) no longer work at Xara.

Me and a few other people got jobs at Serif after being made redundant from Xara and so far it is going well. I have worked on DrawPlus, WebPlus and PagePlus.

It is good seeing everyone is still here and still creating great drawings. I read some of the posts about the next version of Xara X and it is sounding good (and it is good to know it is still being worked on).

Jonathan

[This message was edited by Jonathan Payne on March 14, 2004 at 7:33.]

[OklaEd]

I GET it http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Johnathan-
Thanks for lending your expertise.

-Ed.

[Mickie]

Oh, the bitmap fill...I got the one magic copy of Xara that allows you to rotate the outside contours http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

When I made the above example yesterday, I didn't think I had done anything special. When I tried it today, it took me quite awhile to duplicate yesterday's effort ... the entire shape kept rotating.

I finally figured out that when the elipse is selected with the fill tool, you not only get the fill arrow, but a small node on the edge of the elipse. Begin your rotation at this node and voila.

Thanks Jonathan and Ross for coming up with the ideas and original thread.

Mickie

WordStyleinc.com

[joto]

My copy is yet more comprehensive http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif, I don't have to start rotate at the node, just begin any place except the actual fill handles.

Jolande

[colin_e]

Now this is fun ;-}

As far as I can tell, using a contour is just a quicker and more convenient, but more restricted way of doing what could be done with a blend. The countour automatically creates a "back" shape with matching nodes for the starting shape. A manual blend takes more time, but allows you (say) to have the front and back shapes off-centre. Either way it's very pretty ;-)

[colin_e]

By the way, I would have never guessed in a million years the trick with needing to rotate the fills starting from the (single) object node. If you don't do this, at least on my copy of XX, both the master shape and contour fills rotate at the same time so is no interesting blend effect. I cannot imagine why it works this way, but it does.
Obscure UI design or a happy bug?

BTW in the image below the left hand object uses a blend not a contour. It's rather pretty but to be honest I have no idea how I got it to look this way, and I'm not sure I could do it again...

Regards: Colin