Xtreme & Illustrator mesh & twist tools

**ginger44** · 13 April 2006, 07:32 AM

Computer Arts March issue has tutorial using these tools, is this a possibility for Xara ? Would the mesh tool which has a great way of handling blends be a lot of work ?

wW · 13 April 2006, 03:21 PM

Something else that comes to mind has to do with Node controls. Having a slider available when converting profiled lines to shapes would be helpful. Xara adds way too many nodes, kinda like a working with a wmf.

If there were a slider for this it would make the conversion of profile lines alot cleaner as these shapes could be done with fewer nodes.

**jamesmc** · 13 April 2006, 03:58 PM

What do you mean by mesh tool?

I know what mesh is in 3D graphics, what is it in Illustrator?

**Charles Moir** · 13 April 2006, 04:46 PM

A mesh fill allows much more complex graduated fills. It's a powerful technique, let down by a near un-usable user-interface in Illustrator, in my personal opinion. Very few AI users seem to use the feature because of the complexity and fiddliness, if that's a word.

It's on the wish-list of feature to add to Xara at some point. I'd like to do it in a more usable and intuitive way.

**Albacore** · 13 April 2006, 05:17 PM

This is an example of the Mesh Tool and what effects can be gain from using the tool. Like Charles states it is a bit clucky to use in AI and many folk never use this tool. It was developed at the time when there was little in the way of transparencies in AI all that you really had was opacity slider.

In Xara because we had great effects and can overlay transparencies to give the effects of folds in cloth or tonal shifts in a face few people miss such a tool. Although drawing faces this tool in Xara would make it very easy to get noses, eye sockets and cheek bones right. It is the difference in editing of a shape in AI and Xara, in iX1 it is so easy, while in AI it has taken me 2 years to get competant at it so that is the other reason that this tool was developed for AI. In AI on each node the colour picker can be used and the chnge in colour between each node gives a smoth colour change btween the nodes. It is easy to add nodes and move nodes using this tool but this onlyy changes the blending off colour between each node as you can see on the example I have give here.

**-=Drifter=-** · 13 April 2006, 05:23 PM

WOW!!! That's EXCELLENT!!!

**jamesmc** · 13 April 2006, 08:16 PM

Wish there was such a tool that was inexpensive for 3D object painting. I imagine the programming would be a nightmare though. Not paying $1000-$2000 for the Deep Paint3D- UV etc package that allows you to paint on 3D meshes.

**Kman** · 13 April 2006, 09:12 PM

I think the folks at Xara already have the knowledge to create a
mesh tool with Xtreme, but just are deciding when and how to
incorporate this into a future release. I say this based NOT upon
anything I have heard from the Xara team. But rather upon the
fact that Serif DrawPlus 8 has a Mesh Tool already, and it cost
me $ 79.00. (I just purchashed this program). I am sure that the
programming skill of the crew at Xara is just as capable as those
at Serif. Plus, one of their working members used to work for
Xara.

Here's a quick pic using DrawPlus 8's Mesh Tool.

Ken

**jamesmc** · 14 April 2006, 01:36 PM

Talented people in the UK, they put out so many excellent software products. I have the freeware versions of Serif and they are okay, but don't seem to like my AMD/NVIDIA machines. They have a tendency to hang if the screen gets busy or crash without explanation. I have a INTEL/ATI machine but its older, P4 3.0 Pentium HT.

**jclements** · 14 April 2006, 06:23 PM

Charles,

When you folks get ready to do a mesh-like tool, could you please initiate a posting asking for user input on what we don't like with existing mesh tools?

I know I gave up on Corel's mesh tool because I didn't like the sharp divisions between adjacent color nodes.