Airbrush please?

[MarkMyWords]

Can we have a proper airbrush? The one in the custom brushes selection drives me up the wall. An airbrush is about laying down subtle shades of colour one over another, but with this, everytime you use it the colour reverts back to purple! Argh! You have to put down a purple line then choose your colour everytime, not the intuitive way an airbrush should work.Try putting down an airbrush stroke and then adjusting it with feathering...argh!


O.K., O.K. I know Xtreme is a vector program, but there is no reason why a vector program shouldn't have a proper airbrush.

I freely admit I'm a bitmap artist looking in from the outside. I look at the 'mindset' of vector artists and I think "why must everything take a dozen steps, when one or two will do?"

Look at gradient meshes, goodness gracious me what a lot of 'fiddling' around for airbrush effects. O.K. the results can be impressive, but it seems many people just use it for tracing bitmaps the hard way!

How much simpler to have a true 'vector airbrush'? Lay down a stroke just like painting with the freehand path or draw a path in any way you choose and then have full editability over the stroke.


Sorry about the whinging, I've had my moan now, I'll just stick to colouring in Photoshop and grumble to myself until the next time I need a rant LOL!

[gwpriester]

That is a lot of whinging.

A good airbrush tool would have to be a bitmap function. If you think about it, a vector airbrush would have to spray hundreds or thousands of tiny sub-pixel sized vector objects. This is not to say it cannot be done. But it seems to me this would be more effective as a bitmap function.

Does anyone know of a good Photoshop compatible plugin that might work in Xtreme Pro?

Gary

[MarkMyWords]

Sorry, I'm just in a moaning mood LOL!

When I absolutely must have an airbrush effect in Xtreme I load a circle with a circular transparency and blend it along a path. Still not as quick and easy as an airbrush, but cleaner and more editable than the custom bitmap airbrush.

Now if I had a dedicated macro/actions recorder, I could make this and other work a rounds much easier and slicker to use and even share those macros with other users.

Uh Oh! I'm asking for more 'stuff' again, sorry, I'll get back to work now.

[haakoo]

Hi,
Airbrush and more.freeware,creates plugin that can be used within XXPro
http://www.download.com/3000-2191_4-....html?tag=dl.1

Hans

[MarkMyWords]

Thanks for that Haakoo, but I really don't need any bitmap brushes. Photoshop just about does 80% of all the bitmap handling I could want and expression pretty much does the rest.

Do you know of a Macro plugin for Xtreme by any chance? I've tried lots of stand alone macromakers, but they are always more trouble than they are worth.

[masque]

Really not trying to be confrontational here, but it seems to me that what you need is a different piece of software. It’s a bit like buying a small car and returning to complain about there being nowhere to hook up your plough to it.
Derek

[MarkMyWords]

Not at all, we are given an 'airbrush', but it doesn't work as you would expect an airbrush to work.

I have often asked for various new features for Xtreme, too often some might say, but this is about an existing tool that just does not do what it should. An airbrush is a pretty much accepted tool in CG with a familiar way of working. Perhaps not many vector programs have airbrushes, but if you are going to include a widely used tool, then it should perform as expected or better.

Having said that, it is not advertised as a feature and is a custom brush, but still it isn't called an airbrush type, or similar to an airbrush, it is called airbrush.

When I first spotted it, I was delighted, at last, I thought, I can paint in a vector program just as I do in my bitmap programs. Well, the overall excellence of Xtreme overcame my initial disappointment, but the more I try to use Xtreme, to do the things I want to do, the more I find niggling little problems that have to be 'worked around'.

Of course you could say, stick to bitmap programs and stop moaning and I would answer no. LOL!

I'm a freelance CG artist and I'm constantly looking for better tools to do my work. Anyone can see the clear superiority of vector graphics over bitmaps and I believe that is the direction all CG software is moving.

Look at AIs inclusion of more bitmap software-like tools or the rise of Expression and plans to move more graphics (desktops for instance) to vectors. We may always have bitmaps and therefore need bitmap editors, but I believe it is clear that, as vector software speeds up and becomes easier to use (two areas Xtreme already leads in), more and more CG artists will start to make the move from the huge and, presently, dominant bitmap sector over to vector software.

The contest, over the coming years, is going to be about who is best at attracting that massive number of bitmap artists and Xtreme, seems to me, is in a position to leap ahead of all the competition here, with only a little 'out of the box' thinking.

I have asked many times why vector programs cannot have tools similar to the best tools of bitmap programs and the answer seems to be that they can, it is simply about demand. Well I'm demanding such tools LOL!

I may be a lone voice and I know I irritate some 'loyalists', but I'm not obnoxious and always polite, so until I'm banned from this forum, or find a more receptive and promising place, I'll keep shouting for my corner.

Just to be clear, I'm not asking that Xtreme become an hybrid program or that it has a ton of bells and whistles hung around its slender neck, I'm not looking for 'bloatware'. What I'm arguing for, it seems to me, can mostly be added with a few new options to already existing tools.

Nor am I asking for the impossible; Photoshop shows you can create vector shapes from a magic wand easily, we can already work on objects within a clipview group, why not extend that to make clipviews 'live' (masks)? The airbrush would be vastly improved just by allowing it to use the current fill colour (or even better to make a vector airbrush like the one I make). Why on Earth can't the envelope warp bitmaps beyond simple perspective distortions? The biggest thing I have asked for is a dedicated macro recorder, which could work with all Xara software not just Xtreme, but would be the single most important addition.

Why would a non-graphics tool be that important?

Well, very many reasons, firstly all those repetitive and time consuming tasks we all have to do; preparing docs for other users/software, optimising the workspace for particular tasks and the ability to do all those work-arounds in an easier and quicker way. Much of what I want to do and very many special effects and techniques can be achieved with complex work-arounds, but why go to all that trouble when it is easier and quicker to do it in a bitmap program? I'm sure there are others who are in the same position. And best of all, those macros can be shared with other users, this would be a massive resource for Xara, just as it has become for Adobe; try Googling 'Photoshop actions'.

Vector software has the reputation of 'taking the long way around' to do many things and that is largely deserved, Xtreme goes someway to undermining that, but still has a way to go.

[gwpriester]

It's more about learning to use the tools at hand.

Years ago, when CorelDRAW was king, many people attempted to create a realistic photographic portrait style image. And nobody came close until John Cokery, a traditional air brush artists, figured out how to create what he used to create with an airbrush, with vector blends.

You need to think inside the box

Gary

[GeoBen]

Mark,

it seems to me that Derek and Eric have, indeed, answered your question. Sometimes the answer is "sorry, not possible".

Masque's analogy is very apt. That is why there are Raster editors (that include some vector functions) and vector editors (that may include some bitmap capabilities)... they are fundamentally different technologies.

Doubtless, in time, the two will move closer together, but... i am not holding my breath. When you get that sportscar to pull yer plow, it probably wont be as good a sportscar as one that is not capable of pulling a plow. A basic principle in many disciplines (technology, physics, aesthetics etc) is that for every gain, there is loss. You have to give to get. I prefer to do my bitmap functions in a bitmap editor and keep Xara the best, fastest most dedicated Vector editor there is.

geo.

[MarkMyWords]

That isn't my point at all Gary, it isn't about solving design or practical illustrating problems at all. I could paint every image in oils. I did for many years and scan them in, as some (better illustrators than me) still do, but I moved to CG art for a reason, it is better for what I do. I'm very proficient at using Photoshop, but I want to move to vector art for similar reasons. I could learn the work arounds and for many things I have, but I'm looking for the quality of Vector graphics with the ease and speed of some bitmap tools.

Xtreme will change and evolve, I'm just making my opinions on how it should evolve known. There is no need to be defensive, I'm not attacking Xara, quite the opposite.

O.K. I do go on about this, so I'll give it a rest.