Wire Mesh

[inabottle]

I know this has prolly been discussed, but is there any talk about implementing a mesh too into Xara Xtreme, similar to the one in Illustrator. Because I cannot use illustrator worth crap and its slow and stupid. I've been waiting for xara to get a mesh tool but it hasnt happened. Hopefully its in the works.

[MarkMyWords]

Others have asked for such a tool too.

You would think that the basic technology is already there in the four colour fill, which could just be 'extended' in some way, but we really have no way of knowing what Xaras priorities are or what they are developing, they tend to keep this kind of thing to themselves until it is done.

[ss-kalm]

Ok. There's been a lot of talk about this mesh tool ........

Stupid Questions - What is a mesh tool? How does it work? What does it do? and What will it allow Xara to do that it can't already do?

[steve.ledger]

From what I've seen the mesh tool used for, Xtreme is much faster using the shape editor, transparencies and feathering for one.

This video shows how laborious it appears to be

Illustrator Mesh Tool quick tutorial


Here's another (static) demo

[David O'Neil]

From what I've seen the mesh tool used for, Xtreme is much faster using the shape editor, transparencies and feathering for one.

Part of the reason people are asking for the tool is that they intuit that it can be implemented better. Imagine how much quicker your YouTube example would have been if the guy could bend the beziers by selecting between two nodes.

Another reason is that it is easier to accomplish some effects using that tool than is possible in Xara right now. For instance, take figure 5 from your static example. Creating an exact replica of that is rather difficult in Xtreme, although it can be done using blends. (After a little experimentation, I can only figure out how to do it in the attached manner.) Now, imagine that one of the corner points was another color besides black--it quickly gets incredibly difficult in Xtreme. I can't figure out how to do it.

[steve.ledger]

Imagine how much quicker your YouTube example would have been if the guy could bend the beziers by selecting between two nodes.

Yes agreed - dragging the *line* was one of the very first things that won me over to Xtreme.

[eobet]

From what I've seen the mesh tool used for, Xtreme is much faster using the shape editor, transparencies and feathering for one.

This video shows how laborious it appears to be

Illustrator Mesh Tool quick tutorial


Here's another (static) demo

Imo, the video shows how bloody amazing the mesh tool is!

(It also shows how bloody stupid Illustrator's node editing tools are, but that's another separate story.)

[-=Drifter=-]

I wasn't at all impressed with the video and I wanted to shoot that guy/gal for taking so so so very long!

[Burpee]

This tool would be wonderfully useful to me. I do it Sledger's way right now but I can't always achieve 'just the right look', mostly because I create very large work and the feather only goes to 50pixels. It's useless to me sometimes. I love how you can get all the different colors in the various areas. Of course, I don't know if AI has an issue with feathering large images either but I'd be very happy to have a mesh tool in Xara.

[JokeArtist]

I know this has prolly been discussed, but is there any talk about implementing a mesh too into Xara Xtreme, similar to the one in Illustrator. Because I cannot use illustrator worth crap and its slow and stupid. I've been waiting for xara to get a mesh tool but it hasnt happened. Hopefully its in the works.

Seeing as there's been no new vector tools since X1 through to X4 I wouldn't hold your breath. Apparently there's no money to real development. I think they wanted to get some free development done by making it open source for linux a few versions ago but nothing came of it. There current tactic to swell the coffers is to make it a more all round swiss army knive of graphic applications - Flash, HTML, 3D, birmap manipulation etc.

I find the fact that Illustrator seems to improve leaps and bounds with each new release but still has a very awkward interface very fustrating. Otherwise I would have jumped ship long ago.