Bitmap Brushes?

[Egg Bramhill]

Am I missing something? In a recent thread on Spiro in Inkscape Albacore wrote

Yes please but I don't want another type of bitmap brush

What bitmap brush? As far as I'm aware the brushes within XXP are vector brushes (although you can create your own brushes using a bitmap).

[Albacore]

What I meant there Egg was that when I create a custom brush in XPro or Xtreme it is a bitmap brush when I do the same thing, not quite, in Illustrator it is a vector brush. Then it is so easy to change colour or even modify the shape of the resulting brush stroke. If you give me 1/2 hour I will put up some examples.

[Egg Bramhill]

What I meant there Egg was that when I create a custom brush in XPro or Xtreme it is a bitmap brush

Only if you use a bitmap in the construction surely? Here's a self made vector brush.

I do agree that being able to modify the brush shape from outside the brush would be excellent.

[gwpriester]

Pete - When you create a vector brush, as far as I know, it remains a vector brush. And you can convert line to shape, ungroup, and have a bunch of vector shapes. I am not sure if you can do that in Illustrator.

[David O'Neil]

I think this is what he's talking about. From this thread:

[Xcellent]

I think this is what he's talking about. From this thread:

Well this is just a different approach XARA handles brushes.

In Illustrator, vector shapes are entirely stretched along the path curve, while XARA doesn't stretch any objects along the path.
XARA just repeats the same shape over and over the path curve.

[David O'Neil]

(I believe that's what Albacore was trying to get at.)

[Egg Bramhill]

Note the Jaggies ... A true vector brush wouldn't have this problem

Still confused. The inclusion of jaggies doesn't make the brush any more a non "true" vector brush, whatever that is. If the brush is a vector you should be able to scale it to any size and retain the resolution. You can select a brush created in XXP that's used vector shapes and convert the line to shapes and ungroup and select any of the shapes. They're still vectors.

My original question is where does this "bitmap brush" concept come from?

Jaggies are a product of the brush construction. To avoid them use smaller slices and transparencies within the creation vector shapes.

[Xcellent]

Jaggies are a product of the brush construction. To avoid them use smaller slices and transparencies within the creation vector shapes.

Or use a brush like it's used in Illustrator, which stretches the brush along the Curve

Xara can use Bitmaps to repeat along along a curve.

[Egg Bramhill]

Or use a brush like it's used in Illustrator, which stretches the brush along the Curve

No arguement with that Xcellent. Illy obviously has some coding behind it that shrinks/expands the brush around the curves and a very nice feature too.

However this doesn't make XXP's brushes "bitmap brushes".