A Planet-Building Tutorial

[Gare]

There were some pages that needed to be cut from The Official Guide due to space considerations; ironically, one really cool tutorial was on "space"!

So I put it together as a PDF. Fee free to download and have a little fun.

A Drawing Tutorial: How to Build A Planet

My Best,

Gare

[InfoCentral]

Thanks for the additional tutorial. I guess while I am waiting for the book to arrive (Amazon just shipped it out) I can download those two tutorials and start working on them...

[Gare]

In a way, it is (or was) one of the book tutorials
I think it puts a lot of different features together. I find that when you "converge" techniques and features with Xara, the result can be more than one anticipates!

My Best,

Gare

[neodeist]

Thanks for the freebie Gary

[stygg2003]

There were some pages that needed to be cut from The Official Guide due to space considerations; ironically, one really cool tutorial was on "space"!

So I put it together as a PDF. Fee free to download and have a little fun.

A Drawing Tutorial: How to Build A Planet

My Best,

Gare

Thanks for the PDF Gare. I did a planet sometime ago but I can't for the life of me find the xar.file

Stygg

[Spinny]

I haven't looked at your .pdf tutorial yet, but I ginned this up just playing around with the material actually included in Chapter 5...

[Spinny]

And here's a question for you guys. Attached is the .xar file for the above jpeg. I'm wondering why I can't apply a profile to the transparency of the ice caps object (the arrow is greyed out), yet I can for the shadows and the fractal clouds transparencies. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[sledger]

Planet Xtremus and it's two moons, Xarian and Camelot.




Thanks for the inspiration Gare.

[handrawn]

I'm wondering why I can't apply a profile to the transparency of the ice caps object (the arrow is greyed out), yet I can for the shadows and the fractal clouds transparencies.

its a multi-stage transparency would be my guess - don't think you can profile those - same with muti-stage fills - yes?

[Gare]

Hi Spinner—

Lovely work, by the way.

I downloaded your file; top object takes a profile as I can see, but yes, a profile controls the bias and contrast between two pins on a transparency, and no more. If you have three or more pins defined—this goes for any fill, contour, or blend, as well—and try to apply a profile, the arrow button will be dimmed. Also if you have a profile defined and attempt to add a pin ("stop", whatever we call it), you'll get a polite but firm attention box telling you if you go ahead, the profile will be removed.

But you can "mix it up" and achieve almost any effect you like by adding a lot of duplicate objects, moving the center of the transparency or fill, redefining the colors, blend mode, and scale of fractal fills...and get the effect you seek. Also not to forget using ClipViews to hide areas you don't want visible.

sledger did a wonderful thing with fills there! If you read chapter 5, or just download the chpater 5 files, you can see an example of a "painting" of a sunset, done entirely with fractal fills and transparency.

My Best,

Gare