Tube Challenge

[wfcentral]

Here's a challenge for the forum. I am trying to help a co-worker with an illustration. We need to make a 3D looking pipe. (see attached picture) - the catch is that we cannot use any bitmap type Xara effects (I used feathering in the illustration below). The finished product is going to go into Flash and it needs to be all vector. I have done it with blends using a plain elbow, but the shape of this pipe is giving me fits. Anyone?

[wfcentral]

Here's a challenge for the forum. I am trying to help a co-worker with an illustration. We need to make a 3D looking pipe. (see attached picture) - the catch is that we cannot use any bitmap type Xara effects (I used feathering in the illustration below). The finished product is going to go into Flash and it needs to be all vector. I have done it with blends using a plain elbow, but the shape of this pipe is giving me fits. Anyone?

[wfcentral]

so you don't have to waste time making the shape...

[arnold foss]

Something like this?

Arnold

[jclements]

>> http://talkgraphics.infopop.net/1/Op...1&m=9801912612


It is the "Shading (Rendering) a Bent Tube" thread.

Not sure how well it would work for exporting to flash though.

[Renaud]

... vector drawing should be better than bitmap images.
But this is not always true. A vector tube made with blend can be heavier in SWF than in PNG for a given size, and clipviews are not well exported to SWF.

Are ou sure you definitely need a vector for your flash movie ?

I hope this can help you :
http://www.essentiel.net/xara/posts/help1.gif

[Old Dog]

I'm not in the need for any pipes right now, but your mini-tut on the blend method for shading has solved a problem I was having on something else.

Thanks so much for the tip! It really helped.

Jack

[Egg Bramhill]

I'm interested in what you are trying to say. Firstly if I import a 20 step blend from Xara to Flash I get a 2Kb file size. Of course this remains a vector and is totally scalable. However surely the png file size will depend on the size of the required image, and this is not scalable to the same extent?
Egg

[Renaud]

You could use the SWF export, the only thing to know is that if you use clipping to shape your objects, the export will have problems.

For the simple objects i've used, SWF exported file size is bigger than the PNG one... but 1/ this is not a rule (rule is ALLWAYS false for hi resolution, and often for low rez)), and 2/ maybe i don't know enough in Xara export optimisation.

PNG or GIF are less scalable than vectorial objects, and file size depend on "pixel size". but if you stay at screen resolution perhaps this is not a big problem.

If clipping problem is not an issue for your needs, and if SWF is not lot bigger than JPEG/GIF/PNG, then use the SWF export.

I hope that helps you... if not, feel free to ask more questions ;-)

[Renaud]

The simple tube shown in my mini-tute(*) exported as SWF weight about 5 Ko. Well... i import this file in a flash movie, then publish this one, and TADADADAHHH!!!!!
The final SWF is 545 BYTES!

Xara X produce very poorly optimized SWF, but Flash can do the job... so you can use SWF export, without worrying about the file size.
Just read the XaraX Help file (search in it for "SWF") to know the limitations before to start working : flash do no support lot of X features, so avoid those ones or... choose another export format.

Renaud


(*) was inspired a lot by tutes of the XaraXone, and give nothing really new ;-)