November 2012 Video Tutorial - Let There Be Lighting!

[Barbara B]

Let There Be...Lighting!

In this month's Xara Xone tutorial, Gary shows you how to use Xara's Extrude tool, Shadow tool, and other tools to make dramatic lighting a snap in your compositions.

It’s the lighter side of Xara Designer, in more ways than one!

So take a gander and then come on back and show us how you light up your world.

[angelize]

I've been enjoying all the interesting stuff about lighting this month! Here is my attempt at the boxes. I like to play around and experiment with lighting and shadows, and I have a different method to doing vector shadows for extrusions. For the boxes I cloned the boxes and with all 3 clones still selected I converted them to editable shapes (shift + ctrl + s ) and change to fill to flat. When an extrusion is converted to editable shapes it becomes a bitmap filled shape and by default when you change the fill you get black shapes, with all 3 shapes still selected ctrl +1 will combine them into a single shape. Ctrl + Shift + B to send the shadow shape behind the boxes and the rest is the same.

[Gare]

Well, Frances, the perspective look quite handsome, and the use of text on the boxes (I was hoping someone would innovate and do that!) looks great. Now that's either Rockwell or Lubalin Graph, or Memphis, right? Some sort of stub serif font. Fonts go in and out of fashion and it seems as though with the popularity of webfonts, this sort of font is making a comeback after 30 years or so.

My Best,

Gary

[angelize]

The font is called Stymie it's a knock off of another font but I can't remember which ATM.

The way I turned and stacked my boxes also left me with an extra corner on the top of the bottom box that I tried to shade in such a way as to have the box on top casting a shadow but also have the outer edge of the corner catch a little bit of light I think it came out ok.

[Barbara B]

The English language transcript for this video tutorial has been posted. If you like to read along while watching the video or just like to have a hard copy reference it is very close to being an exact word-for-word transcript of the video.

If anyone out in Xaraland would like to translate it into some other language, we would be thrilled to post it along with the English version.

[stygg2003]

Not got round to the pumpkin yet but here's my attempt at the boxes, learnt a few things from this little tut. so hope it will help in the pumpkin tut.

@ Francis
really good effort Francis, learnt something from your feedback

Stygg

[Gare]

Your image uses colours that are a little darker than I would have 'em, but you did well, innovated like Frances did, and I'm glad you learned something.

One thing I'm, already liking is that your stack and Frances' are from slightly different vierwing angles, but both have accurate perspective, so I get we're learning this mointh.

Of key importance this month is using that Angle 2 slider for rotating objects around what is usually called the Y axis in 3D space, the up and down, "Fireman's pole" axis. Because if you try to manually drag the box around this axis, you'll probably fail. I'm not a big fan of dials and sliders in a graphical environment where theoretically you manually adjust your work, but in this case, use the Infobar sliders!

The pumpkin will probably be less effort than the stacked boxes example, and I'm not sure what you've learned can be applied to this example. I'm trying to show the best lighting a designer can use on roundish objects.

And the last time I looked, the boxes aren't round.

Would anyone like to try drawing a round box and lighting it with a primary source and a catch light?

-g

[angelize]

I gave the round box a try, this is meant to be a trinket box. I was sort of trying do do something similar to one I gave my mother many years ago. I'm not sure if I have the catch lighting quite right.

[stygg2003]

My effort with the pumpkin, did'nt get the catch lighting so good but a great tut. again The stem at the base looked a little bland so I added the fill Francis used on the Birdbath.

Stygg

[Gare]

I'd argue that you did great, stygg. The main light is pointing into the scene from upper left, so the shadow should be behind, at lower right.

Your stem is a little large, so the object looks a little more like a gourd or squash, but I think if you learned something, all is well.

Trivia: the pumpkin is a fruit, not a vegetable. It's actually a distant relative to the berry family, but don't try putting several pumpkins on top of pudding, because you'll break the bowl and besides, it's silly.

-g