Interweaving vines with 3D text

[dcahall]

I have now tried this whole process with different (simpler) shapes and have boiled it down to the blend process. This causes everything to be treated differently. I got fairly close but had definitely proved to myself that the intersect shape down not work when there is a blended shape. If you can live with a fairly simple line/vine then the intersect method is very easy to use. Xara Xhris has a very straight forward video on You Tube (thanks for pointing me to that Gare) but it does not work with the blend.

[Gare]

@Frances. Thanks for pointing that out. I truly didn't know that you could "opacity mask" using the Eraser.
So now you can do both destructive and non-destructive erasing. both are valuable depending on your intention.

@Dave—I don't know what your system specs are, but I am able to intersect a line blend of five steps with an ellipse. I'm attaching the file; why don't you try it when you have time to let your system hang. The bottom shape is he product of intersecting the blend lines with the ellipse.

Try this: once you have your Blend group of shapes the way you want them, select 'em and then press Ctrl+Shift+S (Arrange>convert to editable Shapes). This—mathematically—simplifies the group and you might get where you want to go then. The dynamic blend attribute is destroyed and the blend can't be edited any more. but the result is a group of 7 lines if you do 5 steps, and I think I was able to apply a boolean operation even back in version 4 with a Pentium box!

My Best,

Gary

Oh, and P.S. We're getting O/T again and I'm going to get screamed at for "poaching" activity and privatizing it on the Xara Xone thread. Please share with the entire community when you have a tip, or when you have a general question, cool?

[dcahall]

Do not want to get off target any more but here is the results of my research.



If you want to pursue this any further, please move to another thread.

[Gare]

Yes, they can be broken apart, Dave. Use the Arrange>Break Shapes command. Post your working Xara file as an attachment and let me look at it. Actually, I made a mistake and if you use Slice Shapes you don't have to break anything apart.

See me proof of feasibility document attached. Oh, my bad: use slice Shapes to cut the blend group with a shape on top.



My Best,

Gary

[dcahall]

I can not reproduce your results. Yes changing the line to butt caps solved one of the problems but I have tried a BUNCH of times and cannot get it to come out correctly with a blended line. I am wondering if there is something different between the two products. I have XP&GD.

The closest I can come is multiple cutouts that can not be manipulated independently if the line is a blended line.

[stygg2003]

Same as you Dave I have DP7 and cannot use a blend to weave, fine with just a shape, also if you use use a letter extruded and try to weave a shape through it, it works but you have a lot of dragging to do on the extrusion to get the colours back right on the extrusion? For some reason or other the colours go out of line. Looks like I'll have to upgrade and use the eraser

Stygg

[Gare]

I don't know what's going on, but it could be a system thing, becaus, Dave, you're using windows 8, right?

I just went to P&GD (I usually run XGDP as you see in the tutorials), I'm in windows 7, and the steps I suggested do indeed produce a sliced line blend that I can then produce the weave effect with.

Promise. It could be the operating system and your program are in conflict.

-g

[angelize]

If you have the eraser tool you can easily use it on your blend and you don't have to even set a softness because this is the beauty of this tool if you erase a complex object like a blend or group you automatically get an opacity mask

Edit: Gary you are right we are straying here so I've started a thread in the Xara Graphic Chat forum for discussion and tips and tricks of both the eraser tool and the shapebuilder tool.

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ols-Handy-tips