Interweaving vines with 3D text

[dcahall]

@Beanpole—Problem #1 is making it hard to discern the solution to Problem #2. I really can't see if there is enough color contrast, because of all the leaves in front of the characters.

I really don't want to discourage anyone from experimenting and I do see improvement, but if everyone would please consider this:

If you've posted more than 3 cracks at a composition, and the current one is better in one area, but worse in another...the problem is with your "process".

IOW, your game plan going in isn't sound. And you're patching your original idea and diluting it, because you didn't work from the General to the specific.

Example? BeanPole, would you mind? Me, I'd have started with an outline drawing with white fill for everything, to see how the composition looks in general. Then, with great deliberation, I'd start mixing up textures, fractals, gradients, and other fills, comparing one to another to see how they balance and influence the overall graphical idea.

If this sounds like the long way about things, look at the time you've invested so far.

And I'm singling BeanPole out here for criticism. This is just advice and you can then choose to ignore me in a minute or two.

Sadly, computer graphics programs offer this enticing thing called "instant accomplishment". There is no pencil sketch, you go straight from idea to finished drawing.

Or do you?

Let me introduce a different fill type here; fractal fills are okay, but they cannot represent everything because there are only two types of fractals. Open the Fill Gallery, and if it's not populated, download some of the fills from Xara's server.

There's gotta be a bitmap in the Fill gallery that does a better representation of bare earth than trying to use a fractal fill.

I've attached a piece that has a "grass" brush in it. I encourage anyone here to take apart this drawing. It's a little bit of this and a little bit of that—an extrude, a brush, some gradient fills, and fractal transparency.



But I believe the piece succeeds because I had an idea of how it should look before I began it. Then, and only then did I decide on what features to use and I built the piece a little at a time, checking for artistic balance, color coordination, editing the grass color so it has contrast in both light and dark grounds...basically sweating the small stuff all along the process.

-g

Thanks for sharing this file. I do have a couple of questions.

When I started pulling things apart it appeared that part of the image that comprised the ground was a fractal. How do you do that and still have the ability to apply a gradient fill?

The second question I had was about the roof. Is that a blend?

There were a couple of other objects that I could not "pull apart" (like the building and the circular window in the side of the building). Are those bitmap copies or clipped objects?

Lot of valuable stuff in that little image.

BTW: At one point I did try that approach of creating very basic objects without any fancy fills or such just to get an idea of how I wanted to put together the final picture but still did not get exactly what I wanted. I do think I am moving in a better direction though.

[wizard509]

Gare I took your hacienda apart and I think the way you did that was clever. The only thing that I am still stumped on is how you did the roof.

[angelize]

Hi everyone here is that example I promised Dave.

remove the clip view and you will see how I used a couple of seamless tiling bitmaps (which are included in the re uploaded .xar) and the mold tool to create the illusion of depth. The shadow adds to that depth as well. I also used the mold tool on the pool. Both the pool and the ground were given a floor perspective. I corrected the gravity defying arch and the vines needed to be anchored to the ground so I wound them around one of the pillars. I hope this helps

Edit: @Larry: I had a suspicion but I downloaded the file to confirm it. Gary used an extrusion for the roof. It's a wavy line extruded and positioned.

[dcahall]

@Frances: Some vary interesting things that I overlooked. How did you achieve the feathering at the top of the lawn? I did an ungroup and it went away but I could not find mysterious object that was producing the blur effect. I also clicked on your lawn and looked at the fill and it just said many. Isn't it a fractal fill?

[stygg2003]

Dave, hope this helps to unravel the mystery of the ground with a fractal and gradiant fill?
The roof is as Francis says and the circular window is 3 shapes, grouped then sliced from the building shape, then try the extrude tool!

Stygg

[dcahall]

@stygg2003: I have looked at your .xar file but I am not being successful at reproducing the steps. I do not get the right colors for the fractal plasma on the second step. Then I still do not see how you applied a gradient fill to a plasma fractal for the last step. What the heck am I doing wrong?

[stygg2003]

@stygg2003: I have looked at your .xar file but I am not being successful at reproducing the steps. I do not get the right colors for the fractal plasma on the second step. Then I still do not see how you applied a gradient fill to a plasma fractal for the last step. What the heck am I doing wrong?

Dave the colours for the fractal fill are centre node HSV Green#339966, the outer node is HSV Brown #a76135. Note also the feathering! Also check that repeating tile is in use. With the image and fill tool still selected and it will be still showing fractal plasma, go up to the Fill tool box on the tool bar, open it and select Linear fill, nothing else, just select and click. You shoud now see the shape you want with the linear fill arrow which you can drag around to suit. The final step, select the trans. tool(wine glass) this too will still be showing Fractal plasma but this time set the trans. type to stained glass and as per first xara.file set the centre node to 42-42.5% and the top node to 100%. you might need to drag the top node down a little. For a final check, on the tool bar for the last step, you should have showing Fractal plasma, stained glass, repeating tile, 109dpi, fractal scale 30%. The very first shape, the base shape as a feathering of 12.7 The second shape, fractal plasma as a feathering of 31.8

Stygg

[dcahall]

Dave the colours for the fractal fill are centre node HSV Green#339966, the outer node is HSV Brown #a76135. Note also the feathering! Also check that repeating tile is in use. With the image and fill tool still selected and it will be still showing fractal plasma, go up to the Fill tool box on the tool bar, open it and select Linear fill, nothing else, just select and click. You shoud now see the shape you want with the linear fill arrow which you can drag around to suit. The final step, select the trans. tool(wine glass) this too will still be showing Fractal plasma but this time set the trans. type to stained glass and as per first xara.file set the centre node to 42-42.5% and the top node to 100%. you might need to drag the top node down a little. For a final check, on the tool bar for the last step, you should have showing Fractal plasma, stained glass, repeating tile, 109dpi, fractal scale 30%. The very first shape, the base shape as a feathering of 12.7 The second shape, fractal plasma as a feathering of 31.8

Stygg

@stygg - as soon as I select linear from the drop down list, the fill changes to linear and the fractal fill is gone. What am I doing wrong or is there some difference between XP&GD and Designer Pro?

I have tried this several dozen times and no matter what, it changes the fill type to linear before I ever get to the transparency step.