Interweaving vines with 3D text

[stygg2003]

Just to add to all the confusion with interweaving a 3D weave and driving the tech. guys mad because I can't do an intersect shapes with a blend and before you split the posts up, I found I could do this though funnily enough?
Posted the xar.file

Stygg

[dcahall]

@Gare - You are 100% right on.

I feel that I am the one that got things off target when I did the interweaving vines in your imaging tutorial thread. At first I thought I was doing the same thing as your tutorial only with multiple bitmap objects instead of photos.

HOWEVER, your comments about the exchange and learning are exactly why I have been participating. I am a retired guy who was looking for ways to improve my artistic and graphic skills and my participation over the past few weeks has, IMHO, helped me to advance my skills. I will not pretend that they are on the level of some of the people here. But that is also another reason for participating (learning from others).

In these past few weeks, I have for the first time used fractals (Thanks Frances and Stygg). I would probably never have used the Clone tool (not sure I was even aware that it was there (Thanks Gare). I had never used the eraser tool (Thanks Frances). I certainly had not played around with the Combine tools like I learned in these endeavors (Thanks to a bunch of you). And, I was not really aware of the power of converting lines and text to editable shapes and the doors that were opened by that move (again Thanks to Gare and several others). I feel I could go on with the list but Gare's point about the learning and sharing is EXACTLY what has inspired me lately.

I hope that we can continue in this direction and I look forward to where we are heading. I wish some other product forums I belong to were as helpful as this one and lets make sure our emphasis is on the learning and sharing.

[Big Frank]

@ Big Frank: Only if you included shadows for the text

yeah that's correct, but since everybody used 3d text which indicates one or more light sources your vine too has to be shadowed unless you decide to skip realism

edit: lookat this post from Gary, he touched on shadows cast in his example

[dcahall]

Just to add to all the confusion with interweaving a 3D weave and driving the tech. guys mad because I can't do an intersect shapes with a blend and before you split the posts up, I found I could do this though funnily enough?
Posted the xar.file

Stygg

THANKS Stygg - That works. I need to play with the vine a little so that it is a more rounded appearance than the letter but the bottom line is that your approach did break the blended line so that you can get the weave effect.

[dcahall]

yeah that's correct, but since everybody used 3d text which indicates one or more light sources your vine too has to be shadowed unless you decide to skip realism

edit: lookat this post from Gary, he touched on shadows cast in his example

Agree, I think the big problem that we started wrestling with was that we could not get the blended line to break into parts properly.

[dcahall]

@Stygg & @Big Frank - Stygg, I used your technique (and found a way to use the 3D with the vine but not at the same extrusion as the text) and Big Frank, I had to do some messing around but got vine shadow included (not perfect but you get the picture).



Sorry, I lost the .xar file or I would have included it.

[stygg2003]

Dave you can draw the shadow for the vine your self, I used it on the vine here and just used the shadow tool for the G.

Stygg

[angelize]

I'm all for learning and sharing what we have learned here on TG but My thoughts are that some of what has been discussed in this thread should have been discussed in the Xara Graphics Chat area specifically the interweaved vines and the neon glow stuff. The exchange of ideas that is happening here is great but we shouldn't neglect the rest of the forum

I think that tidyness doesn't have to be stiffling if it's done right. There is a wonderful energy here in the Xara Xone forum I'd like to see that energy grow into other parts of TG

[dcahall]

Dave you can draw the shadow for the vine your self, I used it on the vine here and just used the shadow tool for the G.

Stygg

That is what I tried to do but did not take the time and do it as elegantly as you did. Boy, if I go back and add the leaves to the vine, this will turn into a REAL project. I think the most valuable thing of this entire endeavor was learning how to accomplish the weave (especially with the blended line).

BTW: When I applied the 3D to the vine, I set the extrusion depth to 1 and that is more what I was wanting the vine to look like.

[Gare]

Let's hit Pause and back up for a second, because this vine lesson is doing exactly what it shouldn't be doing for most of our members here.

Rule #1 in good Art composition is to go from the general to the specific.

Huh?

You begin with an idea, you get a visual reference if you feel you need one (hint: beginners and many advanced artists do), then you rough out the idea, and then address specific issues.

The shadows are a specific part of the composition, they should come last, and I see some stumbling blocks at the beginning of this art process.

First, don't rush it. This forum will be here tomorrow, so don't get so anxious to post that you post something half-baked, okay?

Second, if you want the vine going in and out of 3D text, fine. But compose the text, make an interesting composition out of it. Make the characters rotate left and right and a little randomly as though someone had tossed them onto a table. Use an interesting font, too.

Then work on your vine. however, as Frank points out, you need to consider the source of light in the scene, and spend more than 2 seconds with the Shadow tool and consider yourself done. Shadows are a subordinate element of a composition, but that doesn't mean they're trivial.

Which means you give quality time to every facet of a composition and quit looking for a "quick fix" that will get you home in time for supper when you create Artwork. Does anyone have the foggiest idea how I and other accomplished artists and designers on TalkGraphics really sweat the details and fight the urge to post our "little child" before it's done?

Now, here's a "think outside of the box" approach to this vine thing. We have mounted something that has grown (pardon the pun) into a very, very challenging, visually complex work of art. How do you calculate the shadows so they're accurate? How do you rotate the letters so they lie on the same plane as one another?

You use a reference, specifically a real-life one.

Got a dollar store or a similar budget five and dime near you? Terrific. Get into the car with $2 and go there.

Buy:

• Those refrigerator magnets that are letters of the alphabet.

• A bag of pipe cleaners which will be the stand-in for a vine. They call them "twistys" or something similarly inaccurate these days because no one smokes a pipe except Popeye in 2013 I guess.

Take your kid's desk lamp, go into the kitchen and set up your scene. Play with the light until the shadows are interesting. Then either develop a good memory and go back to your PC and use Xara to recreate your reference scene, or take a snapshot of your work with your mobile phone, import the jpeg to Xara, lock the photo, and go to the design work.

I couldn't be more serious about making a reference photo or scene. How do you think DaVinci worked? Norman Rockwell? How about Big Frank?

Just because you have a computer doesn't invalidate methods artists have been using since the first cave drawings!

Here are two reference pictures. don't simply copy them because then you're copying my reference pictures and not going through your own personal creative process. Just look at how the light falls on the objects; the sun is supposed to be coming into the scene at about 8am.

If you can get something like this look, then you've taken a big first step into:

1. The process. If you don't have a process, you're going to be lost as you imagine more and more detailed pieces.

2. Making stuff that's truly "3D" and not just extruded text. These reference pictures look as thought the text is IN the scene, not simply o top of the scene. Why? Because from the very beginning, the scene was composed to look dimensional. Then the vine, then the shadows, it's all calculated, it's all planeed, it's all part of an individual's process for making art.

I think that's a worthwhile thing to strive for in your work.

Give it a go, and take your time.



My Best,

Gary