making brush

[mentorman]

Hi guys (and girls), I know there is probably a simple solution to this but I want to produce a brush that draws a row of buntings all attached to a rope or tape either using a graphic or a jpg. I have tried everything I know but for the life of me cannot get it to work. I can get the little flags to draw but not from a continuous line.

Help! or am I expecting the impossible

Ken

[gwpriester]

See attached.

This brush was created with a group of three circles.

[mentorman]

Hi Gary looks good but what I was after was the British style bunting(triangles on a rope) I have made the buntings and added a line(for rope) and made a brush but for the life of me I cannot get them to link up when drawn as a line. What am I doing wrong?

Ken

Ken

[gwpriester]

Ah, I see.

I would make a series of triangles, not grouped. Make your brush from this series of triangles.

Apply the brush to a curved path and adjust the size and spacing.

Then clone the path, make it a line and not a brush (the first option in the brush drop down), and adjust the size of the path.

You can also make a rope brush and add the rope brush to the same path.

[gwpriester]

Oops. I forgot that brush shapes center on the height of the brush object.

Might be better to use a blend of pennant shapes along a curved path, then convert to editable shapes and change the colors.

Maybe I should shut up and let someone else suggest a method.

[mentorman]

Thanks for the help Gary, I did answer a couple of days ago but it hasn't appeared. Looks like my dream of unlimited yards of bunting at will is just that and I need to fiddle to achieve. I will come back if I crack it. But if the master cannot.........wbat chance have we mere mortals.

Cheers

Ken

[angelize]

Sorry I haven't had time to get to this sooner but this can indeed be done. The trick is to create a triangle or bunting flag with a bit of cord attached to the top and then create one small section of your cord and group it with a 99% transparent narrow rectangle the same height as the triangle. duplicate this group a few times on each side of the bunting flag. how many of these you do will depend on how much space you want between flags. Do not group these groups any further. you will need to edit your brush and tighten up the spacing you can set the sequence to either forward or backward. I made one red flag and set the hue slider on the fills properties panel to get multi coloured flags

I've attached a .xar file you can take apart, it's very quickly put together with a triangle and ellipses but it should give you the idea. It's still not perfect but that's due to the fact that Xara brushes don't do tight curves well at all.

[Egg Bramhill]

My solution to this would be to use two brushes, one for the rope and one for the flags. Just create the line with the rope brush, clone the line, change the brush to the flag brush, adjust the line width to suit. Note that the flag brush has an invisible triangle above the visible one to ensure it centres on the line.

[mentorman]

Thanks both am off to try them out and I am sure one will work to give me what I want to do.Egg like the invisible flag so that it centres on the line. Such lateral thinking never came to my small brain. Angelize, the tightness of the line isn't a problem as flags have a smooth line of hang in shallow curves anyway.

Thanks Guys for the usual high level of assistance and sharing of knowledge that is the trademark of this forum

Ken

[mentorman]

Egg, found your solution great and actually quite advantageous having to do the rope and flags as separate entities. It allows for changing the size and style of the rope to add perspective and realism to the bunting when changing the size. Will make good use of the brush. Thanks again and I can now see how to apply to other future "hanging on a rope" needs that might arise.

Ken