Brush draw/build problems

[jassony]

Yesterday I built a brush about 40 pix x 40 pix from a group of flowers created in XaraX that had gradients. It came out great, and all was fine. Next I created a heart cloned it w/ a 4pt outline, selected my flower brush and applied it to the outline, still everything was fine.

Next I selected the 2 hearts, grouped them, and tried to create a brush out of it. The 1st couple of attempts created the brush, but when I tried to apply it to a object with an outline everything froze. I tried doing it with anti alias turned off, it still froze. Today I tried several times again and got Out of Memory message.

I have a AMD 1000 processor with 256mb ram, 16mb video ram.

I went into Options/Tuneup, and changed the limited undo size to 1.000k from the default of 2.000k. The memory access is at the default of automatic, as is the cache.

Is this just a bug? Just me? or is there some settings I should change or do differently?
Judi

[jassony]

Yesterday I built a brush about 40 pix x 40 pix from a group of flowers created in XaraX that had gradients. It came out great, and all was fine. Next I created a heart cloned it w/ a 4pt outline, selected my flower brush and applied it to the outline, still everything was fine.

Next I selected the 2 hearts, grouped them, and tried to create a brush out of it. The 1st couple of attempts created the brush, but when I tried to apply it to a object with an outline everything froze. I tried doing it with anti alias turned off, it still froze. Today I tried several times again and got Out of Memory message.

I have a AMD 1000 processor with 256mb ram, 16mb video ram.

I went into Options/Tuneup, and changed the limited undo size to 1.000k from the default of 2.000k. The memory access is at the default of automatic, as is the cache.

Is this just a bug? Just me? or is there some settings I should change or do differently?
Judi

[RTK]

I'm suprised that you have problems with brush creation - after seeing all the complicated brushes Ivan has been creating the last couple of weeks.

If you post the complete xar. file with the objects - I will give it a go...

Risto

[Christine Farrelly]

Judi,
I would suspect you are either finishing up with too many objects in your brush (the limit is 50) or trying to apply it to too narrow a line.

For what you appear to be trying to do I would think that a blend between the 2 groups of hearts applied to a curve might be better.

Christine

[ivan louette]

Hello Judy,

did you convert your heart's line to shape before convert them to a brush? The limit is not 50 objects but eventually 50 groups (not too complicated).
Otherwise, an alternative is to oversize your hearts (100 to 200 pts high), create bitmap copies, convert these copies to editable shapes with SINGLE TILE FILLING and create a brush with these bitmaps. But before creating the brush you must have deselected your object and typed a size identical to their high in the line width menu.
At this kind of complexity, bitmaps are much more performant than vectors; don't forgot that.

Kindly yours,

iva

[jassony]

I guess my problem was I had over 50 groups. So tried Ivan's alternate method and was able to build a brush, but it painted a repeating tile.
Yes, I followed your instructions to the letter....at least I tried to. I did created the bitmap, converted to editable shapes, and made sure the fill was set to Single Tile Filling.

in the attached jpg. The large heart's flower outline was made using the 1st flower brush I made. The little hearts ended up being just a blend, but are made of of the objects I was trying to make a brush out of to no avail.

Anyhow I learned some new things in the process.

[Christine Farrelly]

Judi,

What you probably missed with the bitmap brush was that you need to uncheck the tile fills option in the edit brush dialog box - it is on the fill properties tab.

Hearts and flowers - for a valentine?

Christine

[ivan louette]

Yes, you had the good diagnose, Christine.

Now I remember another topic about brushes and the template I use to share them. I understand why your version of my "glass snake" brush was not so heavy than mine. While placing my blended vector objects into the template I decreased their size. Thus of course if you converted them directly to 96 dpi bitmap copies these ones were lighter than mines!
As I have explained elsewhere this is an advantage because you can create different versions of the same brush with different definitions adapted to different kind of uses.
And another advantage is if you increase the size of your bitmap copies before convert them to a brush you can obtain nice blurring effects.

Regards,

ivan

[jassony]

Ugggh! I selected single tile filling in the regular fill area (paint bucket) not in the Edit brush.

I'll try it again.
Thanks

[jassony]

Well, when I unchecked Tile, I got one of those XXoo violation thingies and crashed. Rebooted, tried again and got the same thing.