Bevel and Mould Weirdness

[Su Lawrence]

Came across some odd behaviour when using bevels and moulds together.

I was trying to apply a mould to several objects, some of which had bevels, but the mould options were grayed out. Checked the help and it said that bevels could not be moulded independantly of the shape.

Ok ... so I tried to mould a bevelled object by first clicking on the object itself ... no problem, except of course the bevel has no perspective. (Maybe another item for the Xara X2 wishlist, perspective bevels or bevels that can have perspective added with a mould). A marquee select, selects both object and bevel so no mould options, I would have thought moulds would work as long as the original object was also selected? Marquee selecting a shadowed object only selects the object so that's okay.

But I started experimenting and found some weirdness. I drew a rectangle, then a smaller circle inside the rectangle, gave the circle a bevel, shift+selected both circle and rectangle. When I applied a mould the bevel moves to the outside object - ie the rectangle ... same thing happens with shadows.

I sort of figured out that when applying a mould all objects then become 'one mould object' and so all effects apply only to the mould object and not internal parts, maybe? For example as far as I know you cannot ctrl select or otherwise select any internal objects within a mould.

Then I created several bevelled (non overlapping) circles, applied a mould ... but then removed the mould and found more weirdness. The one bevel for the 'mould object' doesn't revert back to indivual bevels after demoulding, so the objects are still 'joined' by the bevel. So by clicking on one circle, only that circle is seemingly selected, but drag it and all circles move together. Change a circle's colour and all change, the bevel changes for all circles on edit etc. If you then change the bevel colour you can now independantly change the fill of each circle to a diff colour, effect etc. Remove the bevel and all circles become detached again. Shadowed objects behave a bit differently, as only one object has a visible shadow after demoulding, although they all appear to actually have a shadow.

Just found more weirdness. I did a marquee select where my original bevelled shapes were, and found the lost bevels completely on their own, you can't click on them and wireframe view doesn't see them. If you try resizing them you can see their outline, or add a feather and they appear in white. If you add a shadow you can now click on the shadow to move the bevel. Convert to editable shapes and they are filled with a 'bevel' bitmap. If you try this please be careful with editing this as I got a lot of error messages and almost crashed (ie tried to change bevel size and got error 2910). Aha! ... the way to avoid the mystery of the 'lost bevels' is to create shapes and only apply a bevel when it is a mould, that way there is only ever one bevel for all shapes anyway.

Still even if this is a bug you can get some interesting effects, with overlapping shapes, for example quickshape stars. As the overlapping objects are in effect 'added' or 'grouped' together by the bevel but not really (see attached). For example: If you use a large inner bevel the overlapping parts get bevelled as well.

Regards

Su

[Su Lawrence]

Came across some odd behaviour when using bevels and moulds together.

I was trying to apply a mould to several objects, some of which had bevels, but the mould options were grayed out. Checked the help and it said that bevels could not be moulded independantly of the shape.

Ok ... so I tried to mould a bevelled object by first clicking on the object itself ... no problem, except of course the bevel has no perspective. (Maybe another item for the Xara X2 wishlist, perspective bevels or bevels that can have perspective added with a mould). A marquee select, selects both object and bevel so no mould options, I would have thought moulds would work as long as the original object was also selected? Marquee selecting a shadowed object only selects the object so that's okay.

But I started experimenting and found some weirdness. I drew a rectangle, then a smaller circle inside the rectangle, gave the circle a bevel, shift+selected both circle and rectangle. When I applied a mould the bevel moves to the outside object - ie the rectangle ... same thing happens with shadows.

I sort of figured out that when applying a mould all objects then become 'one mould object' and so all effects apply only to the mould object and not internal parts, maybe? For example as far as I know you cannot ctrl select or otherwise select any internal objects within a mould.

Then I created several bevelled (non overlapping) circles, applied a mould ... but then removed the mould and found more weirdness. The one bevel for the 'mould object' doesn't revert back to indivual bevels after demoulding, so the objects are still 'joined' by the bevel. So by clicking on one circle, only that circle is seemingly selected, but drag it and all circles move together. Change a circle's colour and all change, the bevel changes for all circles on edit etc. If you then change the bevel colour you can now independantly change the fill of each circle to a diff colour, effect etc. Remove the bevel and all circles become detached again. Shadowed objects behave a bit differently, as only one object has a visible shadow after demoulding, although they all appear to actually have a shadow.

Just found more weirdness. I did a marquee select where my original bevelled shapes were, and found the lost bevels completely on their own, you can't click on them and wireframe view doesn't see them. If you try resizing them you can see their outline, or add a feather and they appear in white. If you add a shadow you can now click on the shadow to move the bevel. Convert to editable shapes and they are filled with a 'bevel' bitmap. If you try this please be careful with editing this as I got a lot of error messages and almost crashed (ie tried to change bevel size and got error 2910). Aha! ... the way to avoid the mystery of the 'lost bevels' is to create shapes and only apply a bevel when it is a mould, that way there is only ever one bevel for all shapes anyway.

Still even if this is a bug you can get some interesting effects, with overlapping shapes, for example quickshape stars. As the overlapping objects are in effect 'added' or 'grouped' together by the bevel but not really (see attached). For example: If you use a large inner bevel the overlapping parts get bevelled as well.

Regards

Su