Xara co, I present a Proposition

[Steve Newport]

Once in a great while I ponder a thought in my brain in which I really think about and believe it could really help me and others greatly. I had a case like that today in which I really believe the artists using Xara could benefit a lot from.

Artists, I think your response to this will also be important to whether or not they decide to give this a go, so please offer your opinion.

Xara co, here's my proposition. Not being a programer or anything of the like, I have no clue as to how hard this would be to achieve, but I think it would be really usefull and could offer a nice challenge to you:

For the next release of Xara this new tool would be a "Shapeable Fill Tool" (I think the name will need some work [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] !). The idea would be to have an option in the fill's bar that would act as a regular fill, but give it a different flare. When you select it you draw a single line in whatever path/size you desire. From that a second line is given in the center perpendicular to the first in which the fills colors are able to be given by the artist.
-This tool would do away with the need to use blends to shade oddly shaped objects.
-It would also have more quality and persistence in the appearance over the blend tool. Because lets face it, the blend tool bands to much and and doesn't always achieve the effect we need.
-It would also lower the rendering/file sizes in images due to less objects. Big blends take a long time to render due to the amount of objects they produce.
These are just the advantages I have thought of, as you have seen in the past, these artists go above and beyond anywhere you would have expected them to go. I think this would also fly!

Please present this idea (Along with the profilable or "Ramp" transparency idea I had brought up a while ago) to whomever it may concern.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope this is able to be achieved. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Below is a visual of my idea (See the banding produced by the blend needed to achieve this effect)

Steve Newport

[Steve Newport]

Once in a great while I ponder a thought in my brain in which I really think about and believe it could really help me and others greatly. I had a case like that today in which I really believe the artists using Xara could benefit a lot from.

Artists, I think your response to this will also be important to whether or not they decide to give this a go, so please offer your opinion.

Xara co, here's my proposition. Not being a programer or anything of the like, I have no clue as to how hard this would be to achieve, but I think it would be really usefull and could offer a nice challenge to you:

For the next release of Xara this new tool would be a "Shapeable Fill Tool" (I think the name will need some work [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] !). The idea would be to have an option in the fill's bar that would act as a regular fill, but give it a different flare. When you select it you draw a single line in whatever path/size you desire. From that a second line is given in the center perpendicular to the first in which the fills colors are able to be given by the artist.
-This tool would do away with the need to use blends to shade oddly shaped objects.
-It would also have more quality and persistence in the appearance over the blend tool. Because lets face it, the blend tool bands to much and and doesn't always achieve the effect we need.
-It would also lower the rendering/file sizes in images due to less objects. Big blends take a long time to render due to the amount of objects they produce.
These are just the advantages I have thought of, as you have seen in the past, these artists go above and beyond anywhere you would have expected them to go. I think this would also fly!

Please present this idea (Along with the profilable or "Ramp" transparency idea I had brought up a while ago) to whomever it may concern.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope this is able to be achieved. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Below is a visual of my idea (See the banding produced by the blend needed to achieve this effect)

Steve Newport

[Steve Newport]

Like the fill tool, I think the transparency tool should be able to have multiple transparencies on the same line, ellipse, etc.

This would show what the linear form could look like...

Steve Newport

[wfcentral]

Steve,

you can already do part of what you want. Try changing your linear transparency to "repeating" and see what happens. I duplicated the effect you had with one transparency.

Robert

[Steve Newport]

I was aware of that effect, although hadn't thought of it when I posted this pic. But you still don't have the option of changing the size/width of each, and I'd love it for others such as elliptical etc.! Thanks for reminding me Robert!

Steve Newport

[jclements]

Steve, I have had similar thoughts as yours; that is give having a general path "profile" for fills and transparencies.

I am not familiar with other vector programs except Corel10. They have a Mesh Fill tool, but IMHO it is totally unrulely to use or to easily edit.

To have a curve profile which you could edit with nodes simliar to the way curves are edited would be extremely convenient. A slight twist to what you have suggested would be a way to click on the profile curve and reposition and/or rotate it relative to its parent object.

[RAMWolff44]

What you are suggesting is instead of straight up and down fills that there is an option to use a more flowing type of filling tool, that you have control over?? I would like that too!!

I also ran accross something in a little known vector program that I think would be handy for all sorts of projects to add realism to them. From a program called "RealDraw" by MediaChance, haven't tried it, but the idea seemed really good (from browsing their website and galleries) If you were to do skin or something that needed a realistic texture added to it, you just select the area and this tool adds (I think you have control over the amount) a realistic "finish" over the area.

One other thing, is that I would like the ability to fill 'lines' with bitmap fills. Right now the only way I see to do that is to add a bevel the object, set the line to zero and then you can fill the new 'outline' with what ever you want. The drawback to that is that if you export it as any other file format, most programs don't support shadows or bevels. So then you loose some of what you are trying to convey in the piece.

There are so many ideas for XaraX that run through my mind, as I'm sure many of us have our personal 'wish lists' and all think they would be valuable to the programs whole.

But right now, I think it's pretty swell the way it is [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Egg Bramhill]

"One other thing, is that I would like the ability to fill 'lines' with bitmap fills. Right now the only way I see to do that is to add a bevel the object, set the line to zero and then you can fill the new 'outline' with what ever you want. "

Dont forget you can always go to Arrange / Convert Line to Shape. You can then fill the ex line in any way you can any other shape.
Egg

[RAMWolff44]

forgot about that.

Coulda' used a V8 [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Thanks for the reminder, Egg

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]