Xara X shadow icon

[Sheff]

Well, in terms of intuitive functionality, is there a way to place a light source?

When you create an object with a cast shadow that goes along the floor, it is difficult to cast shadows on other objects consistently so that all the shadows feel like they are all on the same floor plane. The solution is to eyeball it.

What I would like to see is an indication of where the light source is. Similar to the vanishing point with a mould, you should be able to see where the light is coming from. Once you pinpoint it, you could put an intersection of guidelines at that location and make it so that other objects that have shadows all have light sources that originate from the same point. It would be nice to be able to drag colors to the origin point of the light source. Or if the light point was selected, you should be able to click on colors to update the shadow color.

By that same token, I realize that the shadow is probably generated, by duplicating the shape, filling it with color and skewing it, so there is no real light logic that Xara is following.

In order to create the illusion that light is coming from above, you have to clone the object, fill it with a shadow color and compress it vertically, as the default shadow tool casts a shadow that is sometimes not attached to the object.

I like the shadow function, I just wish it didn't choke my machine when there is a lot of text.

Again, more wishful thinking on my part. I would just like to a new version that resolves my pdf issues.

Sheff
www.sheff.com

[mike engles]

Hello Charles,

As far as I can see, you cannot add transparency to shadows, other than with the slider in the shadow control.

The other thing is,why is the floor shadow bounding box larger than the shadow. You can see this by making a floor shadow,removing any blur or transparency and viewing in wire frame.
This causes problems when exporting as a tiff or png.It is not a problem with wall shadows.

Mike Engles

[RAMWolff44]

I've noticed that too Mike!!

It's easy enough to trim off the unnessesary alpha but it is still kinda strange to me too that the bounding box extends out so far when ungrouped!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

http://www.ramwolffsworld.com//Publi..._Prowl_sig.gif

http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/RAMWolffsWorld

[Charles Moir]

Yes Mike you're right. You can't alter the shadow transparency, except with the slider in the Shadow tool. And yes the bounding box always appears much larger than the shadow, but I've always assumed this was because the edges of the shadow go out much further than you can normally see. After all you can't see 1% transparency, but we don't crop any part of the shadow.

[mike engles]

Hello Charles

Is there residual transparency below 0?
The bounding box is still larger in wireframe.
If you export it, there is a whole lot of unnecessary white space.

Mike Engles

[RTK]

Micke,

You can always apply a clip-view to what you want to export, that way controlling the amount of "white space" from the bounding box.

Or placing a transparent rectangle over the area you want, and exporting as a selection.

Risto

Risto

risto@ristoklint.com

Visit my web site!

[Charles Moir]

Yes there may well be residual transparency below what is shown as 0%, or more precisely between 0% and 1%, half of which would be shown as 0%. Having said that the bounding box does look unnecessarily large.

[FLySOLO]

a good thing would be an directory with the bitmap resources of the icons, buttons and other bitmap stuff in xara, so we could create skins or themes :b

just for fun i attached a start screen done in 5 mins in a clean style. just received corel 12 and must say its ugly - specially the start screen.

i'm using xara every day for hours so being able to change its looks a bit from time to time would be very nice.

bb

FLySOLO

[alan e.]

you can change icons and the way xx looks...
download the Resource Hacker (freeware) and open the XaraXeng.dll or XaraXenu.dll (not sure) and you can edit bitmaps, icons, dialogs etc.
(when saving you have to type the extension to the filename,too ie. filename.dll)

[FLySOLO]

yup i know ressource hacker - but i allways feel a little "unsafe" using it. i can remember that modifing a dll in an older photoshop version with borland ressource workshop lead to crashes using photoshop.

FLy