Pluginless Chrome effects

[Big Frank]

Yeah, something like that - that 256 limit has ballsed me up more than once. It's annoying to say the least. Plus, there's nothing realistic than a bitmap fill - the colours, the contrast, however we change the contrast, the saturation, still stay correct as regards their relationship to each other. The linear fill works for your beer tap because it's not the focus of the drawing. The exercise in this thread concentrated on the focal object in the drawing being chrome. You can't get away with any inconsistencies when it is the main focus of your drawing. However, if you think you can do it, have a go. If it works, I'd love to see it. I wasn't able to do it using a linear fill with transparency as you'll see if you go through the whole post. Can't wait to see your offering (vectors only, remember).

[jvila]

I've got lost, I don't understand a thing, must be english the problem.
I can't realize what is right and what is wrong in this thread, I'm not sure if using a bitmap is right or not, As far as I understood the objetive was to achieve chrome without pluggins and there are many drawings made here without pluggins right? and many of them are excellents.
May be using bitmaps is considered a pluggin, as I said I've lost.
I agree that one problem is not to draw what you see, It happened to me many times.

[Big Frank]

Don't worry Javier, just enjoy yourself. You can use a bitmap fill or not, whatever you want. Keep on doing what you're doing, it's tremendous.

[instinctive.de]

Linear fill has always 256 steps no matter how many colors you add to it

Eeek, fixed-size arrays... Xara people too lazy to use malloc?

[covoxer]

Eeek, fixed-size arrays... Xara people too lazy to use malloc?

No, not really. It's a historical issue. Early versions of Xara had no possibility to add an intermediate colors to the gradient fill. In this case 256 is all you may need since no matter what ending colors are, there will be no more than 256 shades between them (as we work with 8 bits per channel).

[Xcellent]

i hope i'm not mistaken.. If you choose 'repeat' on color grades the steps suddenly become smoother and the 256 colors per fade is history?!? Of course you need to change and extend the colors on the grade, its not just a simple mouse click.

I have silly dual LCD screens here at work which flicker crazy when zooming into the grey areas, so i can't compare on my screens if the fades are smoother.. (Are CRT's still the choice for graphic design these days?). Can someone confirm if the right hand fade is smoother and 'stepless' or not?

[Ross Macintosh]

Hey Remi! Your beer glass is most excellent. The gold metallic features are very realistic. Is that Charles home on the graphic? It is so small it is hard to tell. I really like the out-of-focus background effect too -- very effective.

Regards, Ross

[Ross Macintosh]

Thanks Frank for the great tutorials. The effort is appreciated!

Regards, Ross

[jvila]

Hi Frank,

could be, that I'm a little bit ignorant regarding the previous discussed techniques, but why do we need a image as fill, in order to create a chrome effect? Isn't it much more simpler to create a chrome effect with a complex fill?

True vector, without effects, of course:
Attachment 59459

The complex fill:
Attachment 59460

Regards,
Remi

wow, that chrome is great, I feel I can touch it

[gwpriester]

Remi - That is CHROME!