Resizing bitmap brushes

[ivan louette]

It's helpful to chose points as page units when creating brushes which include bitmaps. Then check the height of the bitmap you chose, (or the size of the bigger one if you select a group) and before creating brush, type this size in the status bar.
If you will resize a bitmap brush, select it in the (new) brush stroke gallery, hold down right mouse button, select "copy brush graphics to the clipboard", paste it into your page, resize its height at the size you will for your brush width and then only save it to a new brush.
After that, modify settings to your taste.
Here are some new brushes for free, which I will attach to my second message. As you see, some of them include bitmaps; that explain the weight of the containing .xar file !!!

Enjoy,

iva

[This message was edited by ivan louette on November 03, 2000 at 05:30 PM.]

[ivan louette]

It's helpful to chose points as page units when creating brushes which include bitmaps. Then check the height of the bitmap you chose, (or the size of the bigger one if you select a group) and before creating brush, type this size in the status bar.
If you will resize a bitmap brush, select it in the (new) brush stroke gallery, hold down right mouse button, select "copy brush graphics to the clipboard", paste it into your page, resize its height at the size you will for your brush width and then only save it to a new brush.
After that, modify settings to your taste.
Here are some new brushes for free, which I will attach to my second message. As you see, some of them include bitmaps; that explain the weight of the containing .xar file !!!

Enjoy,

iva

[This message was edited by ivan louette on November 03, 2000 at 05:30 PM.]

[ivan louette]

...into a .xar file !!!

ivan

[Egg Bramhill]

Ivan

I see your having as much fun with this tool as I am. It can be frustrating at times, but is'nt it great to have a really usefull tool to explore.

Egg

[michaelward]

I was actually quite dissapointed at first with Xara X. I mean, the new tools are OK I suppose, but I saw nothing really special to appease my appetite over the long wait we've had to endure.

However, I had missed the custom brushes thingy. WOW... now this is a tool I can play with. This could make such a difference in my design work... I took me about three weeks to notice that it was there. I'm glad I spotted it sooner rather than later. Xara have added a really great tool and I'm sure to take much inspiration from the examples on this site.



http://www.cashflowstore.com/temp/sig.gif



<img="http://www.cashflowstore.com/temp/sig.gif">

[ivan louette]

(Yes, Egg, I have allways time for Xara X !!!)

1° Before converting the bitmaps to a brush, convert them to editable shapes, go to fill tool and selects "single tile" in the info bar.
2° After converting to a brush, go to brushes dialog box, check "fill properties" and deselect "tile fills" if you will keep the positionning of your original objects.
3° After that it will be possible to resize your brush interactively, but some settings (like spacing) don't follow (a) and they must be adapted (b) (but so easily!) into brushes dialog box.
Nevertheless if you don't deselect "tile fills" at the step 2°, or if you select "repeating tile" or "repeat inverted" at step 1°, you may appreciate and use the resulting special tiling effects !!! It is even possible to obtain oriented quadrangles with oriented tilings (c) if you deselect "tile fills" and select "rotate along path" at step 2°

Thus interactivity may be ameliorated to preserve your settings when scaling but this is a splendidly configurable tool !!!
Have much use of it !!!

iva

[This message was edited by ivan louette on November 04, 2000 at 07:23 AM.]

[Mark Goodall]

Ivan

These images are superb, I particularly like the washed/blurred look of some of the edges of these brush strokes, you are giving us more ideas here back at Xara. One thing you might like to try as well is the use of irregular shaped brushes,with irregular fills and transparencies, combined with a random rotation setting in the edit brush dialogue, this gives a nice varying irregular edge to the strokes.

Mark Goodall
Xara Ltd

[ivan louette]

I will certainly try !!!
But for today I have other ideas for shadows. I will send them in some hours.

Friendly yours,
ivan