March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutorial
TalkGraphics' own Bob Taylor AKA imtheblues has contributed this months Xara Xone Tips and Tricks. His tutorial Building a Xara Vector Grunge Effect is a keeper.
You can use this thread to show off your very best grungy, Xara vector artwork that this tutorial has inspired and be sure to thank Bob for his fine work.=D>=D>=D>
Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
A great tutorial Bob, well done. I found it inspiring!
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Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
Thanks, Bob!
Take care, Mike
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Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
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I worked this one to death, and it still isn't very good.
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Looks very interesting Larry.
I noticed this month's Xara Outsider mistakenly attributed Bob's guest tutorial to me.
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I liked some of the effects I was getting with this one. Well Bill, Bob did a very nice tutorial, too bad I struggled with it so hard. I have followed the tutorial as best I can, over and over but always I seem to have problems. The last attempt has been the closest to success, but, I started trying something extra to it and ran into significant problems. I got it done, then used the 3Dtool on it and added a shadow and my poor computer would grind away trying to do what I asked but it took forever. Actually it didn't really want to do what I asked so even trying to add a shadow was a problem, change the trans. of the shadow was a problem, changing colors was a problem, so I am wondering if I need a better graphics card. Would Xara benefit from a dedicated graphics card? This is getting off topic, sorry about that.
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Larry unless things have changed over the past few years Xara uses it's own graphics routines and not those of any hardware. However my information may be badly outdated.
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Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
Here is what I was doing, it caused me so much aggravation that I gave it up before I got it to where I wanted it.
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Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
Larry that looks like a very good start. Where were you wanting to take it?
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Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
Larry—
This might be of some help in reaching your goal, but not exactly the steps Bob offered this month.
1.) Figure out some way to create large, chunky noise. Then blur if if you need to.
2. ) Have Xara auto-trace it.
3. Clean the results up to your taste.
This is essentially what the tutorial is teaching, and Bob has Taylored his steps to make it a goal-oriented series of procedures.
My Best,
Gary
If anyone would like me to post some images of noise, say the word. Here's one to begin with:
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—g
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Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
Thanks for the noise Gary, I've just got round to doing Bob's tut and I also saw G.P's method for grunge, not a lot of difference really and the effects in both are good, that's only my opinion :D Also I found that extruding these grunge effects DP7 was not happy and whitened out a few times so I left the extrudes out and settled for just the shadow.
Stygg
Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
You did good, stygg—the "UberPoint" here is that you use a method provided by Bob or someone else, you modify it to suit your needs, you ultimately add a tool you crafted yourself to your personal toolbox.
Let it be said about grunging up something, that we are appealing to a lesser strength of Xara—dirtying up and distressing something really is the sport of a bitmap editor and not a vector drawing program, at least not aesthetically (all the time) and technically. You choose the right tools for an artistic effect, and the result of 1,000 autotraced pieces of grunge are harder to process than a bitmap of grunge, because the vector math is (unecessarily) complex to comfortably work with what is essentially random noise.
This is not me dissing the use of Xara, not to take away any of the praise I have for Gary P. and Bob sharing their techniques.
I'm saying that with your intelligent eyes wide open, you'll see that this technique is more uphill than painting some noise in a bitmap program.
Then again, you can't extrude bitmap noise...
My Best,
Gary
Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
Gare, I agree that vector noise is probably likely to be a job for a small minority and that bitmaps are generally the way to go. But having said that, occasionally a job comes along where the client insists on vector grunge for perfectly good reasons and that's where this tutorial fits the bill. "Nothing wrong with clean grunge", that's what I say.
Bob.
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Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
Thanks for that Gary, I put the G.P. Jpeg into Zoner Photo Studio, which is free by the way and has lots of useful tools in it and came up with this effect.
Stygg
Re: March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutoria
I'm going to go a little O/T here with a recommendation.
Xara can do a lot of bitmap editing, but it has no brush tool. ArtWeaver comes in a free and a commercial version, and even the freeware comes with effects and Painter-like "Nozzles" and natural media brushes. The results you get can go in and out of Xara quite well, and ArtWeaver is essentially Photoshop version 5 or so. The program can stand on its own and it's a little like what Xara is to vector graphics, ArtWeaver is to bitmaps, that is, the two programs can complement one another in skilled hands.
I've not used Zoner Studio, although I have their 3D blue lens/red lens program and it's very good at what it does.
@ Bob=if you read between my lines, you read correctly. There are a lot of times when nothing will do as a graphic except vectors.
My Best,
Gary