**Call For NEW BRUSHES**

Having recently revised my brush tutorial, I thought this would be a good opportunity to see if people wanted to create some new Xara brushes. If people wanted to design some new original brushes and post them to this thread, over the coming weeks, I will sift through them, and select the very best brushes, and create a "community collection" xar file containing them all.

Perhaps we could aim for 1st October 2007 as the date to make some by? I will also include the handful I have created already for what was going to become a sequel brush collection. To help inspire creativity, check out the brush collection I made a while ago and also check out the great Swap Shop brushes.

Categories to consider:
Seasonal themes (Xmas, Easter, Halloween, Bonfire Night, July 4th, New year, other cultural holidays).
Nature
School
Holiday
Work
Abstract
etc...

Visit also our great Brushes forum here at talkgraphics.com together with the amazing A-Z Index with a thumbnail for each brush, done by Christine.

Remi

It's a shame there isn't an indexed search function available in Xara to help select them, like there is for clipart.

Xhris,

I found that brushes slow down Xtreme loading, so I would offer a word of caution to folks with older computers before putting 9Mbs of brushes into the './templates/brushes' folder.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Xhris,

I found that brushes slow down Xtreme loading, so I would offer a word of caution to folks with older computers before putting 9Mbs of brushes into the './templates/brushes' folder.

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True, large xar files can slow loading down by a few seconds. You might only want some brushes (alphabetised wonderfully in the Swap Shop). You could make a single xar file containing your favourites and put that in the /brushes folder.

You do not have permission to post brushes created by me on your website - please remove them.

Christine

I found it slowed down the loading quite dramatically a few years back when brushes were first added. I don't know if they've improved it in later releases. I just keep my favourite brushes in a "brushes" folder and open that xar file when and only when I need it, copy the brush and paste it into the xar file I'm working on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

I found it slowed down the loading quite dramatically a few years back when brushes were first added. I don't know if they've improved it in later releases. I just keep my favourite brushes in a "brushes" folder and open that xar file when and only when I need it, copy the brush and paste it into the xar file I'm working on.

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I don't think it's been sped up; it's essentially loading a xar file at startup, and bigger files will always likely take a longer time to load. I'm not sure which are my favourites yet; there are so many good ones.

Can't you just create a brush folder in the clipart gallery and drag and drop an object with the brush you want into your open doc?

It gets around the need to load large xar files, but for best results each brush has to be saved separately.

Hmm...having tested this, it does work, except I seem to be losing the colour of each brush?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Xhris,

I found that brushes slow down Xtreme loading, so I would offer a word of caution to folks with older computers before putting 9Mbs of brushes into the './templates/brushes' folder.

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It does and as a fix I keep all the brushes in a seperate file and when there is something I need I just open the one I want at that time. It really cuts down that lag time. :)

I have written this reply twice and I am not sure if this time I have got it right the third time. My big dislike of any version of Xara its it's brushes, now I call myself a fairly experience user and I still struggle with brushes. I would love brushes that do the same as Illy's brushes do, you pick the style, pick the colour and the job is done. Now what do we get when we try to pick a certain style of brush were are stuck with the colour or we have to jump through hoops to change it, why not go the way of Illy and leave the bitmapped way and make it vector? I know Chris has done a huge amount trying to get us us to a better understanding of brushes but is that enough, he has produced a comprehensive array of brushes and shown us how to use them but I still think this area is one of the weakest in the whole programme and I find it hard to support this thread. I would love to see an expansion in this area and have the programme that will allow most any type and age of computer to allow brushes to be used without slowing or crashing the computer.

I like many user her like to scan in my pencil or ink drawings in with the ability at the end to get the flow and the appeal of my line drawing on paper onto the screen but that is hard at the moment to replicate that affect and that is not including the Wacom users that use your software who must really be frustrated. I know it is not the time for more requests when a new version is out but this is an area where Xara looses out big time to other vector software. If anyone can tell me away to load a brush up, click on a line and weight, colour and the line color will be as specified I will be an extremely happy bunny but till then having the top spec in brushes will be not a waste of time, but limiting the user to the colour that the brush was developed in, or near enough. I am sorry to be a downer on an important topic like this!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Albacore

I have written this reply twice and I am not sure if this time I have got it right the third time. My big dislike of any version of Xara its it's brushes, now I call myself a fairly experience user and I still struggle with brushes. I would love brushes that do the same as Illy's brushes do, you pick the style, pick the colour and the job is done. Now what do we get when we try to pick a certain style of brush were are stuck with the colour or we have to jump through hoops to change it, why not go the way of Illy and leave the bitmapped way and make it vector? I know Chris has done a huge amount trying to get us us to a better understanding of brushes but is that enough, he has produced a comprehensive array of brushes and shown us how to use them but I still think this area is one of the weakest in the whole programme and I find it hard to support this thread. I would love to see an expansion in this area and have the programme that will allow most any type and age of computer to allow brushes to be used without slowing or crashing the computer.

I like many user her like to scan in my pencil or ink drawings in with the ability at the end to get the flow and the appeal of my line drawing on paper onto the screen but that is hard at the moment to replicate that affect and that is not including the Wacom users that use your software who must really be frustrated. I know it is not the time for more requests when a new version is out but this is an area where Xara looses out big time to other vector software. If anyone can tell me away to load a brush up, click on a line and weight, colour and the line color will be as specified I will be an extremely happy bunny but till then having the top spec in brushes will be not a waste of time, but limiting the user to the colour that the brush was developed in, or near enough. I am sorry to be a downer on an important topic like this!

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The brush engine in some other drawing programs is based on skeletal stroking. Namely, a vector object/group is mapped (stretched out) along a line stroke. Xara's brush engine uses a sequence of objects to generate the brush (some softwares do this too). As you say, it currently has a number of issues that prevent 'painting', namely, the famous can't change colour/change subtle shades/variations with each stroke; and because it's drawing many objects, even with caching, things can slow down. It's just not practical to paint at the moment. However, I remember reading somewhere that skeletal stroking is on the list of things to add. Even when it eventually arrives, to remain backwards compatible, the old brush engine must remain. I suspect in future, the current brush engine will be improved to make it practical to use, and skeletal stroking will be added. I'm guessing we'll see these things within one or two major updates to Xtreme - 1-3 years?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Albacore

...My big dislike of any version of Xara its it's brushes, now I call myself a fairly experience user and I still struggle with brushes...

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Seconded. Also, a brush that varied its width according to tablet pressure would be a *fantastic* addition.

meanwhile we have E3 for skeletal brushes, which import into xara pro ok in pdf format :)

good news if xara is to get these idc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by David O'Neil

Seconded. Also, a brush that varied its width according to tablet pressure would be a *fantastic* addition.

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Draw-direction according to pen angle technology is available too now, and used in some applications, would be good for the current engine.