Was doing a tech diagram for a client today and had to show overlap in several lines. Then the penny dropped on how to do it with a new feature of Designer 6. The opacity mask of course!
Hope it helps someone.
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Was doing a tech diagram for a client today and had to show overlap in several lines. Then the penny dropped on how to do it with a new feature of Designer 6. The opacity mask of course!
Hope it helps someone.
Very clever use of the opacity mask!
OT: There is a thread in the Xara Art Gallery to say Good bye to Bill and Egg you may want to stop by and wish them well.
Thanks simple yet effective and it does give a answer to how the new Designer Logo was created!
Gary - Next workbook idea - re-creating the Designer Logo!!!!
That would make a great workbook. Perhaps though you might consider sending Gary a PM with this idea. We may not be seeing much of him on TG for a few days
Gary's not going anywhere and all the rage about the moderator issue is getting really old real quick. Can we just get back to Xara stuff please.
I never said Gary was going anywhere. I was under the impression that he was taking a few days away from the forums.
Oh so you did - sorry!
Fast and easy!
Excellent technique - even my attempt looked good. Cheers!
haha, you beat me to it. :) I was planning on posting about this tonight and making a video if I get time. I've attached the files I made. OMs are excellent.
Nicely done JaffDave.
Being more dumb than most, I have been struggling to find a use for this feature, but looking at this, a slight tingling in the back of my brain might be signalling that the penny is about to drop.
Or it could be too much caffeine.
Hey, now that's an awesome use for OM's! I think you just sparked a few ideas over here, thanks!
Better late than never if it helps show how I made the rings I attached earlier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zatIzMlfLg
Thanks, but is it just me? I tend to use the menus to do things not the short cuts and so I don't know what the short cuts do. Would it be possible for someone to make some tutorials using the menus?
Thanks
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xhris
Ah yes, I do make that mistake sometimes and use shortcuts too much (it's a lot quicker once you know what they do). Sorry about that. I will try adding annotations in YT to compensate.Quote:
Originally Posted by gracehjs
Is O supposed to be the shortcut to apply an Opacity Mask or is that just one that you set up?
I remember some discussion about it before so I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be the default but wasn't, or what.
Regardless it's a pretty handy shortcut which I've gotten pretty used to already with all my playing around. I was just curious.
It was omitted accidentally from download release, but is default in CD release. For the time being you can set it up as a keyboard shortcut using the shortcuts utility. There's more info in the video description. Then OMs work just like clipviews' Q, and it's really convenient! :)
Ahh there we go, thank you! I figured I was probably missing something. I was watching the videos with a squirming puppy in my lap so I was probably not as thorough as I could have been. :)
I have set up that shortcut manually since it's pretty handy and easy to remember (even for a gravy brain like me). Thanks for the clarification!
Would you happen to know if that means they've also added 'remove OM" to the menu, similar to remove clip view, or do we still have to select the mask and ungroup it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Xhris
Hi, there is a detach command (Alt+o) (which again is not set as default in the d/l release, but is in the CD release, so you'll have to manually assign it). Interestingly though, 'detach OM' does the same thing as ungroup. Only clipviews are the anomaly to this rule of separating compound objects, but this could change in future versions to be consistent. So 'o' to apply the OM, and ungroup to remove it. I don't think there is a command on the menu yet to detach an OM unfortunately, like there is with clipviews, but I know Xara are aware. Personally, I rarely use menu commands and have gotten quite good at keyboard shortcuts over time--much quicker. :) Once I learned (except for clipviews at the moment) that ungroup just separates out a compound object (e.g. an OM group, photogroup, normal group, [soft groups are special] etc.), I found it less to remember.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonylondon
Thanks Xhris. I wonder if there is a logical reason why the modifying object sits below the modified object in Clipview and above the modified object when creating a mask. Not that it matters very much.
They don't work 'just' like clipviews, as I pointed out in another thread. You can also apply an OM to a bunch of objects at once, be they vector or bitmap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xhris
Yeah, that's a good point about applying OM to multiple objects. If you paste as an OM on a selection of objects, then the paste operation groups automatically for you before applying the OM. Otherwise you would have to group the objects manually so they became the backmost object and then apply OM in the usual way with 'o' just like clipviews with 'q'. Depending on what is getting the OM applied to it (i.e. just 1 or many objects), pasting an OM can sometimes be a little bit quicker in the latter case as it bypasses the need to group.
Xhris,
pressing "o" doesn“t apply any opacity mask. That“s something you have configured manually. It“s not a default keystroke.
It will be a default keystroke in the CD, it just wasn't set in the download version.
I did these using cut piece from each ring and used subtract of the cut piece and the ring below to get a reasonable result.
Great, simple and elegant.