First Image for the New Xara Gallery

Here is the final image from the August Trompe L'Oeil Room Tutorial.

The image was created entirely in Xara X including the sky and clouds.

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Every So Humble...

In my work as an architect I often use Xara to develop illustrations that will help our clients visualize their project. I like to work with building elevations rather than perspectives because the elevations are so much easier. I probably spent about 4hrs on the example below.

-- Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

I use Xara almost exclusively for my web site design work. This is a line drawing of a naval fort positioned approx 10 miles off Harwich (my home town) in the southern North Sea to protect the Thames Estaury. I used this to create an animated gif of its sinking into position, as part of the Harwich Maritime Heritage Trail web site.
Egg

That BMO graphic is really cool? Where are you that you're doing BMO work?

Nathan Heagy
<HR>
Blow Your Beef Away
Cow Comics!

The bank graphic above illustrates a project here in Nova Scotia, Canada. The firm I work for has worked on more than a dozen BOM banks in the last four or five years. All have been in beautiful Nova Scotia.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

Hi Ross,

Here is one of my attmepts. The object shapes were originated in AutoCad then imported into Xara via the CMX format.

A few questions. How did you produce your brick and its texture fill? What method did you use to produce the "wavey" transparency in the upper portion of your drawing? What methods could you suggest for texturing natural areas, ie., grass (I have used the parchment texture but I don't think its all that great).

Thanks for any "light" you can shed.

JClements@Brwncald.com

In response to John...
The brick texture I used in the bank graphic was a bitmap of actual brick. That makes it easy but it does limit you to the selection of bitmapped textures you have available. Thankfully for many textures used in architectural renderings I find that high-resolution textures aren't necessary - often the textures freely available in web clipart collections as background tiles work acceptably.

Sometimes I use wmf imports from autocad to get a line drawing into xara that I can then render. I usually then put the lines from the wmf on a locked but visible layer and then draw filled shapes on other layers. Depending on the graphic effect wanted, I eventually decide if it looks better with the wmf lines layer visible or hidden. With the lines hidden the results are often very similar to what you've achieved with your example.

With regards to the transparency effects used on the brick in the bank graphic: The brick is just a rectangle with a simple bitmap fill. I then applied elliptical transparency to it. It varies from say 50% to 100% transparency. By cloning the rectangle and adjusting the elliptical transparency handles it is quite easy to achieve the "wavey" look with overlapping transparencies.

With regards to your rendering I offer a few humble suggestions to try. I suggest making all the windows a single group and then applying (via cloned and manipulated copies) a highlight or highlights that extends over more than one lite of glass. I'd also suggest being bolder with your shadows - they are your best friend in achieving 3d effects. On the other hand your sky is very bold and the graphic might benifit from making it more subtle. I'd suggest applying a transparency so it fades either up or down.

Anyways, I hope I've been of some help.
Regards, Ross


<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

The attached example was created by scanning a pencil sketch and then "rendering" the bitmap by overlaying a number of transparent shapes. I used the fractal plasma transparency trying to get a watercolour effect. I tried to reinforce the effect with the sky, lettering, and the border.

Using the scanned pencil drawing greatly simplified creating this rendering. All the black lines in the image are the pencil lines.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>