June 2014 Tips and Tricks - Mixing Extrudes and Shapes to Make Molecules

June 2014 Tips and Tricks - Mixing Extrudes and Shapes to Make Molecules

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Some people use the Extrude tool to make Art. Others use the drawing tools in Xara to make art.

Why not use the two together? This month, Gary Bouton takes you through a detailed exploration of what it takes to draw a molecule, specifically a simple water molecule, like the pros do with modeling programs. Except we’re going to do a spectacular illustration right inside our favorite program that will put a lot of techno-scientific-ultra-cranial types’ work to shame!

Read how and then show us how you build your atomic world here.

This was an inspiring tutorial. As I was working on my water molecule it kind of reminded me of little bugs that we used to call water skeeters when I was a kid. The kind you see on ponds that seem to glide across on top of the water.

Oh, that is absolutely wonderful, Angelize! Water floating on top of water.

It's a modern surrealist endeavor worthy of a thumbs up from Magritte!

See waht you can do to "3D" to ammonia and the other molecule, or do an online search for something that doesn't have 290 atoms.

My Best,

Gary

Wow that is high praise Gary thank you. Here is a very simple one. I've gone from wet to very dry :)

I am using Artworks 2 so no extrude tool or some other newer stuff that became later with Xara versions but I had nothing better to do and wanted to try something as an excercise, so here are the early stages of that last one done with old fashioned manual way.

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Originally Posted by angelize

Wow that is high praise Gary thank you. Here is a very simple one. I've gone from wet to very dry :)

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NaCl...salt, right? Actually, Sodium is a little larger than Chloride, but this Art and not Science :)

I'd love to see some shadows on the beach to complete your visualization. If the atom-spheres have highlights and they rest on a surface, the surface must show a shadow.

But ya got the hang of working with Extrudes and drawing tools, that was the tutorial's gist, and you passed with flying colours.

My Best,

Gary

Well, theinonen, I have to say it's a worthy exercise, and it's possible, but a little harder to draw everything when you have the Extrude tool. But as you say, you're using Artworks.

I must say the Tinkertoy sculpture was a joke, not intended to be taken seriously, but it looked like some of the molecules and I had nothing better to do! Let me help you a little if you're up for it. You need perspective because this is not an isometric (orthographic) image. Here is a wireframe of the sculpture as I created it before rendering, lighting or textures:

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If you'd like only a front-facing spline view, let me know.

Do some molecules, too! They're easier! :)

My Best,

Gary

Ok, here is my molecule then.

I think you did great, theinonen. Nice, original posing of the molecule, unlike the simple one I covered, nice use of what is obviously a hand-drawn drop shadow.

Did you use any of the techniques described in the tutorial?

-g

I used techniques on tutorial in a conceptual way modified to suit for the tools I have.

Artworks has no extrude tool and you can not use more than 2 colours in graduated/radial fill, only colour to colour and not possible to add more points for variation. So I cheated and used image composition program for the fine details and as it accepts vector images and even automatically does masking, it actually works very well together with vector software and even extends it.

Those plastic highlights are actually white colour blocks on black background combined with screen blending mode to parts of the molecule. Additional shading can be done with tinting using required blendmode and targeted to right parts of the image using tint-mask. I can not claim credit for the drop shadow either as it is automatically generated with shadow tool and shadow-mask is taken from the blend-mask. If needed that mask can be modified, for example blurred if wanted softer shadows.