Vase

[TwidderBird]

Seagull, while you are amusing, you sound like you have bubble-gum in your feathers

now, Egg, I just glanced at what you had me download. Seagull might be all in a tuft, but I thankyou very, very, VERY much for what I downloaded. I won't be as quick as Seagull in getting it, but it certainly provides other ways of experimenting (and probably easier methods than what I've been trying). I assume these are methods you have learned and used yourself (?)
nance

[Seagull]

Oh, you're good this morning Nance...a tuft, feathers....great play on words. And you know seagulls, anything on the ground is fair game so I very well may have gum in the old feathers.

What happened yesterday was that both Xara and the forum were open and I was playing with the vases in xara at the same time I was writting. Actually, I opened the vases in the morning, left them while working in the yard, played with them a bit at lunch, started working again, got a call which egg can relate to, not a nice one at all I will mention, a rescue that ended up as a recovery) got home and started playing with the vases again to unwind and ended up writting a few seconds before I started to see the light. I realized at the time that the best solution was just to delete the post but I decided to post anyway so others could follow the illogical logic I was using and get the same results in a more efficient manner.

Don't you love what egg did with the blend tool? I have used it occassionly to make 3d, but always going from front to back, played morfing stars to circles and here is egg using it to blend colours in the front of an image to create 3d. That's why I'm here, waiting for the leaders to open the doors to new ideas while us flunkys get to drag the heavy boxes through the door. The tutorials in the xone are absolutly great but they are all written by Gary who thinks as Gary, while Egg thinks like Egg and the Twiddler thinks like the Twiddler. You all take different approaches, see beauty in different places and I am open to you all your ideas.....bet you egg wouldn't have thought of "tuft"....your up there with the best of them Nance...no splat award for you this morning.

[TwidderBird]

Seagull, you are a very noisey seagull. it's a challenge for me to follow what you say nevertheless, I did profit from your l o n g chirade in post #20

Egg your examples are really helpful and, well REALLY helpful. I was even able to take them apart(surprise face) thankyou one more time

by the way--others have made this mistake--my uzer name is TWIDDER not twiddLer. it was intended as a take on 'tweetybird'--twidderbird. but I'm thinking I should've chosen sumthung else

and I certainly DON'T feel comfortable to be put in the same category as Egg and Gary. this is the first time I'm attempting Xtreme gradients, blends, and transparancies...so as you can see senior member only means I reached a certain # of posts (I think?)--not that I know what I'm doing
nance
oh --thanks for the 'no splat zone' tho-- appreciate that

[Seagull]

Hey, I just discovered something here. Egg included instructions with the download. Unfortunatly I only just now found them when I zoomed out for an overall picture. It's the silly screen resolution thing again. I am trying to create the first of the two vases and for some reason my blend is not working like egg's. Will keep on trying

[Egg Bramhill]

Seagull

Blends can give strange effects. The main one being caused by having more or less nodes in 1 shape than the other.

So the first thing to do is to create a blend between shapes with an equal number of nodes.

Secondly, Xara doesn't know which nodes to blend to each other. However it does show you, showing a line between the outer shape and the inner shape, indicating what outer node is linked to what inner node.

You can reset this using the Blend tool, by just dragging from any outer node to a matching node on the inner shape.

I attach a xar file hopefully explaining this a bit better. (in full 800 x 600 pixel screen size).

[Seagull]

First thing I did was to zoom out just to make sure you weren't hiding any instructions outside of my vision field, just so I wouldn't embarrass myself a second time. Then I started playing, very roughly of course since this is my nature, and found out that one important feature in doing this is to remove the outline. I do believe that the strange results in the first effort was caused by not having the same amount of nodes, since both the shapes were drawn seperatly. I was thinking the fault might have been because I converted both shapes to editable shapes to manipulate them, but maybe not. I have been playing with this all day between gardening and another call today. Two rescue / recovery jobs in two days, three in three weeks, emphasis on recovery on all three....this is not supposed to happen to volunteer firemen. This is where xara comes in great, I just open it and play, sometimes not even looking at what I'm doing, just unwinding. Now, I can blend as I unwind thanks to you, or draw bubbles, little mindless pursuits that get deleted when I am ready to leave the computer. And one of these days I hope to create your drinking glass, and if I do I guarantee I will post it making sure you get all the credit. Good night now and thanks for all the help.

[Seagull]

START TO FINISH

Practiced last night before going to bed, then opened the computer this morning and did this in about 5 minutes, give or take one. 5 minutes qualifies as a doodle. Thanks for the help egg and thank you for the new idea nance.......was starting to get tired of bubbles I was. Oh, and getting back to the original thread, notice nance.....no black line...heh heh heh (that's a smug snicker in case you missed it cause I'm feeling good this morning)

[Egg Bramhill]

Glad to have helped Frank.
Remember you can always select either shape in a blend (best go to wireframe then Ctrl+Click to select either shape). Now you can drag the whole shape around or more usefully, with the shape editor tool drag individual nodes around and XaraX does lie onscreen updates!

[-=Drifter=-]

Thanks Egg!!! I learned a lot about blends in this thread.

[Seagull]

I really like your effect Bob. It's not a tool, at least I don't think it is, but it has a really stunning affect on me, almost hypnotic. Seems I'm the first ot download the file. I may have to ask you to slow down since my poor old hard drive is start to fill up with all these xara files I'm downloading. They are all filed waiting for a rainy day to play with, once the accounting has been brought up to date, stupid stuff gets the priority on rainy days