When Are We Getting A Mesh Paint Tool?

[ss-kalm]

Eobet: Drop the colour on the gradient arrow at the location you want to see it.

[Albacore]

As a user of Illy and Xara I feel I can contribute to this dicussion when it comes to the Mesh Tool now I am only making points between the using it in Illy and not using it in Xara.

Firstly I do many face portraits in both programme I have used Illy's mexh tool in about five now, and find it difficult to use if you don't have a picture to trace and copy from. To use it from a sketch is very difficult as I have to think of the finished drawing before I am ready to think that and I find that hard to visualise or I continually go back to the mesh tool to add more gradient lines to the vertical and horizontal axis. Each time I do this I also have to think about the colour as well adding or reducing the lines in that area and that can be very hard to do around the eyes.

To use Xara from a sketch is easy and we have been very lucky here as one of Xara's top user was kind enough to download and example of his work to see how he did it (unshaven is the name of the drawing). Now I have copied this style of drawing many times to get the effect I want and I would not call this a work around it is a style of drawing which can be used in any vector programme. This method is fast easy to use and you can work in one area at a time and build up your drawing quickly and you can see the drawing develop.

Now one of the main Illustrator sites on the web is Illustrator World where you can upload your portfolio or just single drawings. If you look at the drawings on this site there are very few which use the mesh tool. If you look on the net and the tutorials for Illy you can count the number of Mesh Tools nearly on one hand while other methods for the same techniques are many. The one time I found the Mesh Tool easier to use than transparencies was when drawing a simple shape of a tomato when I had the object in front of me and it did not move.

Like all these threads each person has their own priorities for the programme and I doubt if there would be consensus on any new tool. I would like to say that it would not be my first choice or even second choice for development in Xara and I don't think it worth while now to state what are my top choice are.

[Egg Bramhill]

eobet,

As Keith said it's very easy and has been part of Xara for years. Applying the transparency separately is far better than at the same time.

[handrawn]

Egg

I'm not exactly sure what eobet views the transparency issue as - but from my point of view it would be to have a multicolor gradient, and then be able to apply transparency to one color element, and that color element only. This easy to do in inksacpe, because alpha is a color attribute.

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes Steve. Flash has this abilty too. It's not one of my favourite features but it would be nice to have as an alternative.

[ss-kalm]

Egg

I'm not exactly sure what eobet views the transparency issue as - but from my point of view it would be to have a multicolor gradient, and then be able to apply transparency to one color element, and that color element only. This easy to do in inksacpe, because alpha is a color attribute.

That's the way I read it too Steve. Just as a matter of interest, you can also drop the "no colour" icon onto the gradient path. I hoped this would actually give no colour, but it appears just to give white for some unknown reason. It may be a simple job for it to actually be set to give transparent, not sure if that is what Eobet required.

[handrawn]

Keith

thing is - xara defines color in RGB with no alpha channel - so it cannot give 'no color' as a color and therefore it gives white when you do this

this is different from applying transparency to an object because objects do have an alpha channel

[Egg Bramhill]

My apologies eobet. I see the light.

Done in Flash

[handrawn]

... nice

[Egg Bramhill]

You can get the same effect in XXP but not quite as easily.