advanced perfume bottles & technique

[grenadi]

Hello! My first Post!

I am a student of graphics. My Dip of Design is based around Adobe Indesign. However, as someone who is serious about a design career, I have bought other programs like Illustrator. This week I tried the Xara Xtreme Pro 4 Trial. It blew me away! On my duo core PC it IS so much quicker than illustrator at the 3D effects. It's also much more intuitive.

After about 1 hr of use and looking at the movies [which, like this forum, are nicely linked to help in the menu unlike Adobe's totally unfriendly set-up] , I created a 3D perfume bottle really easily. I put in a glassy effect with the transparency, and made the bottle into a complex 3D shape. Then I added 3D text to the bottle with a shadow cast by the letters.

Now, this is all fantastic. It surpasses my craziest imagination that I could make something so good and complex after using Xara Xtreme 4 pro for 1 hr.

To strive for something even better I ask this: on my perfume bottle the label's letters look a bit flat rather than following the curve of the bottle. I mean, in a real bottle the letters to the most left and right would look a little fainter, and the ones in the middle subtly sharper, unless you introduced a new lighting effect.

So, how do I curve my letters subtly to match the curve of the bottle that they're on?

[masque]

Hi.
There is a distinct lack of perfume bottles to look at, but as regards your question, the mould tool is the one to go for. You might need a little practice but its fairly intuitive, watch the movie in help or on the xara website, and of course adjustments are instant so you can see what you are doing and adjust until you have it right.
Derek

[grenadi]

The distinct lack of perfume bottles is noted!

If it's possible, how could I put the bottle pic in this thread? It is quite a small pic with not many MB. [prob about 100 KB]

Hmm..mould tool...I haven't got into that one yet! Can't wait!

[steve.ledger]

Welcome to TG.

If it's possible, how could I put the bottle pic in this thread? It is quite a small pic with not many MB. [prob about 100 KB]

Please read : A quick guide to posting on the forums.

[grenadi]

This should be the right one.

[grenadi]

Yes. That's it.

Made up the label name BTW.

Letters could curve with the bottle a touch more.

[gwpriester]

Welcome to the Xtreme Conference grenadi.

Glad you have discovered what a lot of us have known for a long time. Xtreme runs circles around Illustrator and has much better transparency options than Illustrator. Illustrator is an excellent program. But in terms of results, we prefer Xtreme.

I deleted your two posts with the wrong image. We'll leave the Batman stuff to soquili.

Gary

[Sammy]

Grenadi : Welcome to the TG Forum and especially to Xara. You'll soon find how versatile and easy it is.

Since one can't have too many perfume bottles, here is another

Sammy

[raynerj1]

Nice Perfume Bottle there Sammy.

[grenadi]

That's amazing! So realistic!

With Xara I feel for the first time that I see a tool that can produce professional effects as seen in published work.