Tracing / bevel and contour tool

[Egg Bramhill]

I've been messing around with traced images and then applying effects using the bevel and contour tools. I particularly like the effect gained with the bevel tool. It gives the image a mosaic effect.
Give it a try. The image attached is a jpg at 50% compression to keep file size down, so it does'nt really do the final effect justice
Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

I've been messing around with traced images and then applying effects using the bevel and contour tools. I particularly like the effect gained with the bevel tool. It gives the image a mosaic effect.
Give it a try. The image attached is a jpg at 50% compression to keep file size down, so it does'nt really do the final effect justice
Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

.

[tad]

Terrific !!! The bitmap tracer is now expanded ! And, of course, the question is how many shapes in these birds and how long do they take to "render", or save, or open.
Wonderful, wonderful,,,,,,,,,Tad..... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[This message was edited by Tad Bridenthal on January 21, 2001 at 09:53 PM.]

[Egg Bramhill]

Thanks Tad. It did'nt take to long at all. The tracing was almost instantanious and the bevel took only 30 to 60 sec's. (p133 132mb ram)
See Gallery for another image.
Egg

[tad]

Ok, here are some more numbers: Using a mere 11,000 shapes on a PIII500 w/256ram :: Render bevel, under 4min; Save file, under 5min; Open file, under 5min; PRINT IMAGE,,,Well,,after 10min the progress bar said 3%, so I blew it away.
HOWEVER, export 11.2meg Tiff :: 4min. ......cool, prints fast.
Never a dull moment...........Regards,,,,,Tad...
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi again Tad. Yes I've just done another image which I've posted in the Gallery (marine image). This time I increased the minimum size to 2. The vector had 8000+ shapes and it had steam coming out of my poor old PC. The saving of the Xara file took an enternity, and another eternity when I closed the window. (reckon this was the "swap" memory file thrashing about).
But what the heck, it's a great toy!
Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

I tried it with a flower this time but added shadows. During the export I lit a cigarette and smoked it during the wait. I'm not even going to save the file.

[Luciano]

To Tad,

I found that printing time can be widely reduced if you enable "Never smooth bitmaps" in Utility/Options/View, before printing.

It doesn't even degrade printing quality, given the resolution of inkjet printers.

Ciao
Luciano

[Egg Bramhill]

This one is of a photograph of my son in laws Yamaha. (I'm very worried about those pink wheels!). They are the same tracing but this first one has a bevel of 3 pixels. It gives the impression of being produced by applying very thick oil paint or a tapestry made with thick wool.
The second one is exactly the same but the bevels are now only 1 pixel. I think this gives a flatter effect as tho it was done with a palette knife.
There were 6000 objects in this drawing (traced with about 8 setting in the minimum area) and it was sloooow. It crashed my computer twice, but I like the effect.
I think your correct Ross with regard to the texturing of areas that are large. I think you would have to select these large area, clone them, apply a fill and give them a transparency. The problem there is that your increasing the number of shapes to bevel. I got around this problem by removing the background (ie sky) which tends to give these large area's. With this technique I'm running at the limit of my system. I'm drinking too many beers and smoking to many ciggy's waiting for things to happen. (not a Xara feature that were used to!)
I'm afraid the images are a bit large but I could'nt wait for them to reduce size.
Egg