Native paint bucket tool

[handrawn]

alternatively - why not make a second line drawing in xtreme with no gaps and break it into shapes - this is what I do - usually a lot quicker than moving to another program

sorry if I have mis-understood

that said a paint bucket tool would be very useful if it included automatic gap closing like inkscape does - as Peter says, a much requested feature

[-=Drifter=-]

As far as deleting the lines only and the "shadows" only you can simply put these on their own layers in Xtreme.

[MarkMyWords]

A paintbucket, flood-fill would be great for me too, but it isn't a "must have" for most Xara users, so we are unlikely to get it. Still, no harm in asking.

[Skaven252]

A paintbucket, flood-fill would be great for me too, but it isn't a "must have" for most Xara users

+1 from me too. Hope that helps the cause.

Are you sure it's not a "must have" for many Xara users? After watching Bob Hahn's Youtube video on drawing a cartoon dog head, I just kept asking myself, "why does this user have to spend so many minutes tweaking a fill shape to conform to the head, when he could just create one with a click of a mouse by using a flood fill?"

If you've worked on cartoons, you know that it involves shapes built out of multiple lines (overlapped shapes, protrusions, et al) - which are not always fully encasing an area, sometimes you want to leave a gap for stylization - yet fill this area with color. An Inkscape style paint bucket with gap tolerance would be just fab. Then you wouldn't have to draw again a shape you've already drawn, just to create the fill.

Okay, I know a trick: make a Clone of all those outlines, apply Convert Line to Shape on them, then, Add Shapes, Break Shapes, and you've got yourself a fill shape ("conveniently" hidden in the bottom of the other shapes you can delete). But this only works if the lines form a closed shape. You'll need to slice across the gaps with a pen if you want to fill an opened area. Also, the fill shape created with this trick is only barely touching the inner edges of the oulines, so you may need to expand it a wee bit with Contour (and then do another break shapes, delete excess shapes procedure). All this would be so much faster with a Paint Bucket. Oh yes. (Yes, I am aware of Inkscape. I am also aware of the frustration involved in having to switch between programs)

Don't enough people use Xara for cartooning to justify the development effort?

Actually... what new features are coming up in the future versions of Xara? Where do I need to look to find out, anyone?

[handrawn]

it would save us an awful lot of time - yes

[PixelDust]

I vote for a fill tool, too, or at least the ability to fill unclosed shapes. It wouldn't necessarily have to be a "paint bucket" type tool, although I wouldn't mind that. Having options for gap closing would be nice as well.

If Xara would opt to have unfilled open shapes without creating a specific tool just for that, it might be implemented like:

1. An option in the Options dialog box (which can already stay open as you work)

or

2. A toggle button or checkbox on the Info Bar that appears when using the Shape Editor, Pencil, or Pen tools to let you choose to fill or not as you go. The fill/not fill option could even be assigned to a keystroke.

I do cartooning in Xara too, and I agree with Handrawn... this would be a real time saver.

[Xhris]

This may help some people. Using a workaround, you can create static (non-dynamic) filling of open regions in Xara. The video below demonstrates this. A live fill tool would be nice though.

[Skaven252]

Related to the open, filled shapes trick, here's another trick: if you fill your open paths with white (black outlines), you can use the open filled paths to create protrusions and overlapped shapes. Then group the lines together, and switch their Transparency mode to "Stained Glass". Then create your fill shape and place it behind the grouped outline object.

This allows you to use a single color fill shape - combined with open filled paths to create overlapping shapes. But it only works with black outlines and white fill, as otherwise Stained Glass gives a translucent effect.

Here, this is what I mean: