Ball with Extrude tool

[csehz]

Hi, I would like to ask that is there maybe some best practice to extrude a ball? I assume from a circle for example?

Basically I have seen the method that drawing a circle, putting on it with Fill tool circular fill, after a shadow, that gives a kind of nice ball.

But could the Xara Designer do similiar with simply the 3D Extrude tool?

thanks,

[Antspants]

The 3d extrude will turn the 'circle' to a cylindrical shape. You could experiment with keeping the 3d extrusion flat and messing with the lighting to get effect but I doubt you can improve on the 'known' very simple way of doing this using a circle fill overlayed with a copy that has an elliptical transparrency.

This is only based on my own experiences, see if anyone else has something to add.

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Hello

Not sure what kind of sphere you want to make.

Here is one made in Xara, though it does not use the Extrude Tool. The advantage to this method is that it is textured...



Peace

James

[ShapeShifter]

The extrude tool is not the best choice for 'balls' (aka: sphere)

You can get close when you manually enter the extrude bevel size as shown. But that's as close as I can get using just an extruded shape.

[csehz]

Thanks very much the answers, so basically it is better to try to create sphere on other way and not with extrude tool.

Sorry for my english yes meant rather sphere than ball, but you understood the point absolutely :-)

thanks,

[slavelle]

Hey there ODdOnLifeItself: Can you detail how you made that sphere?

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Sure, Slavelle

The main elements of creating it can be found in a XaraXhris tutorial. http://www.youtube.com/user/XaraXhri...30/aJNNFYFA9W0

I made some modifications to that idea for the texturing.

I duplicate a bitmap copy of the Blend (so you have a bitmap copy of the blend AND another clone on top) and then use the 3D Bump Map tool to create said bump map and then use that (with the Transparency Tool controlling Brightness) and use the slider to get the right mixture of original sphere vs. bump mapping.

Take care and let me know if you have problems, I'll try to make it easier to understand. There are a few steps involved, but once you've done it a couple of times, it's not difficult at all...

James

[gwpriester]

Chris probably got his technique from one my old Workbooks.

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Sorry, Gary

I wasn't around long enough (apparently) to know the original source.

I notice that this method has varied results. (ie. I haven't found a way that always works and looks right -- often the mapped object tends to get a bit washed out, in order to have an acceptable amount of bump mapping)

For the most part though, it makes objects with a "realistic" texturing... and works great for more than just spheres...

Peace

James

[gwpriester]

Not a problem, James. Chris has done hundreds of really excellent videos and I have learned from his as well.