Interweaving vines with 3D text

[BeanPole]

Thanks Gare

I used the bevel tool on the text and it did look much better!

[Gare]

Bevel shapes aren't for "everyday Artwork", but the feature is usefull for dimensionalizing flat art, and it's good for more than simple web buttons.
I used the Rounded 2 preset on the attached piece; it's a seamless tile, BTW. You keep the Contrast down and just play with the options you have.



My Best,

Gary

[dcahall]

Boy am I dense..........I have tried multiple times/ways using the combine shapes process and cannot get the results.

Someone point me to those tutorials because I am sure doing something wrong.

[Gare]

Dave—

This is PlayTime and ExperimentTime, so forget about any goal other than understanding stuff, okay?

Create different colored shapes, 5 will do, and overlap some of them with others.

Go to Window>control Bars, and then in the d'box, check the Arrange bar.

You can do all these functions when you select two or more overlapping shapes, this is from the Help file:

•Add shapes together.
•Or subtract the top shape from the other shapes.
•Or discard parts of other shapes not covered by the top shape.
•Or use the top shape to slice the other shapes

Yeah, you can go to Arrange>Combine shapes, but it's the tedious way to get things done.



It's what I used until he Shapebuilder and Erase were invented and actually I still use Add and subtract almost daily.



-g

[BeanPole]

dcahall,

put the vine to the back,
the next layer is the text,
then you klone the vine, which puts a second on top of the first one, and on top of the text.
then you draw the shape and cover the top layer where you want the vine to remain (over the text), and do the intersect shapes.

What this literally does is totally delete the klone except where you put the shape. Then this mini shape that is over the vine can be edited if necessary by moving and adjusting the nodes.

[BeanPole]

dcahall,

There is a great tutorial on interweaving thread in Graphics Chat section. There is a link to the tutorial named Interlocking Rings. I will try and include it here.

One of Gary Priester's XaraXone workbooks shows how to interweave rings.

http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/workbook10/page_5.htm

[Gare]

Ah.

I'd be remiss at this point to not point out that there are 15 years' worth of tutorials in Xara Xone's archive section.

Xara Xone 1996 through 2011 Archives

Gary Priester pumped the well for a decade and a half.

Gary Bouton is only on Year 2 ("Year II" makes it look classier, doesn't it?)

My Best,
Gary

[dcahall]

OK - I understand the process but am having some weird performance on my laptop. It all seems to stem from using the blend tool on the vine. With a simple line for the vine, placing the line (as an editable shape) here is the process and it works beautifully.

1. Put the vine behind the text
2. Select the text and the vine and hit Ctrl-C to save a copy
3. With both still selected Ctrl-3
4. With the "clipped" portions showing > Arrange - Break Shapes to make the clipped pieces editable
5. Ctrl-Shift-V to paste a copy of the original objects back on the screen
6. With the pasted objects back on the screen, Crtl-B to these objects to the back
7. Now go delete the "clipped" objects you do not want so that the vine appears to go before and behind in the desired areas

Again, this works fine unless I do the blend on the vine. Then my computer just hangs.

[Big Frank]

everybody has made the common error of forgetting that the vine would casts a shadow on the lettering

[BeanPole]

You are right Frank,

However, the shadow of the vine (snake) is more difficult than it would appear, because if you use a shadow on the over part of the vine, you get a chopped up shadow, and if you use a shadow on the back vine, it does not cast the shadow on the front part. HMM!

Perhaps someone has an easier way, but I tried it the long way around and used the shadow on the back vine(snake) and then tried to add a similar shadow on the front part.



Did this work?

Rats! I just thought of a better way! Perhaps if I had added a shadow to both it would have filled in the gaps?