Xara Designer Pro X - Gradient Mesh?

[WilliamHere]

William I use Illy on a regular basis and never really felt the need to use it the Gradient Mesh regularly as I feel it is too unwieldy. Surely it is easier to use transparencies to get the same effect or a quick blend. I did some tuts on it but felt since gradient stroke, the blob brush and using transparencies was much quicker way of achieving the same results. You will find when you get into Pro properly and get the hang of some of the colour functions along with transparency and feathering you will not miss the Mesh Tool at all. Mind you a few members here are calling for this tool.

It's hard to believe that anything else would be better than Illy's gradient mesh tool, but I am looking forward to learning how to use transparencies in XDP to achieve the same results. I always welcome new techniques and ways of doing things, especially if the results are very good and more efficient. Thank you for the tip. I will give it a go and see how it goes.
Are there any good tutorials on illustrating with XDP's transparencies? Any videos?
Thanks!

[mwenz]

William, the better thing would be to pick apart someone's work. Here is a car drawing given by Ron Duke:
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...all&highlight=

And his latest post for the bumper tutorial, which shows what one could do using a gradient mesh, but via transparency.
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...mper-for-a-car

Both of those drawings I would encourage you to examine.

Take care, Mike

[csehz]

Mike thanks for these links, it brings up these great examples from the deep of the forum.

In the second one very interesting for me how smartly used the clip view on a feathered shape

[masque]

Its often said that there are a number of ways to approach most tasks in Xara. If there was a gradient mesh tool that would simply provide another way to do what you can already do and it would be an arguably less effective way of doing it, if my experience is anything to go by.
If it was there it would be another tool in the box but if its not there I don't think that many people would miss it.
Derek