September 2013 Tips and Tricks: Creating a Space Beacon!

[stygg2003]

Stygg thanks in advance, yes sure would be interested in, as I count on a dark green rectangle maybe two surface with fractal transparency with different colours, plus maybe a slight linear transparency, that would be the toxic fluid :-) But of course that is just a tip

You got it just about right csehz but uploaded the xar file for you to pull apart
and see for yourself

Stygg

[csehz]

Stygg thanks, so the analyse of that green poison fluid that a linear filled rectangle + fractal clouds fill with fractal clouds transparency, and wanted to mention but rather just felt was not sure that there are some gas also above the fluid So that seems which Gare mentioned fractal clouds for the stars, when the beacons did not land yet, so that is with elliptical bleach transparency on the right side. That gives some really plus to it, concretely some gas

Good one, I learnt from it, as rarely used to apply fractal cloud fills, more often rather the fractal plasma, but so there are ideas also with the fractal clouds. I know that this was your topic on XaraXone once, you are strong in this

[stygg2003]

Glad you enjoyed csehz, yes I did put in some extra "gas" as I did in the sky. I don't know if you noticed that in the sky makeup there are two white fluffy clouds? These are clouds you can make yourself by cutting from a cloud photo and using a technique that gives a really good cloud you can use anywhere. This is a technique Gary shown us in his micro-tutorial "Clouds to Go" It's really worth looking at as it is a good technique to know and have.

Stygg

[csehz]

Yes of course has seen the clouds and also aware of that tutorial, but probably that is my personal preferation not liking too much photo bitmaps. More like if there is some 'logic' and that gives complexity to the drawing. But maybe my english will fail again to explain that expression.

Anyway the sky also good looking, but one thing seems new for me, this sky rectangle is a group? Is that intended and some technique?



Because ungrouping it, the strange is that it is a single rectangle, slightly different



And I think I understood the target of that.. So you made a fractal clouds fill + fractal plasma transparent rectangle, grouped it, and with that got an additional opportunity to do a transparency on that same single object, because group can have individual transparency, and that is an applied linear transparency. Acha, maybe that is evidence and the answer will be that Zsolt welcome in the club everyone knows this, well I did not Good one really

[stygg2003]

Csehz you got it pretty much right but if you look at the bottom rectangle in the sky you will see it's an opacity mask with linear trans. The top rectangle a fractal clouds with a linear trans. I did this because it gives me endless combinations of colours and fractal fills with just these two rectangles.

If I leave the fractal cloud fill and colour as it is but want a change in the back ground, I can change the opacity mask colour and trans. if I want and it makes a big difference, or I can change both, the opacity mask and the fractal cloud colours. I have done this in this image, exactly the same image as the file I posted to you but you can see the difference yes? And just for interest sake if you put a black rectangle at the back of the entire image, you get some really nice effects. You can change this rectangle colour to any you want and the type of fill, linear, circular etc. Try it on the sky xar file I posted.

Sorry to be so long winded but I thought I'd explain the reasons why I made the image this way. Endless different skies

Stygg

[csehz]

Thanks Stygg for the explanation, yes I can see the whole composition is transparent at the sky because of the opacity mask, because putting behind a yellow rectangle that shines through



Anyway why exactly opacity mask that is? Could not be a normal rectangle with linear transparency?

[Gare]

Actually, Stygg and csehz, I got good sky effects before the Opacity Mask feature was added to Xara, just by using fractals and transparencies along withe fractals.




It might be the long way to do things today, but csehz, I think you can still get the effect you might want using a linear transparency.

My Best,

Gary

...and this is getting very O/T!

[csehz]

Gare yes you are right just as we landed on the planet, the topic became a little bit planet related

So let's jump back to the stars, as I am also thinking on that method which you mentioned in point 1 in the tutorial. So white bitmap, noise, blur, levels, contrast, create bitmap, levels again, threshold live effect and that really gives some stars arranged points for me and the whole from Xara



Which I left out the You then make the black areas white and vice versa using the Color Editor’s Light and Dark Contone feature., there I lost in the space and immediately added the threshold. Basically what is the target the making black areas white and vice versa before of the threshold filter?

[Gare]

Basically what is the target the making black areas white and vice versa before of the threshold filter?

I think it is "experimentation"; "hit or miss" is the slang used in English. Seriously, I cannot recommend a value because there are so many steps and factors that result in a value that cannot be known beforehand.

You need to experiment. And truthfully, this the Xara way to make stars, but is also more complicated than using, say, MS Paint or other bitmap program that has a splatter brush, make some strokes and then bitmap trace the result, and rearrange the resulting shapes until the sky pleases you.

Some of the Filter Forge free plug-ins for Xara might even contain a starfield, I'm not certain.

My best,

Gary

[csehz]

Gary thanks, this method anyway quite fast in summary and all in Xara which is itself good. Sounds also alternative how to make bigger shaped unregular noises on a surface, which was discussed in one of the Photostrator challenges on TG (condition is only in Xara) and rather seems was done as brush. That is why my stars on the before scene were brush as felt more comfortable with that

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...graphics/page2