water ripples and swilrs using filters in xara designer

[handrawn]

the mehdi vibrations and melt can be downloaded from mehdi site [free]: www.mehdiplugins.com




I'm sure most of the time you can get away without making bitmap copies between each live effect, but I like to do it ever since I made a really great sea-monster, saved the xar file, but when I came to re-open it, the last few effects were not re-created, the work was lost.. - it had rendered in the work file right up to save, but the file saving/opening was unable to deal with it..

[zaphodeist]

Did you lock the effect?

[handrawn]

that would certainly be a possible cause - some plugins they lock themselves whether you like it or not and you can't unlock them... making a bitmap copy is quick and as secure as it gets and can cut down on the redraw time as well...

[zaphodeist]

I set DP9 to lock them by default, used to have loads of of stress waiting for redrawing

[handrawn]

I guess I really ought to investigate whether locking them is the problem or a solution to the issue I had - I am not actually sure..

[handrawn]

dang hit submit too soon again...

thing is a lot of plugins I use you can't edit them - going back to the bitmap copy is also a quick way of starting again without any undo time... not saying it's a panacea just I got into that habit

[zaphodeist]

Well, they don't need to be unlocked to edit remember

[zaphodeist]

Yeh, the way one is used to doing it is a hard habit to break It's just that using a bitmap means having to go through the whole process if you want things changed, with the locking method you just click edit ... most of them work that way, not all I grant you, Akvis plug-ins need a re-do for instance

[handrawn]

if they allow re-editing - mehdi vibrations is locked like it or not, can't unlock it...

I have assumed that putting a new filter on a locked effect may some times not work at the saving/opening stage because the filter says - 'no I am locked you are not going to change me' even if it renders before save in a 'temporary' state

now I may be wrong.. but bitmap copies have so far not let me down - and you need to make them for tracing and stuff... gets to be second nature to me...