Please, bring back old features in Xara pro

[KIR23]

1. An ability to quickly replace all the same bitmaps on a page with Shift + drag keeping their fill in the same position. Now I can't replace my albedo texture design into normal map one.


2. An ability to feather cropped bitmap edges WITHOUT feathering its alpha, so only edges are feathering not translucent pixels


I am using Xara for creating game textures and interfaces since version3 and it always had been my secret weapon. Even now with recent addition to Photoshop I consider Xara more convenient, quick and non destructive.

To be honest I didn't see any improvements related to my workflow for many years but the latest 64 bit version is really a step forward that definitely worth buying an upgrade. Much more stable and reliable to work with big bitmaps.

To my surprise it turned out you removed KEY features that makes the whole soft useless for me.



ps. After that please, make layer compositions in Xara, Mesh deform, ability to keep and use 16 bit grey channel bitmaps at the same document and finally something like Z combine node in Blender, when you could combine two depth 16 bit textures and get a mask to blend colors layers out of it.

[handrawn]

some discussion on these points 1 and 2 in this thread:

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ages-on-a-page

[KIR23]

I tried what you offered and looks like it doesn't work . Live copies are pretty useless for me and ctrl+ shift while dragging out of bitmap panel does nothing new . I still get mismatching fills on the other page. I am trying the current demo version.


As of using clip (Q) to get feathered borders only it definitely works but the problem is it's also works in Photoshop and any other graphics program and it works more complicated way than before . I have to do redundant operation each time while earlier it was as smooth as a breath of fresh air. A reason why I love Xara is that you always do a few clicks less than in Photoshop, not that Xara can do something Photoshop can't. Should be an option to do it old way imo.


One minor thing that disappoint me also is that once you applied the feather on a bitmap it can't be scaled/moved on the fly keeping the fill intact. Even having "-" pressed. It scales/moves the whole bitmap and gets the fill back to the old position only after you release the button. It makes troubles to see what you do currently and how much you need to move a border . Works just perfect in my xara 5.

[handrawn]

the program has changed - I don't see it going back the way it was, a lot of these changes are to facilitate the web-design features that the earlier programs did not have - but there is of course no harm in asking, I wish you well

[KIR23]

Thanks for your suggestion I found that if i keep pressing Shift while do fill button it does what I wanted. Problem is sometimes it doesn't work. especially when i need to replace a lot of small details scattered by a brush . By the way It's one of reasons why I love Xara ( scattering brushes) a thing I can't do in Photoshop.

It makes the whole approach useless since i can't be sure I would be able to turn my texture into normal or specular one.

I understand web design focus but why kill other markets . I do my textures in Xara sometimes quicker than time necessary to open Zbrush and load tools there. Thanks to very convenient design library in Xara.

They only have to do a few options in the settings . I could continue to use old Xara of course but texture resolution is getting bigger and bigger and I really need that 64 bit update.

[handrawn]

They only have to do a few options in the settings

if the underlying code has been changed, not going to be that simple....

[Big Frank]

1. An ability to quickly replace all the same bitmaps on a page with Shift + drag keeping their fill in the same position.


2. An ability to feather cropped bitmap edges WITHOUT feathering its alpha, so only edges are feathering not translucent pixels

agree agree agree agree
xdp is fairly brilliant but could be just brilliant

[KIR23]

Couple more important things for texture making and gamedev in general:

1. pixel snap. It doesn't work fine in my Xara5 and in current one too. Whatever I try it always snap to some point in-between pixels even with 1pix grid

2. Tga export need to have alpha support and do it unpremultiplied (tranclucent pixels are not multiplied over white background) Like Photoshop 7 did few years ago for a short period of time. Maybe just kind of auto conversion from png.


I believe Xara has a lot of potential in gamedev market. I tried Mary today , a 2000$ texture painter, its layer system makes me headache, not much better then Photoshop one where you couldn't find a thing after 3 days. Xara name library is so huge and wonderful invention, we need just a button "S" next to names and it would be a perfect " layer compositions". Xara color adjustment based on objects rather then separate layers is also so big plus over Photoshop.

[handrawn]

snap to grid, when enabled in the arrange menu, works fine for me - bearing in mind that it snaps to the leading edge relative to the direction of movement, and if it is a curve or otherwise asymmetric to the grid it will snap at the first grid point the edge reaches

edit - I think you mean 'Maya' not 'Mary' after point 2

[KIR23]

typo, I meant Mari http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/
It's a soft created specifically for texture making but I still find Xara more quick for a large number of things especially non UV-specific/unique environment textures which are often a half of all art works in games. Imo Xara needs just a few touches here and there to become a popular thing in the gamedev. In fact I learned about Xara from a fellow texture/interface artist and have never known any web designer who would use it.

as of the snap, while in Xara I am getting things mostly snapped to a point in the middle of a pixel/texel. I guess it's a webdesign feature also so a 1 pix line could be rasterized the same way. But I don't need such thing with bitmap compositions. I need it snapped always to pixel corners . It's not a critical thing although.