Fancy Corners with Masks

[Egg Bramhill]

Why not go for the arrange/combine shapes/subtract shapes.... approach Acorn? The outlines are still retained which your method destroys.

[Acorn]

Why not go for the arrange/combine shapes/subtract shapes.... approach Acorn? The outlines are still retained which your method destroys.

Egg, your approach destroys subsequent editing. I was trying to show mine could emulate the Xara Smart Shape for changing corners on the fly..

With mine, you can also change Line widths, position, individual mask colour/transparency/fill, squishy/squashy, none of which the Smart Shape can achieve.
It is a hankering back to the original Xara functions without the Smart Shape straitjacket Xara imposes.
Yours could with a lot of back and forth.

Horses for courses.

Acorn

[Boy]

Good stuff, Acorn.

Looking forward to how you'll apply the lost outlines. I tried a number of things with 'Shapes' but didn't succeed.

[Egg Bramhill]

Thanks for the explanation Acorn. It's probably that as a Xara user of many years (as yourself), long before rounded corners and smart shapes when we had to create them on our own. So this is my method of choice.

I admit I've never dabbled with, nor understood opacity masks and having followed your instructions to the letter did get the exact same result as yourself. I just couldn't understand what I could do with it beyond that.

I always keep a copy of my constructions on the pasteboard should I require further adjustments.

I enjoy looking at your inventive alternatives, thanks.

[handrawn]

so opacity masks are rather like intersections with some editable features afterwards such as level of transparency, positioning and size..... useful; I learnt something

[Acorn]

Good stuff, Acorn.
Looking forward to how you'll apply the lost outlines. I tried a number of things with 'Shapes' but didn't succeed.

Boy, this is the best I have managed:



Add back a Complete Stroke
1.Clone Masked Shape - Ctrl+K
2.Set Line Width to None
3.Detach Opacity Mask - Alt+O
4.Ungroup - Ctrl+U
5.Delete any White Mask Objects
6.Select all and Arrange > Combine Shapes > Intersect All Shapes
7.Delete all Black Mask Objects
8.Add in Line Width


The result is destructive so you need to keep the original.

Acorn

[Boy]

Add back a Complete Stroke
1.Clone Masked Shape - Ctrl+K
2.Set Line Width to None
3.Detach Opacity Mask - Alt+O
4.Ungroup - Ctrl+U
5.Delete any White Mask Objects
6.Select all and Arrange > Combine Shapes > Intersect All Shapes
7.Delete all Black Mask Objects
8.Add in Line Width

The result is destructive so you need to keep the original.

Even if the final result is destructive, masking is a good method to let you see real-time the desired result (minus the outline) as you can move around/change the cutout shapes.

As per Egg, steps 6 to 8 can be replaced with Select all and Substract shapes (Ctrl+2).

[Acorn]

Even if the final result is destructive, masking is a good method to let you see real-time the desired result (minus the outline) as you can move around/change the cutout shapes.
As per Egg, steps 6 to 8 can be replaced with Select all and Substract shapes (Ctrl+2).

Boy that is useful.

Add back a Complete Stroke
1. Clone Masked Shape - Ctrl+K
2. Set Line Width to None
3. Detach Opacity Mask - Alt+O
4. Ctrl+Select and Delete any White Mask Objects
5. Select all and Arrange > Combine Shapes > Subtract Shapes - Ctrl+2
6. Ungroup
7. Add in Line Width

Acorn

[Boy]

Going through it once more, steps 2, 6 and 7 are actually not necessary.

[handrawn]

in my workflow i can see a real use for opacity msks as a means of quickly repostioning/reorienting a 'visibility window' that is punching through an object; pity that to actually edit the mask shape you need to go 'inside' [like clipview] which means you lose sight of the context and so the usefulness

I never went much for the non-destructive aspect of xara and could quite happily live without it... 'ctrl+z' is usaually all I need; like egg I save out asset though in my case i export rather than pasteboard if it is specific; indeed having to make bitmap copies to fix before applying trace or effect is a nuisence to me

the one area where it is useful though is erase/shapebuild which I now see as a form of opacity masking...