Quote Originally Posted by highfrontier View Post
Hi Joolz,

welcome to the boards - I'm also from an industrial design/CAD background and have been using Xtreme for about 1.5yrs now. Never looked back

There's yet another way to make your invader BTW :
- create a rectangle and change it's size to 1mm x 1mm..
- zoom in so the square (pixel) is a sensible size for working
- press <ctrl-k> to 'clone' the shape leaving it in place over the original.
- press a cursor key to move the 'pixel' to be perfectly alongside in whatever direction.
- repeat until you've made your shape.
- when you're happy with the result, scale the invader to the size you need on the page.

this depends on a setting in 'options'>general>nudge distance that controls how far each press of a cursor key moves your object. This is set to 1mm by default.

COOL

So this 'nudge' method would let you create your array very quickly...(Much better than my method methinks)

I did the 'snap' thing above to create my array then pasted and scaled a Space Invader bitmap.

I applied a bit of transparency to it and locked its layer

It was then a simple task to delete the unwanted squares to create the figures.

The 3D conversion still impresses me BTW

For info ... I bought Xara after posting a 3D model on another forum.... I created the 3D Solid, added lighting etc and posted my effort (it took a while).
One of the guys on the forum said 'nice pic, I'll have a go' . well he posted something similar after about 5mins and I couldn't believe it!

I asked him how he did it so quickly and he said Xara. I downloaded the trial and purchased within 1/2hr

Obviously Xara isn't a 3D app but for the 'Luvvie' work I occasionally need to do it's absolutely fantastic.

I am mainly using it to create graphics for my software (I develop Engineering applications)