Christmas Virtual Baubles

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Acorn, great balls!
Just a few observations on your xar files output.

I believe it's a long standing bug in Xara that changes circular fills to elliptical fills for some unknown reason, often when pasting attributes. Unfortunately this has the resulting effect that rather than creating an svg it creates an bitmap image instead.

Further to this xara's default image creation is set to "Let Xara decide the result automatically". With the introduction of svg export I believe this would be better set to a default of "Lossless compression PNG"

IMHO at present Xara's export is creating far more images (bitmaps) than are required.

DEMO

[Acorn]

Hi Acorn, great balls!
Just a few observations on your xar files output.
I believe it's a long standing bug in Xara that changes circular fills to elliptical fills for some unknown reason, often when pasting attributes. Unfortunately this has the resulting effect that rather than creating an svg it creates an bitmap image instead.
Further to this xara's default image creation is set to "Let Xara decide the result automatically". With the introduction of svg export I believe this would be better set to a default of "Lossless compression PNG"
IMHO at present Xara's export is creating far more images (bitmaps) than are required.
DEMO

Egg, thank you for the analysis.

Normally, I would agree that getting SVGs from a design is very important.

It was not done in this case as I left all the components exposed rather than a single Group so they could be quickly manipulated and taken apart by others.

The Elliptical Fill was not changed from a Circular one by a Xara Bug; I just chose it. I do know that this can happen but I usually have it down as one of my necessary checks.
One bauble also had a Shadow that Xara cannot yet handle as SVG. Again, I would use CSS for my own use but I kept this as a pure Xara design.

Ultimately, the white stars were mapped onto a sphere were always going to be a bitmap, a PNG, as selected by me, so I could change the background Fill and Colour.
I had thought of creating and distorting each star by hand to maintain the aesthetic but that is too much hassle.

Group each bauble and publish and be damned.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Completely understand Acorn. I was merely trying to point out to other TG users that whilst circular fills export as svg's elliptical fills export as bitmaps. Also that letting Xara choose the filetype (default jpg) creates a second unnecessary image where png with alpha does not.

The number of request to a server for downloads slows the page load time. Downloading a bitmap when it can be produced via svg without a download is slowing your sites download speed.

[wizard509]

Marry, I'll make a Fool of miself.

Acorn

Oops whttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F63tXcfVr9gell guess I mis-spell too. sorry.
It's more that my eyes don't notice things like they should anymore therefore I may type gibberish or mis-spell and don't notice sorry I was a painter which seems to me to be a sorry state of affairs.

[wizard509]

Hi Acorn, great balls!
Just a few observations on your xar files output.

I believe it's a long standing bug in Xara that changes circular fills to elliptical fills for some unknown reason, often when pasting attributes. Unfortunately this has the resulting effect that rather than creating an svg it creates an bitmap image instead.

Further to this xara's default image creation is set to "Let Xara decide the result automatically". With the introduction of svg export I believe this would be better set to a default of "Lossless compression PNG"

IMHO at present Xara's export is creating far more images (bitmaps) than are required.

DEMO

Egg, I watched your demo a couple of times and still do not understand how that was done I had seen thopse baubles before and wondered I thought maybe the graphic was made then using the mold tool to turn it into the baubles wanted.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Larry, I didn't do the bauble shapes, they where in a xar file posted by Acorn. However they are fairly simple to make using the mould tool, in particular the Circular Envelope mould.

Hope you can make sense of this (Sorry missed out the Xara window tool sets) :

LINK

[Acorn]

Hi Larry, I didn't do the bauble shapes, they where in a xar file posted by Acorn. However they are fairly simple to make using the mould tool, in particular the Circular Envelope mould.
Hope you can make sense of this (Sorry missed out the Xara window tool sets) :
LINK

Egg, I'll certainly be using Ctrl+1+U a lot more.
What will make your construction far faster is the use of the new Smart Duplication control.

Thank you for the video.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Ctrl+1+U

? Sorry, not with you there Acorn

[Acorn]

? Sorry, not with you there Acorn

After using a Mould, press Ctrl+1+U, to Add Shapes and Ungroup, all in one go, resulting an a Shape that is rendered as an SVG object.
Does the same with a Contour or Bevel or Spiral.
A Blend needs Ctrl+1+U+U. Same with Text Inside but you end up with the Shape duplicated in the text's colour.
A Extrusion becomes a Bitmap after you use Ctrl+1.

If you have a complex repeat of a pattern, like a bauble, than breaking the Mould and intersecting All Shapes when selecting with a Clone or another under-shape separates out the Shape into all its sub-parts. Very cleanly and very quickly and most beneficial now SVGs are the output.

The other benefit is no message about destroying a SmartShape. It is a Bug, I sure, that Ctrl+1 immediately deletes a SmartTable.

Acorn

[wizard509]

Thank you, Egg your demo was most helpful and reinforced what I thought, but took it a step further.
Thank you Acorn for providing the baubles.