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gdenby

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Everything posted by gdenby

  1. I have some difficulty understanding what you are asking. I suppose there is a language problem. The shapes of an object, like dot fields, can be placed as a masking layer attached to a colored object. A gradient filled rectangle with a mask of 3 grouped dotted lines. Appearing like this: But I also don't understand "cannot find patterns." Designer does not have a library of designs. You can make your own, and store them for use in other projects.
  2. Hello, I think you will find AD to be a lot of fun to use, even as a newcomer to computer graphics. Once you review the interface, and see where everything is, and how the context bar changes as you use various tools, I'd suggest you start playing with the shapes. There are more than 20, including standards like rectangle and ellipse. They can all have modifications. Early on, I tried to make a catalogue of the variables. I have one catalog sheet that has 40 variations on the arrow shape. And that is without using AD wonderful corner tool, which can add many more minor variations. Probably 2000+ shapes available with only the slightest bit of effort. The various shapes can then be added/subtracted/divided etc into one another. There are a great many figures that can be made w/o any drawing skill And each on can have different combinations of fills, and outline strokes, and then there are about 20 different ways to blend the colors/shadings.
  3. I d-loaded a beta yesterday. I'm not having a snapping problem as described, quite. I can't give a complete description, but I'm getting all sorts of indicators. Top & bottom aligns, side to side, centers, often showing indicators for 2 object in the group. I made my own file w. 7 rectangles, and grouped them. In the newest release, another shape as it is moved around will show alignments and distances to the objects within the group. I get snapping indicators from adjacent rectangles at different positions, as well as measurements so I can tell when the object is evenly spaced between the objects In Aammppaa file, I needed to ungroup the group, and then regroup. Also, I found that the snapping is improved by resetting the bounding box. That way, both the outer nodes and the rectangular space they are within work for snapping. Otherwise, it seems the outer points of the diamond are the alignment points.
  4. That's what happens when I try figuring something while working on the 1st cup of morning coffee. I'd run into that behavior w. curved objects, never ran into it , or noticed at least, w. single lines. Something I don't understand is how the 2 line segments were in the same layer w/o being shown as separate curves. A side effect of converting file to SVG?
  5. Here's something weird I just noticed. If I divide the layer, I get 2 curves. After much frustration, I happened to select one, change to node tool, and I dragged the center of the line. I ended up w. a closed arc. Same for other. Somehow, the 2 lines are a closed object. I was able to duplicate the problem by using the pen tool, drop a node, extend the line, and then go back and click on the 1st node. An oddity produced by using the pen drawing method in an unexpected way.
  6. My new to me iMac is a refurbished 2015 model. Good price, tho' I had to upgrade peripherals to use the newer USB and Thunderbolt ports. See specs below. I can get AD to display the spinning beach ball, but it is rare. Yesterday, I created a mesh of 240 irregular dashed lines, and expanded all the dots to curves. Then did a combine. Did hit a wall there. I suppose there may have been at least 15000 dots in the mass. But in less intensive use, I get only a few seconds before the screen updates if I have lots of noise and.or fx applied to a couple hundred objects. I have a Huion model 1409 tablet. Quite inexpensive for its size, and works well w. AD. I do have rather bad arthritis, so I suppose some of the problems I have w. pressure control are on my part, not the tablet. In regular use, the display is quite wonderful.
  7. Fine work. And thanks for the presentation showing the steps to completion.
  8. The paper was scanned, but the text and numbers are just from the text tool. Most of the images I found of the model showed the bakelite shell really dull, and pitted, while there are a few examples where the surface is still high gloss. If I can figure out how to add pits and scratches from vectors, I will. But for now, I've decided to set it aside, let it cook on the back burner, as it were.
  9. Hi Folks, A pic of something I've been working on and off for the past 6 weeks. An old style rotary phone, Western Electric, ca. 1937. I recalled having a broken one of these as a child, and would take it apart and reassemble it often. Don't make 'em like they used to. I got started on it when I heard a fellow on the radio who was talking about differences between generations. He told his kids, "My mother used to say 'You have such a bad sense of direction that you'd get lost in a phone booth.'" One of his kids looked blankly at him and asked "What's a phone booth?" He went on to say "It is a place where you sit down and rent a phone for a few minutes in private." Then his kids were really perplexed.
  10. I'm not entirely certain. I spent a week or so soon after get AD trying out the various blend modes, and combinations of them. From the samples I have, and some notes I made, my guess is that the "L" value of the blend layer in the HSL model is subtracted from from the underlaying layer if the L quantity there is lower than 50%, but added to quantities above 50%. In grey scale, that would mean a 25% L grey on top of a 75% grey would boost the to white, 100%, whereas the same object over one at 25% would drop to 0. There might also be a luminance effect corrresponding to the perceptual bias of the human eye. Yellow is seen as more luminous than blue. Drawing from the above example, a light grey reflect blend over yellow would produce white, whereas over blue would shift toward black.
  11. It is very likely that most images will be turned into raster images as they are printed. Vinyl cutters need vector lines. Old line printers used actual nibs that drew across paper much like a human draftsman. The problem w. raster images is that they don't scale well, and are locked into a square grid. If the raster data that is in the image is scaled up, eventually it will become blurry and blocky. I haven't looked really closely at AD's noise, but it seems to be a somewhat random generation of pixel variation, which simply fills a vector shape that will at some point be rasterized for print out. I've been messing w. making vector noise w. AD's existing features. For instance, scribble a bunch of pencil lines with a small point size. Turn those into dashed lines. Shrink them down, and place them within layer objects w. various levels of opacity and/or blending modes. Attached, a sample. I have a gradient filled green rectangle to represent a baize desk topping. I want to to look scuffed. One portion of the sample is a scribble with partial opacity and an emboss effect. The other portion is 2 scribbles layered, both set to the same level of opacity, but one set to add blend mode, and the other to subtract. Shown at about 100% screen resolution.
  12. You might like to look over in the "Share your work" forum section. @kevinmcsherry just posted a sketch he worked up into a book cover. Evidently, after a little pixel work, he went complete vector. No outlines, just shape boundaries from color contrasts and shading.
  13. There is a fellow with whom I corresponded some time ago, named Dermot O'Connor. A fine digital animator, he has some courses here. I suppose his method and terminology is standard. My own understanding is that the pencil scan is just the pencil work. The Inking is the next step, and the Painting/Colorizing fill follows. I did make a small living for awhile as a painter, mostly portraits. Practice drawing like crazy. Get good enough that you can sketch w. ink. Pencil work scans really poorly. It is easier to turn scanned ink drawings to digitized work than graphite.
  14. I'm amazed! And... disappointed. No cat fattening adjustment, no tale fluffing parameter. C'mon Serif, yer lettin' us down. ;)
  15. Splendid trick. Loved the tutorial and I'll review it several times. Using a layer as both a shadow and a highlight was to me a surprising application. Good work.
  16. Check out this video as a starting point. When a vector object is made in AD, the default is that it goes on its own layer, which is above any other layer. There is an option to add new objects within or behind any existing objects. If I understand your terms, the mother layer is the object which has another object drawn within it. The objects can be drawn above or below, and later moved within another object by dragging the layer listings into the layer entry which will be the "mother." The visibility of the objects within will be masked by the shape of the main layer. Their color can also be changed thru using different blend modes. In your example, you mention rivets. What you can do is draw a circle, duplicate it, move it, and then perform a "power duplicate" series. This will quickly create a large number of circles, which is generally hard to manage. However, they can all be selected, and joined using the boolean add operation. All the joined circles will have the same attributes, so changing a stroke width or a fill color, or adding a layer effect will change all of them at once. For instance, I just made a grid w. 150 circles that were turned into a single object in about 75 seconds. Alternatively, I could have grouped them for ease of organization, and opened the group to change specific circles.
  17. I d-loaded the file. I was perplexed. I think that however Freehand works, AD is very different. What you were trying to do is not the way AD works. The various lines should be left each as their own layer. You can select some or all, and make a group. Then, with the group selected, change the stoke attributes. All will change color, line thickness and end capping. When the group is opened up in the layers panel, each element can be adjusted. Attached, your lines as individual layers, and ready to be grouped. Once grouped, changed w. the stroke attributes panel. The various elements in the group can be individually modified if selected when the group is opened thru the layer panel.
  18. The closest I've been able to do is duplicate the shapes, scale and hand tweak it down, make it white, and ad gaussian blur fx.
  19. Never used noticed or used that feature. Likewise, thanks for the pointer.
  20. If the road lines are pen strokes, you can use the node tool to create new nodes where you want to break the line. Select the node, and then use the Action/break curve widget. There will then be several separate curves that will have endpoints overlapping, Select a curve in the layer panel, and adjust to where the end point needs to be with the node tool.
  21. Select the pen tool, draw a line. Make sure fill is set to none. For the stroke width, just type in the size you want instead of using the slider. Adjust the color to you liking. With the item selected, use the menu command Edit/create style. You may wish to start a new style category for your own creations. Thereafter, draw as you like, and w. the object selected, just click on the icon in the style panel to apply.
  22. I don't understand "drag it back down manually." In AD, the operation is simple. Select the layer, press the adjustments widget at the bottom of the layer panel, and select the adjustment you need. Alternatively, select the layer, and use the menu "layer/new adjustment.
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