gdenby

Again, less than perfect, but convert the shape to curves as another work around.

If you want a segment shape to snap to the horizontal guide at the full circle center, the segment must be made to a full circle, then adjusted to suit the situation.

As PaulAffinity said, the issue is not mostly technical. It is trying to understand what the client wants the picture to look like. I painted and drew portraits for a number of years, and capturing a good likeness was not nearly as hard as figuring out how to make the likeness have the emotional characteristic that pleased the customer. Looking at the images, I'd have to say that from a technical standpoint the white balance is not quite right. I suppose the light sources were not well balanced, because it was not studio lighting. But as far as the client comments go, I'd suppose there is too much fine detail. It appears to me that in the close up of the woman's eyes, she is wearing contact lenses. That is nothing that needs knowing. And while it may be a good bit of work, in the couple photo, the background is more detailed than necessary. Perhaps select that, and work on reducing the detail and reduce the selected areas' value & contrast to make it more of an incidental back ground.

Nice work. But, what spiral path?

Hi, Louva, Any time a shape is drawn, when it is selected, the divide boolean button lights up. That does not mean the object is divided. It is possible to make compound objects from different shapes, and the divide option is available so that those can be broken into discreet parts. Just select a shape you have drawn with the move tool, and position the shape wherever you like. It won't affect the other shape(s).

Hi, MikeDuf, Yes, Designer is still young. Deformations are in the version 1 roadmap, so should show up in the not too distant future. Auto trace is also in the roadmap, but it seems iffy based on comments from the past few months. Serif would like to do soething better than what is already available. As you note, the available tools are not always very good. There has been mention of a scripting language addition. I don't recall reading anything about a mirror function. Current capabilities require a bit of work, but not too much. Likewise, exporting specific layers is not a 1 click operation. Takes several steps. Not sure what you mean when you mention turning shapes into guides. There are lots of good snapping options to grids, guides, and object geometries, but I don't know how others might be able to use them w/o having their own AD app. So, yes, bunch of stuff that are yet to be available. But what is there works quite well.

From what I can tell, the noise is antialiased at whatever zoom level. If you rasterize the vector, it becomes quite pixellated. Often I duplicate a vector w. noise, rasterize it, and use the rasterized noisey version as a nested child

Just out of curiosity, what do you want to do w. the GOBO's? Something for a real light source. or something to overlay a digital image?

I think I may have figured it out. When you have the vector brush object selected, change the stroke color, not the fill color. A vector brush object/layer is only a stroke. While the history record says "set fill" it would be clearer if it said "set stroke fill color." Hope this helps.

Haven't used Illustrator for at least 6 years, tho' did use it often 20+ years ago. I suppose my comments are not worth .001$ Anchor point = "node" using node tool. I think Outline mode: Mac, command Y Direct selection tool, the Move tool, kinda... No reflection tool like AI. Can copy, duplicate and transform around object or page axes, but no automatic reflection axis. Etc.

I'm making some assumptions based on the history play-back. It seems that you are selecting the circle shape in video 2, and successfully changing its color. But the vector brush shape is what is needed. My guess is that the vector brush shape is nested within the circle. Look at the layers panel, and see if the vector beush layer is inside the circle. Click on it there, and the color should change as you want.

Don't know enough about Inkscape, myself, and haven't worked with .dxf or .dwg in years, but here is what I managed. Took a jigsaw made in AD. Transparent background and removed all fill and strokes for the pieces. Nothing to see except in outline mode. Used export as .svg for export. Opened in Inkscape v. .91 Macintosh, could only see a blank page. Exported .dxf using the default settings. Exported again w. all objects selected and grouped. Viewed in Solidworks eDrawings viewer. Slight mess up at the corners, but otherwise OK.

I mucked about some more, and saved the Inkscape file as a .pdf. It opened w. the arrowhead marker properly positioned on the dashed stroke, but available as a separate vector object. The dashed line is correctly interpreted, and can be modified w. AD's dialogue. This means the dash samples from Inkscape could be saved as AD styles and picked as desired from the styles panel.

AFAIK, there is no way to change the defaults for layer adjustments like gradient map. Also, the adjustment is not part of the layer style attributes, and is specific to the particular joined object/layer. No way to save it as a discrete style. Gradient fills can easily be saved as styles, and exported. But I suspect this may not be quite what you want if you are trying to map colors onto the grey scale values of an image.

I tried to figure out if there might be a synergy between the 2 programs for your purposes. I'm a clod when it comes to using Inkscape, but I made a couple of dashed lines w. it and added arrows. Exported those as .svg files and opened them in AD. I don't know if I missed something, but the dashed lines came thru fine, but not the arrowheads attached to them. ? don't know why. Seems the arrowhead is actually a reference to an url which isn't pasted into the .svg file. So, I don't know that the arrowhead implementation would work w/o a net connection, something I frequently lack. So while making dashed lines in AD is really quite trivial, (see the stroke dialogue panel) and variations made can be saved as styles, the arrowheads are still a work around. On a Mac, the system symbol viewer allows on to copy any font arrow into an AD file, where it can be easily be manipulated for diagram purposes. Or built in shape combinations can be used, but it does take a couple of seconds.

I haven't needed to use constraints, so I don't know if or how that is playing a part in the problem. Nested objects are cropped by the geometry of the parent. If the parent object's bounds are too small, the nested children can't be seen. Grouped object w/o nesting work differently. The layer hierarchy determines which objects are drawn 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. such that the upper ones are visible.

Brian, As I've written, I find this series fascinating. Enigmatic, and visually intriguing. I had a professor who long ago taught me that making something that was or should be self explanatory was fine, talking about it was a whole different thing, and probably as necessary. So, give us a title for the day's production, if you will.

I don't know that there is any menu command to lock/unlock all, or hide, but if all layers are selected, or any number from the layers panel, lock/unlocking & hiding/showing is done w. 1 click. Took me about 1 second to lock & hide 420 layers just now.

You can change the corners of multiple selected objects, also. My limited experience w. the text boxes has been that some text, specifically text copied from the Mac Pages program, comes in as formatted. Text from .pdf have missed paragraph breaks.

Can't quite tell whats going on w. the layers, but my guess is that the objects are not just grouped, but also nested. When nested, the geometry of the upper most object crops those below.

I think it was one of the devs that said the fix for the white line problem was "non-trivial." From what I know of "computer speak" it means it may be really a pain to fix. I haven't needed to work w. "symbols." But one symbol can be changed in any document, and all other instances of the symbol will change together no matter what group it is in.

Hi, Oshawk, I don't know that Serif offers a student discount. The white lines are most likely due to a problem w. the rasterization routine. As a work around, add a stroke of the same color to the fill, with the stroke centered or on the outside. Both fx and layer adjustments can be used on groups. In the layers panel, open the group. The layer order may need to be changed for easier use. But then, just select the objects you want the effect of adjustment, and apply only to them. Have fun.

MBd beat me to the answer, but here are illustrations,

Download Inkscape for windows. There is a pretty good tracing module based on potrace, which is a widely used open source app. It is not well documented, so difficult to use. At least within Inkscape, one doesn't have to feed in command line variables. With some trial and error, it will make decent results that can be used in AD. Don't know how the Windows version of Inkscape works, but the Mac version is, erm, quirky. Note, the developer has been working on it for 16 years. To me, that indicates it is not a trivial task to implement.

Wow! That is manic! What fun.