On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 09:50:15AM -0700, Tony Vigil wrote:
Hi!
This comes a day late and possibly a dollar short, but maybe it could be useful all the same.
I created this blood spat as a personal Inkscape learning exercise.
http://soundnvision.homestead.com/files/blood_splat.svg
Let me know if you think a tutorial worth doing.
I think a tutorial would be good. I also wonder if this effect could be done automatically with a plugin. The other vector editor whose name escapes me, begins with X, it can make these sort of 3D relief things very easily. Of course it's not constrained to SVG constructs.
But how about this as a way for Inkscape to make the dark and light blured paths that give the edge relief automatically.
- break the path up into small pieces, either the way 'Add nodes' does, or by an algorithm that uses more points in curving areas than straight areas. i.e. add nodes and then break this new path up into pieces, one for each internode
- assign blurred white, nothing, or blurred black to these new pieces, based on the angle of piece and the desired illumination angle. You'd need to keep track of outside and inside, not too hard.
I think this basic approach would generate the kind of 3d Tony's acheived here by hand?
An optional inset or outset on the blurred lines would change the apparent profile of the 3d edge, too.
Cheers -Terry