
Episode 049 – Sunbursts
by heathenx
In this screencast I will demonstrate how to make a sunburst and apply it to a logo in Inkscape 0.45.

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Tags: gradients, logo, sunburst
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on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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January 12th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Very nice
January 13th, 2008 at 3:19 am
I alsways wanted to know you you do that, thank you!
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
[...] The screencast is here: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/episode-049/ [...]
March 27th, 2008 at 5:27 am
This is my favourite!
It’s very easy and nice grahic for all beginners!!
April 27th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Hi guys! Thanks for great tutorials!
I have one problem with this one. After cloning my picture look like this: http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/245/errorv.png The left one is the object I’m doing cloning on, and after that appears second object on the right side and below. I’ve no idea what I’m doing wrong. Any help?
April 27th, 2009 at 8:26 am
@Michal
Looks like to me like you might have things off center. Make sure that the center point on your circle remains in the center. If you have moved it off center then you can highlight the circle by left-clicking twice then shift+ctrl+LMB the center point. Finally you need to have your triangle properly aligned to the center of the circle or the guide cross hairs.
There are several ways to achieve the starburst effect. A simpler way is to duplicate or stamp the triangle and manually swing them around holding the ctrl key down. That will bypass the tiled clones if you find that a little frustrating. Check out episode 034 and 034-1 or even episode 049 for some tips.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:51 am
@heathenx
Thanks for replay. Center seems to be ok. I know about stamping, which I use instead, but it is still annoying cannot do some things in proper way. Anyway I’ve just found bug like this on Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/213793
I have to try SVN version, But when I used it last week there was problem with bluring while I was doing dogtag from episode 046. So now I’m using Inkscape from Ubuntu repo.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:41 am
@Michal
Ah! I wasn’t aware of a bug in 0.46. Perhaps that’s what you are experiencing. If you want clones instead of duplicates then you can clone your original several times and manually rotate it around instead of stamping it. Duplicates increase file size anyway. Most of the time I don’t care much about what method I use to get my artwork done (proper way vs some manual way), just as long as I get it the way I want it in the end.
Btw, 0.47 is scheduled to be released in the next couple of months.
April 28th, 2009 at 6:50 am
@heathenx
I managed to do that finally!!! I was experimenting a bit and I found solution. I had to change some values to end up in the same effect. In tutorial you have:
shift x per row= -100, per column=0
shift y per row= 0, per column=-100
exponent per row=0.0, per column=0.0
And I change it to:
shift x per row=0, per column=-100
shift y per row= -100, per column=0
exponent per row=1.0, per column=1.0
And now it’s working! Tested on Inkscape compiled from SVN.
Thanks again for your great screencasts !!!
April 28th, 2009 at 7:11 am
@Michal
Thanks for posting your values. Those will surely help others who run into this same problem.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Thanks. Great tutorial.
Regarding circular tiled cloning, I’ve noticed in more than one tutorial that you choose to control rotation by grouping a second object to the path to be cloned (in this case, a circle). The method I have used is to move the rotational centre of the item to be cloned. In this case, you would click twice on the sun ray with the select tool to see its rotational handles. When these appear, you will also have a cross-hair in the middle of the object representing its rotational centre. Drag this to the point of your sunburst triangle around which you wish to rotate its clones.
Now, if you were to rotate the object, it would rotate around this centre. But, this will also control the manner in which the item is rotated in tiled cloning. Using the same settings you do in this tutorial for shift and rotation, you would achieve the same effect without having to draw the circle, group the items, or delete the redundant circles when you are done. The only clean-up is deleting the original item that you cloned.
Just a thought for simplifying the process, although I would be interested to hear if you have other reasons for choosing your method.
Thanks again.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
@cdeobald
Thanks for the input. I usually move the rotational center point before I rotate the object nowadays, especially since we have some new snapping features in 0.47. However, I do get stuck in my old habits from time to time. I sometimes take the long way before I notice a shortcut.