Comments on: Episode 088

By: Annonymuss

Annonymuss — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:34:02 +0000

Thank’s it works btw i’m new in inkscape…:P

By: heathenx

heathenx — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:08:46 +0000

@Annonymuss

You are probably not having trouble with the Bezier Envelope extension but rather the text. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Draw a rectangle with your pen tool with first node at upper left, 2nd node upper right, 3rd node lower right, 4th node lower left and then close it. You must have it in that order. This rectangle will become your envelope

2. a. Make some text
b. convert text to path
c. ungroup the text
d. combine all letters to make one complete path

3. Select text first, shift select envelope path second

4. Execute the Bezier Envelope extension.

If you follow the above specifically then the extension will work without errors.

By: Annonymuss

Annonymuss — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:53:03 +0000

HELP me with bezier envelope…

C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\bezierenvelope.py:90: DeprecationWarning: raising a string exception is deprecated

raise(“Both letter and envelope must be SVG paths.”)

Traceback (most recent call last):

File “C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\bezierenvelope.py”, line 351, in

e.affect()

File “C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\inkex.py”, line 207, in affect

self.effect()

File “C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\bezierenvelope.py”, line 90, in effect

raise(“Both letter and envelope must be SVG paths.”)

Both letter and envelope must be SVG paths.

By: Troy

Troy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:46:31 +0000

Ah, I see… …layers are your secret! Now I understand! I can do it! Otherwise, I would of never known how you did it! Okay… …now lets make the pot thicker and much more complicated. As my original intention, I want to take the same globe as in this Tutorial (#088) and putting that one in animation (rotation) instead, not using your simple globe extension. NO offense! Yes, this exercise has taught me what I need to know! Thank you! I should of clarified myself to begin with. I’m sorry. But now I understand that the true secret to get this done with by using layers. So what I will do… ….I will follow this tutorial (#088) to begin with and go to the point where the grid is basically laid down which is presented nearing the end of your tutorial. The grid lines will need to be darker. I agree with your first response that you think these grid lines are too light here. I will then duplicate what I have completed of the globe at that point in different layers. This is done to produce my different frames I will eventually need. This will save time of not having to recreate the globes from scratch for each layer. At that point, I will slightly shift the grid lines slightly in each layer of the globe. Then finish up each of the layers to completion. This part up to know is time consuming! Then go ahead and save each layer as a png file as you show in your Tutorial #031. Then convert them using SWFTools to show the animation. I will see how this happens. In the meantime, I have already begun this tutorial (#088) to begin to create this globe. I am having issues with the Bezier Envelope extension. I have read the postings above for the issues people have already had that I am having now — those error messages you have answered. I will keep trying to get past this problem I hope soon. If you have any opinions or suggestions, please reply. Thank you!

By: heathenx

heathenx — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:47:59 +0000

@Troy
I supplied for you an SVG file with three wire spheres on three different layers. Open your layers dialog and turn them all on and you’ll see them. All three are placed in the center of the page with a white document background (it’s normally transparent). Basically, you need to turn on ONLY the layer that you wish to export to a PNG. There are automatic ways of doing this by assigning object id’s but we’ll save that for a later time. Let’s keep it simple for now.

Basically, you will want to make sure that you are now moving your wire sphere. Only place another in a new rotation on top of it. Layers are a way to manage things when it gets chaotic. In the animation I made a 4th image. Not sure if that is needed now that I think about it but you’ll figure it out.

If you want the animation to run just once then you may want to output to animated gif instead. I’m not sure png2swf has a loop option. It just runs continuously. Not to worry. Download and install Imagemagick and run ‘convert -verbose -delay 20 -loop 1 *.png output.gif’ instead. If you’re using Windows then place your images in the root Imagemagick dir and run the convert.exe command from there as well since Windows already has a convert.exe command of it’s own.

Animated GIF

By the way, Mencoder can also rip a directory full of PNGs into an AVI or other movie format if you need that too. Lots of options here.

By: Troy

Troy — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:26:42 +0000

Hello again. I have a few questions.

1. How do you keep your globe stationary in the same spot in animation instead of running from left to right on a plane like you show in your Tutorial 31? I need to know this before I begin.

2. Say you want to copy/clone/duplicate your document or project you created multiple times within Inkscape and most importantly keep the all the same formatting information with each copy/clone/duplicate. How do you do this?

3. In your Tutorial 31, you have it in a continuous loop. Let me ask this, if I wanted to have the animation run once without the loop? What do I do?

Please reply. Thank you!

By: Troy

Troy — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:18:36 +0000

Thank you for the fast reply! I appreciate your suggestions and ideas. I am going to attempt it and I’ll keep you posted. I gotta say Inkscape is pretty awesome software!!! Again, thanks for your tips!

By: heathenx

heathenx — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:07:17 +0000

@Troy

…Or you could take on this challenge yourself and teach me. Just saying’.

I’ll refrain from giving you an exact how-to but let me give you some tips. Have you watched episode 031? That’s where you should start. Next, you need to do away with the pissy globe grid that I made for this episode and use the wire frame sphere extension written by John Beard (wish I had known about that before I made episode 088). That is where my tips end, however, I have provided you with a couple of archives to make things convenient for you.

wireframe_sphere_extension.zip

globe_animation.zip

The first is the wire frame sphere extension. Un-archive it and place the contents in your Inkscape install path>extensions directory. You’ll find it in Inkscape in Extensions>Render. Take the default globe settings and only rotate by 5 degrees. Incidentally, it’s a great extension and a lot of fun to play with (that’s what she said).

Next is an archive with a quick-n-dirty animation that I made for you. I have provided you with the essential components for your understanding. Play the swf file to view the animation. Episode 031 will explain how to animate using swftools/png2swf (works the same in Linux and Windows).

That should be everything you need to get started. Have fun.

Reference:
http://screencasters.heathenx.org/episode-031
http://screencasters.heathenx.org/blog/2009/11/03/wireframe-spheres-extension

By: Troy

Troy — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:31:31 +0000

Hello. I have an idea that I need your help. My idea incorporates implementing your finished product above. I would like to know the steps in order to take the globe in the background and have it revolving or give it the appearance that the 3D image of the globe is spinning on the 2D plane. I am rather new to Inkscape and yet with your tutorials, I am learning rather quickly. You would have to somehow have the grid lines move or shift left or right (probably from left to right like Earth on its axis (counterclockwise)) at a specific speed. You cannot have the grid lines moving too quickly or you won’t get the impression that the globe is spinning. It would have to appear spinning smoothly as possible. The grid lines would have to move only as fast as the naked eye can detect movement of the grid lines.

Please help me or provide me the steps to create some kind of motion/animation to the globe. If these steps would be add-ons to your already completed tutorial, please indicate where these steps are to be implemented or modified and what I would need to do. This would be very interested to complete.

Thank you!

By: heathenx

heathenx — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:16:48 +0000

What does God want me to do? Whatever he asks of me.

Well, you can find hundreds of t-shirt design tutorials online. The majority of them, I’m sure, can be adapted to Inkscape without much problem. The best things to keep in mind are those things required by the outfit doing the printing. Ask them what format they need. The last time Richard and I made shirts (http://is.gd/6yHNR), we had to export the work in EPS format. We chose to stick with black ink only which was cheaper too. The more colors you use the more expensive it gets.

Many of the Illustrator tutorials can be adapted to Inkscape. However, Illustrator has some nice effects and some 3D tools that cannot be adapted easily. For those, you have to channel your inner artist. There are a few tutorials here where I adapted Illustrator and Photoshop to Inkscape.

Inkscape is by far the easiest vector editor that I have ever used. Unfortunately, it’s just a pup compared to Adobe, Corel, and Xara. It lacks some power features but it’s usually perfect for most work. Gimp, Blender, and maybe Scribus can fill in the gaps.

By: What Does God Want Me To Do?

What Does God Want Me To Do? — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:29:06 +0000

It took me a long time but I finally finished this as a logo for our family’s ministry. Really appreciate you putting up these videos for all of us…and for free.

You think you could do a thing on how to do t-shirt designs?

Or what about taking designs for illustrator and making them compatible with Inkscape?

By: coatit

coatit — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:53:53 +0000

EDIT:
I created the text, selected text, clicked object to path (reviewed the description in the bottom window and it was still calling the text a “Group” and not a “Path”), selected the now grouped letters, right click and un-grouped (no the description was saying it was a path), selected letters again and COMBINED, selected text and the bezier path, click on bezier envelope and Viola it worked.
Coatit

By: coatit

coatit — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:38:26 +0000

Thanks it worked but there was a twist.
I created the text, selected text, clicked object to path, selected text and the bezier path, click on bezier envelope and Viola…. SAME ERROR!!!
Fix was this (and I have run into this before):
I created the text, selected text, clicked object to path (reviewed the description in the bottom window and it was still calling the text a “Group” and not a “Path”), selected the now grouped letters, right click and un-grouped (no the description was saying it was a path), selected text and the bezier path, click on bezier envelope and Viola it worked. It did relocate my text far above the original position but it worked non the less. I aways seem to have some little quirk like that to deal with.
Thanks again for the help you guys ROCK!!

– Coatit

By: heathenx

heathenx — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:35:04 +0000

You’re welcome. I must admit that some of the tuts that Richard and I have done have sort of a shelf life. A lot has changed since 0.45. Nevertheless, hang in there and if you run into trouble just shout at us.

Extensions in Windows work the same way as they do in Linux. Just stick your extensions in the extensions directory in your install path and everything will work. I think the default location is “C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions”. All you’ll need is the .inx and .py files.

By: coatit

coatit — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:24:15 +0000

Thanks for the quick response. You screencasts are essential in my learning and I can’t say enough about them. I am pretty new to this so you have really helped guide me. Also how to I get the extentions for inkscape on a windows platform.
Thanks again heathenx for all the support and learning tools

– coatit

By: heathenx

heathenx — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:03:54 +0000

@coatit

The behavior changed a bit in .047. Make your text and convert it to a path and then combine it to make it all one path again. In order for the bezier envelope to work you must start point one at the upper left and work your way around to the right, down, and to the left and up to close. Follow those steps and it should work just fine.

By: coatit

coatit — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:58:37 +0000

I know there are a few of these posted but I haven’t seen one with the \Both letter and envelope must be SVG paths\. I made sure my text was and ‘object to path’. Am trying to follow the heathenx tut and got stuck on the bezier envelope step:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File \/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/bezierenvelope.py\, line 351, in
e.affect()
File \/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/inkex.py\, line 207, in affect
self.effect()
File \/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/bezierenvelope.py\, line 90, in effect
raise(\Both letter and envelope must be SVG paths.\)
TypeError: exceptions must be classes or instances, not str

coatit

By: Ed n

Ed n — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:28:31 +0000

great tutorials, heathenx.

i will almost certainly give this a try, i need all the help i can get,just started from 0.46 and getting ready for 0.47.throughly enjoyed this video,made me smile at the gradient/and globe text mishaps.:)

By: Don W

Don W — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:37:43 +0000

@ knirps..HX
UPDATE. After watching the HX video several times, I see that the text shows as a path and stays a path even before the un grouping. The text in my 047-4 must be un grouped before duplicating or it will not remain a path (showing nodes). hmmmmm

By: Don W

Don W — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:21:31 +0000

@ knirps…HX,
Ditto on the UNGROUPING, that’s the answer.
That’s why we keep HX around. .