Hi again,
I'm trying to follow a tutorial where one of the final results is this: http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee124/joaclint/joaclint_istgud/inkclon3d.png.
Starting from a square, he clones it and then apply "interactive deformation" (not sure if that's the correct English words for that). Can someone give me an idea of how to get the nice sphere?
Thanks.

Mauricio

Hi Mauricio,
Doesn't the tutorial say how to do that? It sounds like he's using the Envelope LPE (Live Path Effect). I've never tried to use it to make a sphere, but I suppose it might be possible. Here's the manual info: http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... ation.html

Hi brynn,
the tutorial shows an example with text. He writes his name, convert the text to path, select all the nodes of every character and then, edits those nodes while pressing Alt-key. I could do that but I can't do the same with the squares. I don't think he's using LPE but, as I'm a newbie, I'm not completely sure.
Thanks for your answer.

Mauricio

Kind of hard to understand your question, sorry. Why do you think he used the same method to make the sphere/ Does he say so?There are lots of ways to make an illustration like this but are you specifically asking how to automatically generate this from a square by cloning and sculpting with the ? maybe you can link to the tutorial if it's online?

Hi Druban,
here is the link for the tutorial: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1_QTdSVGdZPmVd5pXdDPwtrNNRRKLAk_kpkq2OzxgCKY. It's in Spanish but you can have an idea following the images. He plays with the text and at the end he says: "For example, using the clones' previous creation in mosaic we can obtain something similar to this (it must bear in mind that the distortion is proportional from what if it deforms up and later down it will not obtain a symmetrical result. To manage the result debit as symmetrical as possible to do very short editions; that is to say, a little up, a little down, a little up again ...)" (google translation).
Anyway, you said there are many ways to do it, can you tell me where to look for?
Thanks again.

"interactive deformation" is a perfect description of what the Envelope LPE does. But looking at the images in the tutorial, it looks like the author is using node sculpting. (which could also be described as interactive deformation) It looks like he or she is selecting all the nodes in a compound path, then using Alt + drag from certain key nodes. It's not at all clear exactly what happens to create the final result.

I'm not sure what druban has in mind. But one thing you could try is Envelope Deformation LPE (Path menu > Path Effects > Envelope Deform.). Of course you could also try node sculpting, but it's not clear to me what kind of object the author starts with. Does he have an array of tiled clones, and then does the node sculpting? Or has he started with the grid of squares and somehow gets to the circles?

I've found the Bing translator to be a little more accurate than Google http://www.bing.com/translator/?ref=SAL ... &mkt=en-US. Maybe you could translate the entire tutorial? There still would be some questions, but we might infer certain things by having the illustrations together with English text. Like google, the bing translator is free

It looks like he has taken an array of nine squares and dragged the nodes bit by bit using the sculpt mode of the to make the approximate shape of a quarter circle. Then he makes 3 copies to make a sphere like shape.
Then change the nodes to smooth nodes maybe to get rounded corners? It's the alt-dragging that's not exactly clear. He is probably selecting and deselecting and slowly making the image into the desired shape, there's no way for him to explain exactly which nodes he dragged! Maybe in a movie...
What a lot of work!
Instead, try this:
1.extensions >render >wireframe sphere. Latitude 7 longitude 14.



2. Ungroup twice. You will have 15 ellipses. Delete the outermost one.
3. Object to path. make the stroke slightly wider.
4. Stroke to path. Union. Break apart. Oh no! Everyhting's turned black! Relax. Change the fill to none, stroke to some value and narrow. This is what you should have.



5. Delete the outer path and the little paths top and bottom. You should have 36 paths. From this point you can decide how you want to make a smooth shape out of each one.

Here's one way.
a. Throw away 3/4 of the paths, keeping one quadrant. Easier to work with and you can just clone it 3 times at the end.
b. select all. You might have some six node paths etc, so control -l to simplify.
c. In the Transform dialog. Scale them all to 50%, proportionally, each object separately.
d. Switch to the Node tool. select all.
e. Shift U or (control bar button) to convert all segments to curves.
f. Shift S (or C.B.B.) to convert all to smooth nodes.
g. Scale the objects back up in small increments. I used several repetitions of 105%.
h. Group or combine the 9 paths and Clone it 3 times. arrange the clones appropriately.
i. Now node edit the original path, the clones will update as clones do, saving you mucho work. In my example i didn't do any editing, but of course it would have looked better.

Druban, great tutorial!!! Thank you very much!
Brynn, I will ask the author of the tutorial if he agrees to translate it to English. Keep in mind that it's an old tutorial and maybe there were some options in Inkscape at that time.
Thanks again to both of you.

Oh, I didn't mean any kind of formal translation, Mauricio. I was thinking just for your personal use

Wow druban, your Inkscape skills never cease to amaze me! Just for the purpose of discussing this interesting challenge, I would make the observation about the distortion of the top and bottom rows of circles. Of course these result from using the wireframe sphere. But I'm trying to think of a way to make the resulting circles in the top and bottom rows, more like the circles in the far left and right columns. I'm sorry that I can't think of the proper geometric terminology to use to describe the distortion I'm talking about, but it's some kind of symmetry that's missing. Perhaps a kind of 3D symmetry, maybe.

What about radially tiled clones? I'll bet that's the solution to the symmetry! I will experiment, and post again later

Edit
Well, after a good hour, I wasn't able to quickly get very much going with tiled clones. But after another minute or 2 brainstorming, I'm thinking the easiest way to draw this, at least for me would be to draw it outright. Forget any kind of fancy tricks or techniques, just draw a series of circles, the proper size, and place them into position! Positioning should be easy enough using grid or guides.

Ok wait -- I got a flash! brb

Edit -- "flashes" -- the story of my life. I'm tellin' ya', if I could sell all my ideas, I'd be rich. But sell the ideas that actually work, still in the poorhouse
Since I couldn't get the circles to work with a combination of tiled clones, I thought of just making 1/4 of the array, and then just move the rotation center, and clone 4 of them radially. But I got into trouble with that, as well. It's much easier for me to just "manually" draw, rotate, and position them, than to use a fancy trick or technique. Although I did use a little bit of a trick in the end.

So here's the compound path. Notice where the center of rotation is. I used snapping to intersecting guides to place the circles in the right arrangement

Next it's duplicated and rotated 90 degrees, until there are 4 sections making a whole "array".

And next, the magic with Envelope Deformation, which was my original thought in the first place . Notice what I've done with the bend path. The same is done to each of the 4 sides. I used a grid and snapping to make sure the bend paths are all symmetrical.


After that, it appears the the tutorial author added some shading and highlighting objects, on top of the base circles. They look to me like perhaps a complex clipping path (or 2 or 3) was used. But it's hard to say for sure. Then of course the cast shadow to make the floating appearance. I'm sorry that I don't have time to sort that all out for you.

Like with druban's effort, there are some distorted circles. They can probably be fixed by finessing the bend paths in just the right way. Compared to what we have speculated that the tutorial author did, this was probably much faster. But by the time you work out the shading, shadows and highlighting....well, still maybe a little faster, depending on your skills. Or maybe just as long, it's hard to say.

So anyway, for whatever it's worth, that's another way to do it

Druban,
what am I doing wrong? It seems that I'm missing something. After step 4 I've got this:
http://screencast.com/t/PstiRMIhC
and I don't know how to follow from there because it's not what you get.
Thanks for your time.

Mauricio

Never mind, I did it!!!!! http://screencast.com/t/2l4I7PZ2g
Thanks again for your time and this great tutorial!!!!

Hi Mauricio,
Good job! I didn't answer your previous message, since you addressed it to druban. So I'm glad you worked it out