I came across this tutorial and was wondering what is an inline contour fill is that the same as add stroke? I don't think it is because no matter what I do the text does not end up looking like a filled object itself.

From these steps:

The highlight steps.

1. Inline contour the original text.
2. Duplicate and offset the contour layer.
3. Trim.
4. Place trimmed onto the original text.
Voila!

Great effect, but terrible tutorial.

In case you didn't realise, the steps you've quoted are to produce that very first image, not the whole lot.

I'm guessing by the effect he's aiming for that you could translate "inline contour" to Inkscapes "inset".

This is how I would describe the steps required for Inkscape:

1. Use inset to make the text a little thinner than the original (i.e. press Alt+( to inset 1px at a time)
2. duplicate it, and move the duplicate down and to the right a few pixels
3. Select the duplicate text and the text from step 1 and perform a difference on it (Ctrl + -)

You now have the little edging/shine thingy in the first part of that image.

The rest of steps use Inkscapes Outset feature... although I'm not sure if Inkscape will round the corners or keep them sharp. You may need to convert your text to paths to perform some of these effects. If you wanted to be really clever you may be able to create the entire effect using clone, dynamic offsets, and clip, so when you edit the original text all the additional objects will change with it - it'll depend on if you can use dynamic offset with text that has not been converted to a path.

microUgly wrote:it'll depend on if you can use dynamic offset with text that has not been converted to a path.

Yes, you can do that. It makes it easy to do some pretty neat text effects. And editing the text automatically updates the dynamic offset, like you'd expect.

It is not so much the inset/outset aspect as it is trying to get a shape that looks like the inside is filled and the contours resemble the outlines of the letters as in the 5 image from the top. The best that I get with inset/outset is this. Now the edge contours are doing what I want but the inside subsequent layers should not be visible at all if you see what I mean.


Edit By using the Gimp I was able to create a somewhat inline contour fill, but when I dynamic offset the subsequent shapes have rounded edges instead of sharp edges. Is there a way to do a dynamic offset so that you can control whether the edge is rounded or sharp like in the stroke settings?

EditAccording to this bug report I have to use outset directly in order to have sharp corners.

It looks like you've used a different font for the brass-coloured text than you did for the rest of the drawing - which is one obvious explaination for why they don't line up. Are they the same font?

which is one obvious explaination for why they don't line up. Are they the same font?

Not sure I follow what you mean they are supposed to be just a bunch of offsets with the only difference being the first 4 part of the text and the remaining four are just "inline contours" of the text. They don't line up?

We agree that the only thing that doesn't line up is the brass-coloured text, yes? Just to clarify that we're looking at the same thing - ignoring the brass-coloured text the rest of the drawing works perfectly.

Look at the letter "E" on the brass-coloured text - take particular notice of the bottom-right of the E and how the decoration slopes to the right. Now compare that part of the "E" on the respective "E" on outset text - it doesn't slope, instead it's perfectly straight. This gives me the impression the brass-coloured text is a different font to what has been used for the rest of the drawing.

I'm sorry I can't provide visual aids - I don't have the tools handy at the moment.

Here are the steps I would use to create this effect.
1. Create your base text object. In the initial post this is the legible text with the metallic gold gradient fill.
2. Duplicate the base text. Convert duplicate to path. Inset path. Duplicate this. Offset duplicate by going down and right a few bumps. Select the two paths and do path difference. Fill with a light color. This creates the highlight, which in the initial post is the top-most object.
3. Duplicate the base text again. Convert to path and do outset. Change fill to black. This is the third object from the top in the initial post.
4. Duplicate the object in step 3 and do a path outset. Change fill to grey. This is the fourth object in initial post.
5. Duplicage the object in step 4 and do path outset. Change fill to black. This is (surprise) the fifth object in the initial post.
6. Duplicate the object in step 5 and do a path outset. Fill with the metallic gold gradient fill. This is the sixth object in the initial post. (Only one more to go, yay!)
7. Duplicate the object in step 6 and do a path outset. Fill with black. Duplicate and then offset the duplicate by moving down and right a few clicks. Select both of the objects in this step and perform effects->generate from path->interpolate with exponent 0, steps ~50, method 1. Change the stroke to grey to make it look like the seventh object in the initial post, however the final product looks like they switched that grey to black.
8. Assemble your masterpiece by grabbing each object in reverse order and bumping each successive one to the top before aligning them. Object 6 and object 7 should just about align with the left and top edges, all other objects can align centers with object 6.

Here's my result with this method. I was just doing a quick and dirty version, so I didn't use the fancy gradients, but I think you can see that the result is similar.

SVG here: http://files.myopera.com/llogg/files/texteffecttesting.svg
Just for grins I did one with a crummy gold gradient. Not happy with the coloring and I probably could have done two outsets on each step, but anyway, you get the idea I'm sure:

llogg;

That works pretty well! Thanks for sharing!

loosely followed your steps and made this:

Thanks for the suggestions which worked. I was mainly concerned with having an effective way to reproduce the "inline contour fill" with some sort of precision.

Its seems the only way to accurately reproduce the effect with precision would be to take and duplicate your text add a stroke for the exact contour width and then convert the stroke to path and remove the inner part of the object thus giving you "inline contour fill". With the suggestions I came up with this

darthgimp: that looks great! What tweaks did you add? I really like the highlights you ended up with.

capnhud: that looks good. it's missing the sort of 3d effect of the original but looks good nonetheless. I believe that "inline contour" from the original tutorial is the same as "convert to path" in inkscape.

capnhud wrote:Its seems the only way to accurately reproduce the effect with precision would be to take and duplicate your text add a stroke for the exact contour width and then convert the stroke to path and remove the inner part of the object thus giving you "inline contour fill". With the suggestions I came up with this

Overlapping two clones of the text and applying a difference would be easier. I was suggesting you could use Clip to keep it editable, but it would be alittle clumsy since you need to clip the inside of the text, not the outside.

Hi,

I am a very basic user of Inkscape, just started the other day. I'm trying to create some text for a simple logo and the outset command seems to be doing strange things that I can't understand. When I convert text to a path then outset it distorts the text completely. I tried checking llog's testing file and it opens up looking strange too, not how he posted it. I have tried adding more nodes to the text before outsetting, but the outset just reduces the number of nodes back to the minimum for normal text.

Mine looks like this:


I'm hoping this is just a simple setting somewhere that I don't know about.

Thanks everyone.

Oops,

I meant to say, I specifically want a uniform thickness border around some text. I know that I don't have the font that llog used to create his example, but the border (or more correctly the outset path) around each colour element of his example isn't uniform anymore.

For example:

When I convert text to a path then outset it distorts the text completely.

I ran into the same problem using outset. Try this instead
1. Write your text
2. Convert text to path
3. Duplicate the text
4. Dynamic offset the duplicate (use the and hold CTRL to maintain proportions).
5. If you like the size of your dynamic offset convert to path the text again to finish.

I meant to say, I specifically want a uniform thickness border around some text.

1. Type some text.
2. Shift+Ctrl+F (Fill with desired color and no stroke fill)
3. Duplicate the text, then Shift+Ctrl+F (Fill the stroke with desired stroke width)
5. Lower to bottom (this is necessary because inkscape will stroke the text such that half of the width is inside the text and half is outside the text causing a reduction in the actual interior fill of the text.

capnhud,

Top man. That's it exactly.

Also note that using stroke (as capnhud has suggested) has the advantage that you can choose how you want the corners to behave (miter, round or bevel). By contrast, dynamic offset always uses round corners.

I don't know why outset is so bad though.

yeah, using dynamic offset seems to be the way to go, though in most instances I think the difference is going to be fairly subtle. good catch capnhud and sas.