Hey there...
At first i wanna say that im so happy for inkscape... What a feature-rich OS application...
One thing that i am having trouble with is making a nice inner bevel in other figures than a circle...

In this svg: http://www.floola.com/modules/wiwimod/img/icon/Floola-SVG.svg (not made by me) there is a layer called bevel mask with a very nice bevel... But how did he make that, and do you have other tips for me, making bevels??

I wanna show you some of my work when im done. Im making a pretty big site only designed in inkscape...

First he duplicated the blue shape in bevel mask layer with CTrL+D. Then he choose black for fill and stroke color for this shape and inceased its size a liitle more than the blue circle. He increased size to the bottom. Two circles are in the same size. Then he decreased the opacity of the circle to 80 in fill and stroke dialog. Finally he decreased the opacity of the bevel mask layer to 50.

There are too many ways to achieve this kind of effect. You can do this only by radial gradient. Duplicate the circle and create the same black circle as above. Choose no stroke color. Then choose radial gradient for fill color. Adjust radial gradient like, darken on the edges, transparent on the center. You should also reduce the dark gradient's opacity in the edges. Reduce opacity as you like.

He use a mask and filters to make that nice rounded bevel. If you select the object on the bevel level. You'll see it is labeled and a masked object. You can go to the object menu and do a >> mask >> release. To see the two paths he made it out of. He use a mask the same way you'd use a clip in most places. [Clip tells inkscape not to let the "clipped" path extend beyond the outline of the path it is clipped to. Clip is useful for cropping blur to the inside of path.] The person who made this use a mask like a clip. Possible because the object with the nice subtle shading was made using a filter (or just because they like masks, not sure). After you release the mask you can select the blurred path. Then go to the object menu (or the filter menu if you are using the developers version) and open filters with the blurred path selected. You will see a fairly complex set of filters that create the nice fuzzie blur.

http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/gal ... ffield.png
Screen shot of the mask function inkscpae. The mask only passes the image underneath it the masking path in the areas that are off black.


It's odd that whoever made this did not do a nice filter effect on the high light. It looks kind of out of place next to the other effects. You can do a quick and dirty (though no where as nice) bevel with clip. Duplicate the ellipse twice. On one of the ellipse 1) remove any fill, 2) set the stroke to black or dark color, 3) give it a blur and 4) offset it a bit towards your light source. Then select along with the other dupped ellipse. Make sure the non blurred ellipse is higher inteh z order. Clip them together via object >> clip >> set. You can add a gradient to the clip object after if you want.

http://ryanler.wordpress.com/2007/05/24 ... -tutorial/

You are right. He uses a 13 kind of filter effect to create this. Wait wait, ok. I am confused. He just used Filters-->Ridges-->Soft Ridge effect on a blue circle with black stroke. It is in the svn version but I don't know if it is present in version 0.46. It is very interesting. I would like to read about making of these masks using filter effects. I only use them for composite or drop shadow

There is detail here, but it's kind of obtuse detail. I haven't felt like slogging through it.
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/filters.html

Maybe someone else has a better link. All the stuff I've seen on it so far is either too simple to be useful or too raw.

I figured it out and edited my post. He uses Soft Ridge effect. Thank you for this information, Early Blake.

Ufuk_k wrote:You are right. He uses a 13 kind of filter effect to create this. Wait wait, ok. I am confused. He just used Filters-->Ridges-->Soft Ridge effect on a blue circle with black stroke. It is in the svn version but I don't know if it is present in version 0.46. It is very interesting. I would like to read about making of these masks using filter effects. I only use them for composite or drop shadow

That's odd it's dis-played better for me in 0.46 than in the developers version. I just look at the features in the developers version, because of the stability etc.