I have been learning to make vector seamless tiles using the tutorial at http://www.verysimpledesigns.com/vector ... terns.html but after I clip the tile the selection box goes beyond the tile and not rap right up close around it as shown in the tutorial (last example in the "Clip The Tile" section of the tutorial).

This is what I get:


and not this:


So what am I doing wrong?

You probably have switched to geometric bounding box from visual one.

(Fill patterns do not have the gap issue since, and you could make it more streamlined that way, without clipping.)

The tutorial specifically says to use geometric bounding, I tried the visual box option and I end up with huge spaces between the clipped tile when I clone it. What is fill pattern, do you know of a tutorial that explains it? I would love to be able to make seamless tiles in an easier way with less steps.

Have you tried this extension? https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/item/1358/

Hi.

Made a quick screen capture here.
Check the video's description for the details.

(Used 0.921 in the process; some rendering glitches specific still present -disappearing object, pattern not updating without refreshing the zooming etc.)

Also on a side note the base tile could be way simpler if you not split it to four parts in the corner but having it in the centre -if possible; with the one pattern in the tutorial, it is.

^
I think what minky is asking is something different.

For some reason the bounding box of the tile seems to include the invisible parts of the ring patterns.
Note the verysimpledesigns tutorial is from 2010. So maybe the technique is dated.

Heres how i would do it:

1. define the tile size. Lets say its 120x120px.
2. draw one of those ringpatterns and place it on one of the corners.
3. now duplicate the ring and displace by the tilesize (120px).
4. repeat until every corner is covered by a ringpattern (meaning the displacement of the ring can be both, horizontially and vertically, but always 120px !).
5. place more elements inside the tile, wherever you want (meaning anywhere you like except where there would be overlap with the tile border).
6. select everything, group and clip with a square that has the same tilesize (120px)
7. check the result with a quick tiled clones (like 4x4)
8. when happy, convert the pattern into a patternfill (Object -> Pattern -> Object to pattern)
9. apply the patternfill to a new object. You will find it in the dropdown menu of the patternfill inside the Fill & Stroke dialogue
10. adjust the angle, size and placement of the patternfill with the Node Tool and the little handles that appear near the original tile.

Note instead of duplicates you can also do the offset elements with clones so that you could later enter the group and move the elements around, with all the clones following and maintaining the seamlessness of the pattern.

I had another look at the verysimpledesigns tutorial and Tav's Vine tutorial from the manual.

It seems the steps to change the tile in the XML editor, so a clipped pattern tiles correctly, was a bug that is now fixed.

I also made some tests converting a clipped pattern with, split between tiles, ornaments into a Patternfill and there were no rendering gaps.
Is this another bug that has been fixed ?

Thanks everyone for the help. I haven't tried the extension, maybe I'll give it a try.
Thanks Raspi for explaining how you would do it, I want to give it a try but I'm not sure what you mean by "displace"?

The bug they're talking about was fixed because I didn't get any gaps when I cloned the clipped tile. Anyway my problem was having trouble sizing and positioning the cloned tiles because the selection went past the visible object. I figured out (thanks to Lazur) that after I cloned the clipped tile and then changed the setting from "geometric bounding" to "visual bounding" I was able to size and position the clone exactly how I wanted.

minky wrote:Thanks Raspi for explaining how you would do it, I want to give it a try but I'm not sure what you mean by "displace"?

You could use the transform dialogue to displace ornamental elements by the exact tilesize.
See illustration:

The bug they're talking about was fixed because I didn't get any gaps when I cloned the clipped tile. Anyway my problem was having trouble sizing and positioning the cloned tiles because the selection went past the visible object. I figured out (thanks to Lazur) that after I cloned the clipped tile and then changed the setting from "geometric bounding" to "visual bounding" I was able to size and position the clone exactly how I wanted.

I can not confirm this. When i tile a clipped pattern with tiled clones, i still get rendering gaps in IS V.0.92.1.

However when i convert the clipped tile into a Patternfill, i get no rendering bugs.

Maybe thats because a patternfill is raster ?

Tiled clones still have the rendering gap issue. Slightly related article. Probably you don't see gaps because you are using a certain zoom level and your tiles are perfectly aligned to a pixel grid.

Again, you don't need clipping/unioning with the tile the four duplicants/clones in the corners this case. With a better arrangement, and with that kind of pattern, you can place two objects diagonally inside that square to have the same appearance.


Pattern fill is not raster because you can convert it back to the original vector objects and they scale right with no pixelation for every zoom level.

Lazur wrote:Tiled clones still have the rendering gap issue. Slightly related article. Probably you don't see gaps because you are using a certain zoom level and your tiles are perfectly aligned to a pixel grid. .

Are you talking about the Patternfill ?
I cant see any gaps whatever the zoomlevel is.

Again, you don't need clipping/unioning with the tile the four duplicants/clones in the corners this case. With a better arrangement, and with that kind of pattern, you can place two objects diagonally inside that square to have the same appearance.

Thats correct for this particular pattern, but the purpose of Tav's Vine tutorial (and the simpledesigns), is to show how to make seamless tiles for any kind of pattern.

Pattern fill is not raster because you can convert it back to the original vector objects and they scale right with no pixelation for every zoom level.

Are you sure about this ?
Maybe IS uses the stored vectorpattern as the blueprint for the raster pattern and tiles it.
You never have gaps when using patterns in Gimp !
So maybe thats a workaround Inkscape uses to make processor easy tilable patternfills ?


TBH, i still dont understand the rendering gap effect. Why does it occur, there is no antialising at the straight edges of a tile ?!

Raspi wrote:

Lazur wrote:Tiled clones still have the rendering gap issue. Slightly related article. Probably you don't see gaps because you are using a certain zoom level and your tiles are perfectly aligned to a pixel grid. .

Are you talking about the Patternfill ?
I cant see any gaps whatever the zoomlevel is.

No, was referring to this:

The bug they're talking about was fixed because I didn't get any gaps when I cloned the clipped tile.

I can not confirm this. When i tile a clipped pattern with tiled clones, i still get rendering gaps in IS V.0.92.1.

Raspi wrote:

you don't need clipping/unioning

Thats correct for this particular pattern, but the purpose of Tav's Vine tutorial (and the simpledesigns), is to show how to make seamless tiles for any kind of pattern.

You are right clipping can be used to generate tiles of any kind. As a general observation drawing solutions are the simpler the better.
Like this one uses masking and cloning to build up the base tile so the seam is fading between the tiles but browsers hardly render it right.

Raspi wrote:

Pattern fill is not raster because you can convert it back to the original vector objects and they scale right with no pixelation for every zoom level.

Are you sure about this ?
Maybe IS uses the stored vectorpattern as the blueprint for the raster pattern and tiles it.
You never have gaps when using patterns in Gimp !
So maybe thats a workaround Inkscape uses to make processor easy tilable patternfills?

Yes, I'm sure about this. Would require rasterization at every zoom level, which would cause serious lagging. Not exactly sure how they fixed this, Suv may have a better insight.

Raspi wrote:TBH, i still dont understand the rendering gap effect. Why does it occur, there is no antialising at the straight edges of a tile ?!

There souldn't be any visible effect of anti-aliasing if the seams are matching exactly with the pixel grid the image is rendered upon.
At a different zoom level you may not see any horizontal/vertical gaps at all.

Lazur wrote:Pattern fill is not raster because you can convert it back to the original vector objects and they scale right with no pixelation for every zoom level.

Are you sure about this ?
Maybe IS uses the stored vectorpattern as the blueprint for the raster pattern and tiles it.
You never have gaps when using patterns in Gimp !
So maybe thats a workaround Inkscape uses to make processor easy tilable patternfills?[/quote]

Yes, I'm sure about this. Would require rasterization at every zoom level, which would cause serious lagging. Not exactly sure how they fixed this, Suv may have a better insight.

Sounds plausible.

But why are tiled vectorpatterns with hundreds or thousands of nodes so heavy on the processor, while the same pattern as a Patternfill can be moved around easily ??

I sent suv a PM. Hopefully he/she can explain to us how it works.

Lazur wrote:Tiled clones still have the rendering gap issue. Slightly related article. Probably you don't see gaps because you are using a certain zoom level and your tiles are perfectly aligned to a pixel grid.

You're right, when I zoomed out I could see lines running through but when I saved it as an eps file and opened it in another program it was seamless no matter what size or zoom level. Exporting it as png also resulted in a seamless pattern.

minky wrote:saved it as an eps file and opened it in another program it was seamless no matter what size or zoom level. Exporting it as png also resulted in a seamless pattern.

Probably because the eps viewer didn't have anti-aliasing, like adobe acrobat on pdf-s.

Here is a way to make your patterns for use in Inkscape - this is an older version so not sure how much still applies:

http://www.silent9.com/blog/archives/14 ... scape.html

-Rob A>