I've only discovered Inkscape over the last couple of weeks - it's extremely addictive.

I hope someone can help me. I've drawn an old style football/soccer ball. I just used an ellipse for the outside of the ball and the bezier tool to draw the outline of the curved panels inside the ball. I specifically left the fill "no paint"/"none" so that when I put it on a tshirt all that you will see is the outline (the stroke) and the colour of the tshirt underneath will form the "fill" of the curved panels inside the ball.

Here is a link to the SVG file old style football

What I want to do is "invert" it so that when I put it on a tshirt, the colour of the tshirt underneath will form the outline (ellipse for the outside of the ball and the outline of the curved panels inside the ball) and the curved panels inside the ball will now be solid fill.

Is there a quick way to do this, maybe using the Path>Difference function... or do I have to redraw each panel individually?

My apologies if this is a basic question and/or if it has been asked/answered before.

cheers
Richard
NZ

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

What I want to do is "invert" it so that when I put it on a tshirt, the colour of the tshirt underneath will form the outline (ellipse for the outside of the ball and the outline of the curved panels inside the ball) and the curved panels inside the ball will now be solid fill.

Is there a quick way to do this, maybe using the Path>Difference function... or do I have to redraw each panel individually?

Yes, it can be done fairly quickly. There are probably a few different ways to approach this problem, and I suspect someone else will come up with a better way than mine. But this is what I'm thinking....well, first, I need to clarify something. If the t-shirt color will be the outline, then the rest of the shirt will have to be another color, right? So will that just be a large rectangle or something? Actually I can't think of a way to describe it, but I can think of a couple of general effects based on your description..... Ok, I'll do a couple of illustratiions, and be right back....

Ok, the shirt on the left is how I understand that you've drawn the first version. (I didn't want to draw a soccer ball, because it would take me too long. So peace sign instead ) I wasn't sure from your description if you wanted something like the middle t-shirt or the one on the right, for your 2nd version. And the instructions would be different. And I'm just assuming you'd use a rectangle for the other color. You may actually have something else in mind. So anyway, let us know which you had in mind and we'll offer some suggestions



Or did I miss the mark entirely?

Brynn, thanks for your prompt and considered response.

brynn wrote:....well, first, I need to clarify something. If the t-shirt color will be the outline, then the rest of the shirt will have to be another color, right? So will that just be a large rectangle or something?

I'm sorry but my original instructions weren't clear and have led you astray. The rest of the shirt won't "just be a large rectangle". Bascially I just want the curved panels inside the ball to be solid fill.

So if we take the first tshirt you drew - the shirt on the left - I just want the four internal segments of the peace sign to be solid fill. I can see that with the peace sign it would be easy enough to just draw the four internal segments separately but with more complex designs like this other old style football I have drawn here:- another old style football it would be simpler/quicker if you could just "invert" it FROM the ellipse around the ball + the bezier tool lines inside the ball being solid (the panels inside the ball having no fill) TO the panels inside the ball being solid (the ellipse around the ball + the bezier tool lines inside the ball having no fill), without having to draw each individual panel separately.

My apologies for the confusion - I can see that all three of the tshirts you drew Brynn could be correct intepretations of my original post.

Thanks for your patience.

Hhmm....well, part of the problem was me, and not being able to see your images. But I've switched browsers, and now can see the drawings. I was thinking....well, differently, obviously.

But I'm still not sure I understand. If you remove the color from the ellipse and paths, it will disappear, unless you have another color somewhere, to contrast. I do suspect that you can use the same ellipse and/or paths to do what you want. That part I'm not worried about.

You want to add color to the panels, and remove the color from the lines? Ok, I think I understand now. Is this it?



Here are the steps, using that exact drawing:

1 - Duplicate the drawing (to save an original copy, just in case ).
2 - Ungroup.
3 - Select just the ellipse, duplicate, applly a fill color and remove the stroke.
4 - Do Path menu > Object to path
5 - While it's still selected, send it to the bottom.
6 - Select all your original 6 objects and do Path menu > Combine.
7 - To that result, do Path menu > Stroke to path
8 - There should be no stroke on this new path, but double check, and remove any stroke if you find one.
9 - Select everything, then Path menu > Difference.

As I mentioned before, others might find a better way to accomplish this. But that would be my approach (assuming I've finally understood ).

brynn wrote:If you remove the color from the ellipse and paths, it will disappear, unless you have another color somewhere, to contrast.

The coloured tshirt underneath will be the contrasting colour.

brynn wrote:Here are the steps, using that exact drawing:

1 - Duplicate the drawing (to save an original copy, just in case ).
2 - Ungroup.
3 - Select just the ellipse, duplicate, applly a fill color and remove the stroke.
4 - Do Path menu > Object to path
5 - While it's still selected, send it to the bottom.
6 - Select all your original 6 objects and do Path menu > Combine.
7 - To that result, do Path menu > Stroke to path
8 - There should be no stroke on this new path, but double check, and remove any stroke if you find one.
9 - Select everything, then Path menu > Difference.

Wow!! This appears to be it!! Trying to do this has driven me crazy over the last couple of days. An internet search shows that there's quite a few people whom seem to be struggling with the same issue, ie "how to make stroke dissappear", "how to make stroke invisible" etc

When I was doing it by myself I can now see that I was struggling at your steps 7 and 8 - I think that when everything disappeared at step 8 it confused me. I am still coming to terms with Path > Combine, Stroke to Path, Object to Path etc

I can't thank you enough for the time you've put into this. We can chalk it up as a win for US - Kiwi relations.

It still astounds me that such a powerful piece of software is available for free - and people are available/willing to offer advice like Brynn's above.


cheers
Richard

Awesome and you're welcome. I like to try and help others in return for the help I've received. Plus I keep learning so much
I'm just glad I finally understood the question. I can see where that would be a very common procedure for t-shirt designs.

how about just swap fill and stroke? which you can do either the long way through fill/stroke dialog or the right click shortcut way.
or maybe even one of the alpha image filters

chriswww, thanks for giving this some thought.

I can remember at the time trying the “swap fill and stroke” function – but it didn’t do what you’d think it would. I also played around with the alpha image filters.

The trick is Brynn’s suggestion above – it’s almost like using my original design as a “stencil” to cut through a solid object below. Looking at Brynn’s instructions again I realise I would never have got there on my own – the whole path, combine, difference, object to path, stroke to path etc still confuses the heck out of me.

Other Inkscape conundrums which I’ve managed to find solutions to include:

The angles/points on some of my drawings were blunt. By selecting the drawing and choosing Object>Fill and Stroke>Stroke style and then increasing the Miter limit made them pointy again.

I couldn’t work out why after using the Path>Combine function it would only fill some sections of my drawing with colour and not others. The problem was that the subpaths of the various sections weren’t all going in the same direction – so it was just a simple question of choosing the node tool and changing the direction of the offending subpaths using shift+r so that they were all going in the same direction.

I realise that this is probably basic stuff for most people but I’d thought I’d record it here in case others were struggling with the same problems.

i didn't realize until recently that paths had direction. so that's good info.
about the cutout and combine type operations...i still get surprised sometimes by the results, but for the most part the learning of CSG operations for creating objects in povray program, seem to work similarly. it's good fun creating fairly complex objects from primitives. i found (and lost) a website url that explained how to do CSG operations (which i think also applies to inkscape) with regard to object boundaries. for a simple example: you add two objects together making sure they have overlap, so you get a proper solid. there's similar helpful rules for cutout operations etc.