InkscapeForum.com

@coatit

I answered your question on my website. In 0.47 when you make text a path for the first time, you'll have to combine it afterward if you want the entire text to be one path (like in 0.46). Moreover, the bezier envelope extension is specific. You have to make the first point of your path at the upper left and work around clockwise.

After installing the bezier envelope extentions I see this error when trying to apply. I am trying to follow heathenX on the daily times tutorial

[b]Inkscape has received additional data from the script executed.
The script did not return an error, but this may indicate the results will not be as expected.[/b]

[i]Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/bezierenvelope.py", line 351, in <module>
e.affect()
File "/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/inkex.py", line 207, in affect
self.effect()
File "/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/bezierenvelope.py", line 90, in effect
raise("Both letter and envelope must be SVG paths.")
TypeError: exceptions must be classes or instances, not str[/i]

Any help would be cool

Thanks

Every tutorial is useful, don't regret making it!

I guess you need to right-click on the .inx link and choose Save Link as, it just opens it otherwise.

I think some coding standards changed for extensions in 0.47 so they don't work in 0.46.

Having trouble downloading the .inx file. I keep getting this message:
<_name>Wireframe Sphere il.wireframesphere wireframe_sphere.py inkex.py simplestyle.py simpletransform.py 19 24 35 4 100.0 false all

Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

Edit: nevermind, got it.

This works incredibly well 0.47. Can not be used in 0.46, apparently. If I had known somebody smart was going to work on this I never would have spent all that time on the tutorial. Thanks for this, inductiveload.

Are the latitude lines equally spaced from pole to pole? For example, if I say I want 5 latitude lines, then are they at

60 S, 30S, equator, 30N and 60 N?

Bonus points for an option to specify them in degree increments. :D

Thanks. Ah ... the .inx file was attached to the bug report, too. Wonderful!

It appears that you don't need to start with a circle. Very nice.

@llogg and @Kjohrf

You'll need both the .inx and .py files. Place those in your extensions directory and restart Inkscape. The extension can be found in Inkscape's Extension menu>Render>Wireframe Sphere. It works great. :)

Ah... Looks like I put it in the wrong place. It goes in share/extensions? But it needs a .inx file to describe it?

[quote="Guest"]Hi all,

I wrote an extension to render wire-frame spheres, which may help you with this kind of thing. Read all about it at the Launchpad report: [url]https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/461964[/url]

Summary of capabilities here: [url]http://launchpadlibrarian.net/34456048/Wireframe%20sphere%20tutorial.svg[/url][/quote]

This looks great!

Two questions...

1) Now that I have the .py file, how do I install it? I put it in the python/Lib directory. Do I do something else? I'm on WinXP if that matters.

2) To use the extension, do I make a circle, select it, then run the extension?

That really looks perfect. Can't wait to try it. Anyway to add it without waiting for it to be included in an official release?

[quote="Guest"]Hi all,

I wrote an extension to render wire-frame spheres, which may help you with this kind of thing. Read all about it at the Launchpad report: [url]https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/461964[/url]

Summary of capabilities here: [url]http://launchpadlibrarian.net/34456048/Wireframe%20sphere%20tutorial.svg[/url][/quote]

That is absolutely [b]brilliant[/b]! Can't wait to try it out. Now I don't have to figure it out for myself. Thank-you very much. :)

Hi all,

I wrote an extension to render wire-frame spheres, which may help you with this kind of thing. Read all about it at the Launchpad report: [url]https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/461964[/url]

Summary of capabilities here: [url]http://launchpadlibrarian.net/34456048/Wireframe%20sphere%20tutorial.svg[/url]

[quote="Kjohrf"]When I do the Grid in step 5 of Part I, the horzizontal grid lines show up below and to the right of the square.[/quote]SInce you are using 0.47pre you have other possibilities to construct a grid:[list=a]
[*]Use the extension 'Render > Cartesian Grid'. Has tons of options…
[*]draw a rectangle as first upper right corner of the grid and apply the Path Effect 'Construct grid'. You can resize it 'Live' and alter the number of columns and rows. Once you have it adjusted, use 'Path > Object to Path' to get a regular grid.[/list]
hth, ~suv

Hmm.. When I do the Grid in step 5 of Part I, the horzizontal grid lines show up below and to the right of the square. Is this a new bug? Oh - it was reported quite a while ago. :(

[quote="hellocatfood"]I've finished the tutorial on making a disco ball using Blender and Inkscape together. [url=http://www.hellocatfood.com/2009/10/01/making-a-disco-ball-using-blender-and-inkscape/]Take a look[/url].

I hope it's useful![/quote]
that's fantastic. I'll have to give it a whirl this evening and see if I can make some headway in Blender.

[quote="hellocatfood"]I've finished the tutorial on making a disco ball using Blender and Inkscape together. [url=http://www.hellocatfood.com/2009/10/01/making-a-disco-ball-using-blender-and-inkscape/]Take a look[/url].

I hope it's useful![/quote]

Excellent! ;)

I've finished the tutorial on making a disco ball using Blender and Inkscape together. [url=http://www.hellocatfood.com/2009/10/01/making-a-disco-ball-using-blender-and-inkscape/]Take a look[/url].

I hope it's useful!

@llogg

Your steps look pretty good. The second to the last image looks right on to me. Unfortunately, I still haven't had time to play with spheres. Too buried in work. Story of my life. :cry:

Did a few further experiments with focusing on the interpolate function.
[img]http://files.myopera.com/llogg/files/meridiansandparallels.png[/img]
Sorry if the image is a little big. The top row is trying to get the parallels. I started with the circle, converted to path and added nodes until I had 32 equidistant nodes. I then subtracted nodes to end up with the bottom path on the far left. I then duplicated it and resized proportionately down to get the top path on the left. Selecting these two paths and doing effects>generate from path>interpolate I did a series of experiments by changing the exponent value in the interpolate dialog. The numbers correspond to the exponent used for the same colored result. The exponent for a perfect semicircle is between 1.2 and 1.3 but we only get two significant digits.

The bottom row is getting the meridians. I took a semicircle path and a straight line path and did interpolate (exponent zero). Then duplicated this and combined them to get the center path. Then duplicated, rotated, and combined to get the right hand path.

I'm about out of ideas on how to get the parallels, so I'd appreciate any suggestions.

@llogg

I am an engineer in "real life" and in one of my drafting classes in school I was taught a way to make meridian lines on a sphere by projecting circles and lines from a top view or front view. Of course that was nearly 15-20 years ago. I wish I could remember how to do it since it would come in handy now. I have a feeling that it is not that difficult to do. Everything now seems automatic so trying to understand how one would go about making these manually has been tricky.

PS. Meridians, parallels, not sure of the proper terminology but I think you know what I mean anyway.

thanks, hellocatfood.

heathenx -- I just had an idea on how to get the realism you're after. It's a bit more laborious but might work. When I get home I'll try it out and let you know how it goes. Basically, instead of using a grid you use evenly distributed lines and ellipses with the long axes perpendicular to your lines. Combine the ellipses and lines into one path then use that in your Bezier envelope.

edit -- didn't work. heathenx, you said "meridians" but I think you meant "meridians and parallels", right? You can use a group of parallel lines instead of a grid to make the meridians, but I'm having a hard time getting anything to work on making the parallels.

Oh crap, in my head I wrote about it.

I'll write up a short tutorial on how to do it.

As for learning Blender, these tutorials really helped me quite a bit [url]http://www.youtube.com/user/super3boy[/url]

hellocatfood -- nice looking disco ball. I followed your link but only got the text tutorial. Did you mean just going from blender to inkscape generically or did you actually have a tutorial about your disco ball from blender to inkscape? I'll admit I've never managed to get off square one with Blender. It just confuses the heck out of me to where I don't even know where to begin.

heathenx -- Thanks for looking. I really have learned a great deal from all your screencasts and I hope you keep it up. If you find a more realistic way of dividing up a sphere I'd love to see it. As you can probably tell from the way all my images suffer from terrible lighting issues, I tend to think almost strictly 2D, so I'd probably wear such a feature out using it as a crutch for my own poor visuospatial understanding.

Thanks for the tutorial llogg. :)

I was actually thinking about making this a screencast topic the other day since this has been a topic of interest from some of our viewers. I may just point them here instead. I'm actually interested in other ways to make meridian lines on a globe or sphere. Seems like a properly scaled series of ellipses with a little perspective added would give it a bit of realism and something a little more accurate, at least along the lines of hellocatfood's Blender model. As soon as I can muster some time I'll post back here with my findings.

I read a lot of Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials where the authors have used the extrude or revolve tool. Would that be great if Inkscape had a powerful tool like that? I know I'd use the heck out of that thing. ;)

Great tutorial!

I achieved a similar effect as the bezier envelope extension awhile back by exporting a sphere made in Blender to Inkscape.

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellocatfood/3798815503/][img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2535/3798815503_5d53c7bc2e_m.jpg[/img][/url]
I wrote a [url=http://www.hellocatfood.com/2009/08/16/blending-inkscape-and-blender/]short tutorial[/url] about this recently

Might be a bit overkill to suggest learning Blender, but might work better for some people