Page 7

Glass Corn — A Mini Tutorial




	Soquili, who is a frequent contributor to the Xara Conference and Xara Gallery Conference came up with what he calls a Corn Brush to create a mouthwatering ear of corn. It was pretty impressive. Your editor, who also is a frequent visitor and contributor to the Xara Conference, felt obliged to translate Soquili's corn brush into glass. Here is a bonus Mini-Tutorial on how it was done. This tutorial assumes some familiarity with Xara X. 1. Create a small 40 x 60 pixel rectangle and round the corners to 0.7. Apply a 3-color Linear Fill using the colors shown. 2. Apply an Elliptical, Mix Transparency. Drag the center of the transparency down a bit. 3. Add a small white ellipse for a highlight. 4. Add a Mix, Linear Transparency to the highlight. (Just like the GEL buttons). 5. Create and center two circles, 110 pixels and 106 pixels in diameter. Use Copy and Paste Attributes, to Copy the fill from step two and apply it to the large circle. Change the fill type to Conical . Copy the fill and elliptical transparency and apply it to the smaller circle. Clone the small circle (Ctrl K) and Combine Shapes > Subtract Shapes with the large circle.

6. Group the small rectangle and its highlight and center it over the two circles. Click twice to enable rotate/skew mode. Drag the rotation bulls eye to the center of the two circles.

Rotate and duplicate the rectangle in 30 degree steps around the circles. (Drag one of the rotation handles and press the right mouse button to drop the duplicate).

7. Here is the result. Group all the elements and reduce to 70%.

NOTE: Xara supports transparency in brush shapes which is not always known but is a powerful feature.

Select the Freehand Tool. From the Stroke Shapes drop down list, select the Cigar stroke. (Let your cursor rest over the stroke shapes for a few seconds and a tool tip will appear with the stroke names).

Draw a wavy line about 250 pixels wide.


	Select the grouped, glass objects with the Freehand Tool. On the Infobar, press Create Brush. Name your new brush and press OK. Using the Freehand Tool, elect the line you created and then from the Existing Brush drop down list, select your new brush to apply it to the line.

You will have two or three corn shapes on the line.

The stroked line is shown as an example only. The actual path will not show.

NOTE: Xara's Mark Goodall informed your editor (me) that using a brush stroke shape lets you add a shape to your brush pattern. If we did not use the stroke shape all our corn brush patterns would be the same size. The Cigar shape, causes the final corn image to taper at both ends. A tip of the TIP hat to Mark for that breakthrough tip.

Select the Freehand Tool . Click the corn path and then press Edit Brush on the Infobar. Reduce the Spacing setting to about 10 so that the rows of corn look realistic. You might need to increase or decrease this number.

In the Scaling tabbed section, increase the Pressure setting to 50%. Increasing the Pressure setting increases the tapered effect.

And as quick as you can say Bob's your Uncle, here's your glass corn. Neat effect, huh? Looks pretty convincing if you ask me.

So, another WebXealot comes to an end. Did you learn anything? Was the material presented clearly enough? Your editor (old gray haired Moi) would like to hear from you. Please use the form on the next page to let me know these WebXealots are serving some useful purpose. OK? Thanks.