Vector Graphics Discussion (split)

[Ranger M]

Heh. Curiously enough, this was one thing I wanted to mention to Thrawn. This specific thing, you are doing correctly. Some of your lines might be a little wiggly, which just comes from human hands shaking as they do, but you are doing pretty much everything else related to creating your lines in the correct manner.

yay!

The shakiness can be alleviated by either using vector tools to make the lines, or drawing at a higher resolution than the final size (suggested to be at least 3x). I've done a bit of both - Li'sar was "inked" with vector lines, and Konrad was "inked" with the brush tool. Some of my old ones were inked with real, physical ink, but that can eat a lot of time, and doesn't look as good as the digital variety, IMO. If you do physically ink the drawing, you'd need to touch it up with the brush tool on the computer anyways.

This confuses me a bit, what are vectors? I did a bit of searching in GIMP and found something that creates 'paths' is that them?

[Thrawn]

The shakiness can be alleviated by either using vector tools to make the lines, or drawing at a higher resolution than the final size (suggested to be at least 3x). I've done a bit of both - Li'sar was "inked" with vector lines, and Konrad was "inked" with the brush tool. Some of my old ones were inked with real, physical ink, but that can eat a lot of time, and doesn't look as good as the digital variety, IMO. If you do physically ink the drawing, you'd need to touch it up with the brush tool on the computer anyways.

This confuses me a bit, what are vectors? I did a bit of searching in GIMP and found something that creates 'paths' is that them?

The simple line tool, I believe is the "vector" thing. A vector is just a line, and in phyiscs with a direction.

[Ranger M]

The simple line tool, I believe is the "vector" thing. A vector is just a line, and in physics with a direction.

You mean holding down shift so that a straight line is drawn from where you last clicked and where your mouse is now?

Whenever I have used that in the past it has made images look, blocky and angular , very angular.

However I get the feeling that Jetryl was referring to straight lines, so you are probably right.

[Darth Fool]

vectors in this context are a way of describing images in a scale independent way. For linux a simple free vector editor is xfig. Gimp doesn't(didn't) have any real vector editing, although I believe reading a rumor that they were going to add it in the next release, so maybe it is in by now. Vector graphics are more than just straight lines, typically you can define circles, curves, and all sorts of other stuff. For another example of vector graphics, look up scalable vector graphics on google.

[Ranger M]

I had a look at both scalable vector graphics and vector graphics and they seemed to be different things for some reason.

however I think that it has something to do with using a tool to generate a curve for you.

although Darth Fools post seemed to be more along the lines of the lines on the edge of a image not scaling when you scale the image.

I may be wrong though, so If I am could somebody say, and I'll read it deeper and try to get a better idea.

[Hender]

Inkscape: Excellent SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) tool for Windows and Loonix! That's what made all of these babies, and far more!

It takes some getting used to, but after a while you become sooo comfortable with it and it's sooo neat to make vector graphics!

A full-fledged vector tool like Inkscape is better for vectors than Photoshop, IMHO. You can export it as a bitmap and colour it in Photoshop later.

Of course, it's useless for pixel art.

[scott]

I had a look at both scalable vector graphics and vector graphics and they seemed to be different things for some reason.

however I think that it has something to do with using a tool to generate a curve for you.

although Darth Fools post seemed to be more along the lines of the lines on the edge of a image not scaling when you scale the image.

I may be wrong though, so If I am could somebody say, and I'll read it deeper and try to get a better idea.

Vector graphics is a very general term.

SVG is a file format containing vector graphics.

Oh and by the way, this thread was split from the elf portrait thread.

[Ranger M]

Inkscape: Excellent SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) tool for Windows and Loonix! That's what made all of these babies, and far more!

It takes some getting used to, but after a while you become sooo comfortable with it and it's sooo neat to make vector graphics!

A full-fledged vector tool like Inkscape is better for vectors than Photoshop, IMHO. You can export it as a bitmap and colour it in Photoshop later.

Of course, it's useless for pixel art.

Thanks, I'll download it and get my dad to install it over the weekend.

[Hender]

Inkscape: Excellent SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) tool for Windows and Loonix! That's what made all of these babies, and far more!

It takes some getting used to, but after a while you become sooo comfortable with it and it's sooo neat to make vector graphics!

A full-fledged vector tool like Inkscape is better for vectors than Photoshop, IMHO. You can export it as a bitmap and colour it in Photoshop later.

Of course, it's useless for pixel art.

Thanks, I'll download it and get my dad to install it over the weekend.

Hope you like it! That way I can feel less guilty about ruthlessly spamming the forums.

[Disto]

I have it don't worry, someone would of mentioned it at some time.

[jonadab]

A full-fledged vector tool like Inkscape is better for vectors than Photoshop, IMHO. You can export it as a bitmap and colour it in Photoshop later. ;)

Of course, it's useless for pixel art. :D

Besides being useless for small-scale pixel art such as Wesnoth sprites, it's also highly suboptimal for anything that needs significant shading. I don't know whether this is a limitation of Inkscape in particular or SVG in general, but gradients can only be applied either linearly, or radially. There is no way, for instance, to have splines control how the gradient is applied (like a height map with the gradient interpolated between the levels), or even to have plain old distance-from-edge application of gradients. So you end up with roughly N times as many objects as you really want, where N is the number of levels you want in your shading.

However, Inkscape is great for sketching out the general shape and overall appearance of something, in preparation for exporting to a bitmap and then painting over it in a pixel-based program like Gimp. Although, as a caveat, Inkscape is not nearly as old or mature as Gimp, which has implications for both its feature-completness and its stability.

[Quensul]

vectors in this context are a way of describing images in a scale independent way. For linux a simple free vector editor is xfig. Gimp doesn't(didn't) have any real vector editing, although I believe reading a rumor that they were going to add it in the next release, so maybe it is in by now. Vector graphics are more than just straight lines, typically you can define circles, curves, and all sorts of other stuff. For another example of vector graphics, look up scalable vector graphics on google.

As of at least 2.0, Gimp has limited vector support. You can create paths (Bezier paths, which allow you to control the curvature into and out of the point independently), which can then be stroked with any brush/spacing. Wercator uses this extensively to trace linear/perimeter terrains (coastlines, castles, roads, bridges, etc.).

It can import SVG files (as of 2.2 at least), although I haven't played with that much.

[tuco]

For the lucky linux users, you can even drag and drop a path from gimp into inkscape (from the path thumbnail). Unfortunately, it doesn't work on windows.

[Hender]

A full-fledged vector tool like Inkscape is better for vectors than Photoshop, IMHO. You can export it as a bitmap and colour it in Photoshop later.

Of course, it's useless for pixel art.

... I don't know whether this is a limitation of Inkscape in particular or SVG in general ...

Yup, it's a limitation of SVG.

Who knows what SVG 1.2, right around the corner, will bring, though?

[Skizzaltix]

GIMP 2.0 has Vector support? I had looked for it, but I never found it. I guess I didn't look hard enough!