Illustration Tutorials and Advice Superthread

Alvar_13

Alvar_13

Krall said:
I'd love to help, but I have no idea what you're talking about I'm afraid. :eek:

What do you mean by putting things "on patch"?
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Under the text selection there is a option called text on patch, that simply buts text you used on the selected patch. I would like to know, how (if possible) to but stars, squares, circles etc on the patch.
 

Krall

Banned
King Alvar I said:
Under the text selection there is a option called text on patch, that simply buts text you used on the selected patch. I would like to know, how (if possible) to but stars, squares, circles etc on the patch.
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Oh - you mean "path", not "patch"!

As far as I know there's no way to put anything other than text on a path, and honestly I don't know why you'd want to - the only reason to put text on a path is so you can make the text curve and conform to that path, but that's not possible with shapes like stars, squares, etc.
 
Alvar_13

Alvar_13

Krall said:
Oh - you mean "path", not "patch"!

As far as I know there's no way to put anything other than text on a path, and honestly I don't know why you'd want to - the only reason to put text on a path is so you can make the text curve and conform to that path, but that's not possible with shapes like stars, squares, etc.
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Yes that's what I meant, I could find some text starts from the internet, if it's needed again.




But anyway thanks for the information, Krall.
 

Krall

Banned
Opunium said:
Maybe I am just stupid but... How do I underline text in Inkscape?:confused:
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I don't think there's a specific "underline" tool/option, like there is for bolding and italics, but you can draw a line and put a piece of text on it (by selecting the text and the path, then use the "Put text on path" function under the "Text" drop-down menu) or position it near the text to simulate underlining.
 
Opunium

Opunium

Krall said:
I don't think there's a specific "underline" tool/option, like there is for bolding and italics, but you can draw a line and put a piece of text on it (by selecting the text and the path, then use the "Put text on path" function under the "Text" drop-down menu) or position it near the text to simulate underlining.
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Strange, but thanks any way :)

I have another question too, I am currently using LSCatilina's tutorial and am at the 'draw province names curved' part. But I dont seem to understand/get it. Can you (or anybody else) explain it to me?
 

Usili

As a question regarding Inkscape for the 'border' aspect, if say it is a large amount of land contiguous, and no way to stop around, is there some way to leave the lines like they are, or do you basically have to go all the way around fully to trace it all up?
 
Opunium

Opunium

Usili said:
As a question regarding Inkscape for the 'border' aspect, if say it is a large amount of land contiguous, and no way to stop around, is there some way to leave the lines like they are, or do you basically have to go all the way around fully to trace it all up?
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I can just draw lines yes (I dont have to complete it in a circle).

EDIT: nevermind, I got it! Thanks anyway
 
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Opunium

Opunium

My last question beofre I finish my map! How do I put a border around text? (Putting a white border around black text makes it easier to read when the text crosses borders).
 

Krall

Banned
Usili said:
As a question regarding Inkscape for the 'border' aspect, if say it is a large amount of land contiguous, and no way to stop around, is there some way to leave the lines like they are, or do you basically have to go all the way around fully to trace it all up?
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I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean - could you elaborate, or upload a screenshot of what you're trying to do?

Opunium said:
Strange, but thanks any way :)

I have another question too, I am currently using LSCatilina's tutorial and am at the 'draw province names curved' part. But I dont seem to understand/get it. Can you (or anybody else) explain it to me?
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One of your posts indicates that you might've figured this out already, but in case you didn't, what you need to do is draw a curved line with the Bezier Curves tool (the pen), then select both the curve and the text, and use the "Put text on path" option from under the Text drop-down menu. You can change the length and curve of the path after putting the text on it and the text will change to conform to the path.

The text's alignment (it can be aligned to the left, middle, or right by selecting it, going to the Text tool and clicking the align buttons that appear at the top of the screen) determines where on the path it goes - generally I align the text to the middle, so it's at the centre of the path. Note that you'll need to align the text to the middle before you add it to the path, as if it's aligned to the left (which it is by default) and you change it to be aligned to the middle after adding it to the path Inkscape will decide that the leftmost point of the path is the middle, and thus only show half of the text on the path for some reason.

Opunium said:
My last question beofre I finish my map! How do I put a border around text? (Putting a white border around black text makes it easier to read when the text crosses borders).
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If you just want a thin outline then you can just select the text, go to the Fill and Stroke dialog (Ctrl+Shift+F) and add a stroke to it by going to the stroke tab and clicking the blue square. If you want a thicker border the best method is to copy the text and paste it in place (Ctrl+Alt+V or "Paste in place" from the Edit drop-down menu), then move the copy behind the original text with Page Down or End. With the copy still selected, go to the Fill and Stroke dialog (Ctrl+Shift+F) and add a stroke. The way strokes work is that they radiate from the edge of the shape, but they radiate outward and inward equally - so it can cover up part of the shape itself, which is particularly noticable on text. But by making a copy and moving it back the text itself stays the same and only the outward part of the stroke is shown around it. As only half of the stroke is shown the width of the visible part is half of the actual thickness of the stroke - so if you want an outline of 1 pixel, make the stroke 2 pixels thick. I'd also advise going to the Stroke style tab and making the "Join" type the middle, rounded type, as otherwise the stroke deals with sharp angles by making a big spike or just sorta stopping once it gets to the point of the angle, but with rounded joins it makes a consistent curve around them.

I hope I explained that in a way that made sense. :eek:
 

Nanwe

Working on the map for MotF, Inkscape is lagging so much it take me ages to trace a river (or do anything else, rly), any advice?
 
Alvar_13

Alvar_13

Nanwe said:
Yeah, it's just Inkscape.
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Then I don't know what could you do, but if you have file saved you could restart either Inkscape or computer.

I'm just trying to help but I don't know stuff myself. But if your image size is pretty large it might be slower than usual, it has happened to me with oversized images.
 

Krall

Banned
Wendell said:
Is there a Paint.NET tutorial floating around?
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Ravenclaw said:
Is there a tutorial for how to do Wikipedia infoboxes?
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In both cases, not that I'm aware of I'm afraid. I've also never done either of these (well, I use Paint.NET, but I've never made a map only using Paint.NET), so I probably can't provide any advice on either.

There are AH.commers who make maps solely in Paint.NET, and of course there are AH.commers who make Wikipedia infoboxes, but I don't think they frequent this thread. You might have better luck posting in the map thread/alternate Wikipedia infoboxes thread respectively.

Nanwe said:
Working on the map for MotF, Inkscape is lagging so much it take me ages to trace a river (or do anything else, rly), any advice?
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Ah, Inkscape tends to do that if you're making a complicated and detailed map, due to all the path nodes it's got to keep track of. The only way to actually reduce the lag would be to remove path nodes, which I assume you'd rather not do.

You could open your basemap image in a new file without all the bits you've already traced and trace the rivers separately in there, then copy the rivers and paste them in place (there's an option for that under the Edit menu, alternatively "Ctrl + Alt + V" works too) in the original file. It'll still take a while to copy and paste the rivers over, but you'd be able to draw them without any lag at least.

Edit: One other thing I will note is that - for some reason - if you zoom in then move your view Inkscape starts to lag more than if you just zoomed out and zoomed back in. I don't know why that happens, but if you zoom out and zoom in when you want to change your field of view instead of scrolling whilst zoomed in it can prevent a significant amount of lag in more laggy files. :)
 
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Nanwe

Krall said:
In both cases, not that I'm aware of I'm afraid. I've also never done either of these (well, I use Paint.NET, but I've never made a map only using Paint.NET), so I probably can't provide any advice on either.

There are AH.commers who make maps solely in Paint.NET, and of course there are AH.commers who make Wikipedia infoboxes, but I don't think they frequent this thread. You might have better luck posting in the map thread/alternate Wikipedia infoboxes thread respectively.



Ah, Inkscape tends to do that if you're making a complicated and detailed map, due to all the path nodes it's got to keep track of. The only way to actually reduce the lag would be to remove path nodes, which I assume you'd rather not do.

You could open your basemap image in a new file without all the bits you've already traced and trace the rivers separately in there, then copy the rivers and paste them in place (there's an option for that under the Edit menu, alternatively "Ctrl + Alt + V" works too) in the original file. It'll still take a while to copy and paste the rivers over, but you'd be able to draw them without any lag at least.

Edit: One other thing I will note is that - for some reason - if you zoom in then move your view Inkscape starts to lag more than if you just zoomed out and zoomed back in. I don't know why that happens, but if you zoom out and zoom in when you want to change your field of view instead of scrolling whilst zoomed in it can prevent a significant amount of lag in more laggy files. :)
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Thanks! I think I'll do that I guess, my only fear is that I'll have to do that for every extra detail of the map :/
 
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