 |
free hosting image hosting hosting reseller online album e-shop famous people |  |
  |
||
|
free hosting image hosting hosting reseller online album e-shop famous people | |
|
||
Symmetric Vector Shapes
I credit Ron's Vector Logo tutorial for my being able to figure this out. I also credit Cathy of Cathy's Corner for teaching me the importance of centering the shape. (If there's already a tutorial for this, it's purely coincidental...believe me, I wish I would have known about it! *VBG*) This tutorial assumes an experienced vector knowledge; it's a quite tricky in a few parts, especially starting with step #9, so read carefully (perhaps reading it first, then trying it might be a good idea *S*). Please mail me for any clarifications or problems 8^) Please contact me for screenshots of the menu's if you are physically unable to perform keyboard shortcuts (it will take me while to find them all, as I don't use the menu if there's a keyboard shortcut *S*) 1. Draw out a vector shape; I'll be doing an ellipse in the screenshots. I HIGHLY recommend starting off with a very easy shape, and NOT trying to get fancy at first. That's why I chose a doodle based off the ellipse shape. I didn't even attempt the top and bottom examples until I practised this a lot 8^)
2. *Center your shape*
3. Go into NODE EDIT and edit your nodes on one side only; do not edit the top center and bottom center nodes. Feel free to add nodes, but only on the one side.
4. Add a node as close as you can get to your top center node. Repeat with the bottom center node.
5. Shift+click on the top and bottom ADDED nodes, and also the center node of the side you didn't edit. These 3 nodes should be blackened if you shift+clicked them correctly.
6. Hit your delete key (on your keyboard).
7. Exit out of NODE EDIT (by clicking anywhere outside of your image). 8. Duplicate your vector layer. Make sure that only your duplicated layer is selected (sometimes it seems to have both of my vector layers selected). Mirror your duplicated layer. NOTE - This is where you'll be copying and pasting *while in NODE EDIT*
9. While still on your duplicated layer, go back into NODE EDIT, and Right+click and pick from the menu Edit | Select All:
10. Exit out of NODE EDIT, and delete the duplicated layer (the nodes you just copied are in your clipboard...since they are NODES, they will only be available to you while you're in vector edit mode, which is covered in the next step).
11a. Go back into NODE EDIT on your original layer, and right+click while you are in NODE EDIT. Pick Edit | Paste from the RightClick menu
11.b All the new nodes will be blackened, click on one of the blackened nodes and move it into place, joining the tops and bottoms with a teensy gap in between them (do NOT place them directly over each other, leave a gap). If you lost your vector nodes selection, shift+click on all the new ones so you can move it.
11c. Please note on the screenshot above, that my gap is not very big, I recommend you make a bigger one while you're learning (as shown below). It's rather tricky to select both those nodes so close to one another!
11d. You may notice that you have a wide gap in between your two sides (see below); we are going to fix this in the next step, so don't think you messed up! If you placed your sides too closely together, then you'd have a CUTOUT effect like with Ron's Vector Logo. While it's a very nice effect for vector logo's, that's not what we're trying to accomplish here. So to avoid the cutout effect, the sides have to be a teensy bit seperated. Please continue onto step #12 to learn to join the gap together 8^)
12a. Go back into NODE EDIT...SHIFT+click on your 2 bottom nodes that are next to each other.
12b. While still in NODE EDIT, right+click while both nodes are selected (blackened), and from the right-click menu, pick Edit | Join Select or Ctrl+J (J=join). Repeat this with the top nodes and exit from vector edit mode.
After you've joined your top and bottom nodes, check to see that they're actually joined; if so, then you've successfully made a symmetric vector shape! Yeaaa!
You may wish to try this with a few more easy shapes before getting into fancy stuff, but you know your abilities better than I do 8^) I do hope you'll enjoy making more advanced shapes. Here's one of my symmetric vector shapes from when I was practicing:
Once you're comfortable making your sides symmetric, try doing it top to bottom . You'd just have to flip your duplicated layer instead of mirroring it. Here's my flipped version of the shape above:
A series of screenshots of my chair rail practice
©Shreela |
