What's the best way to bend an svg leaf that has a mesh gradient and several gradients, vornoi pattern, and has several layers to it? I'm trying to get a little 'life' in my leaf. So far none of the PAP, bend, etc works. Wish I had thought before doing the mesh to have bent it... hindsight is 20/20. Can't copy or dup the leaf because of the mesh gradient (a known issue), so attaching a screen shot. Just need a little curving. Ideas?
If the object is all paths, I would think it would bend with the gradients still applied. Although I'm not positive. The Voronoi pattern can be made into a path, if that's what's blocking it from bending.
Or it could be it's just taking a long time to bend, because the Voronoi path would be heavy with nodes, probably.
Possibly you could try Perspective or Envelope Deform extensions. But I think they need to be paths as well. I think the PAP extension can work on groups though. Maybe that would work?
I wonder if adjusting the gradient mesh might help? You could make higher or lower places by making lighter or darker areas, maybe?
I've tried and re-tried them all to no avail. Tried ungrouping and doing them individually but that's a hot mess. The voroni is a path but just clicking on bend (and nothing else), parts of it filled it. It didn't bend well, and can't edit the after effect, quite a mess. Trying to bend the mesh gradient was just as bad. I think I will need to go back to the drawing board, literally, lol. thanks for your suggestions.
Previously I sort-of requested the gradient mesh to be "bendable" as some parts of it seems trivial. On a second thought, the bend lpe adds in extra nodes to the bent paths so it might not work exactly as expected -with each bending a new mesh loop may be necessary to add.
Without bending all the vector data theoretically you can use filters. But honestly I'd better use a dedicated raster editor for that.
(Or learn blender and generate thousands of photorealistic leaves in 3D within the same amount of time.)
You are so correct Lazur, I went back and tried some more things, got odd results between the voroni and esp the mesh. I ended up ungrouping and attempted to bend each item separately, what a mess the mesh was, lost the design pretty much, but I think I can fake it. I would LOVE for the mesh to be updated and bendable, as well as being able to delete unwanted diamonds. And for some reason the actual leaf enlarged itself! (I had to delete the stem as it didn't bend quite right, that really messed it up). In using env def the sides switched (left was right), and one side wouldn't bring up the bar to bend it. just wonky. Will post an update once I've finished it.
I did at one time attempt Blender a couple of times, wasn't my thing, but I was really ill at the time, and didn't know Inkscape enough, maybe in the future will attempt it again. Right now am trying to re-learn Inkscape things that i've put off learning.
ok, didn't have much time today to work on this but I did manage to get the slight bend that I wanted. Pretty much started over, the mesh isn't as nice as the straight one, but it'll do.
You know what I would try? I would make a bitmapcopy of the leaf, with a high resolution, let's say 300 dpi. And then I would trace that copy with paths > trace bitmap. Multiple scans, colors, perhaps 20 scans. If your computer is fast, you can also use more scans.
That creates a group of paths which looks like your old leaf, including all the gradients. That new group of paths can be bent with all the Path effects or with the Tweak tool.
That's an idea Kirstie. I just hate using trace bitmap, it's really hard to edit it later on (for me anyway). I've started redoing another one manually. Will play around with it, thanks for the recommendation.
Kirstie. question. how do you (or can you) change the bitmap resolution? No menu pops up, it just makes it. I export pngs all the time, but don't do bitmaps much because I haven't figured out resolution.
(Many people use the word "bitmap" instead of "raster". JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP and some others are all raster formats. I try to avoid using "bitmap", because people get it mixed up with the file format BMP, which is also called bitmap. I actually made a bug report, to change Trace Bitmap to Trace Raster, and Create Bitmap Copy to Create Raster Copy or Create PNG Image. I got tired of answering messages from users who say they converted their PNG or their JPG to a BMP, so that they could use Trace Bitmap. I doubt if they will change any of it though.)
Beginners' Questions Bend Object
Inkscape.org
What's the best way to bend an svg leaf that has a mesh gradient and several gradients, vornoi pattern, and has several layers to it? I'm trying to get a little 'life' in my leaf. So far none of the PAP, bend, etc works. Wish I had thought before doing the mesh to have bent it... hindsight is 20/20. Can't copy or dup the leaf because of the mesh gradient (a known issue), so attaching a screen shot. Just need a little curving. Ideas?
If the object is all paths, I would think it would bend with the gradients still applied. Although I'm not positive. The Voronoi pattern can be made into a path, if that's what's blocking it from bending.
Or it could be it's just taking a long time to bend, because the Voronoi path would be heavy with nodes, probably.
Possibly you could try Perspective or Envelope Deform extensions. But I think they need to be paths as well. I think the PAP extension can work on groups though. Maybe that would work?
I wonder if adjusting the gradient mesh might help? You could make higher or lower places by making lighter or darker areas, maybe?
I've tried and re-tried them all to no avail. Tried ungrouping and doing them individually but that's a hot mess. The voroni is a path but just clicking on bend (and nothing else), parts of it filled it. It didn't bend well, and can't edit the after effect, quite a mess. Trying to bend the mesh gradient was just as bad. I think I will need to go back to the drawing board, literally, lol. thanks for your suggestions.
Previously I sort-of requested the gradient mesh to be "bendable" as some parts of it seems trivial. On a second thought, the bend lpe adds in extra nodes to the bent paths so it might not work exactly as expected -with each bending a new mesh loop may be necessary to add.
Without bending all the vector data theoretically you can use filters. But honestly I'd better use a dedicated raster editor for that.
(Or learn blender and generate thousands of photorealistic leaves in 3D within the same amount of time.)
You are so correct Lazur, I went back and tried some more things, got odd results between the voroni and esp the mesh. I ended up ungrouping and attempted to bend each item separately, what a mess the mesh was, lost the design pretty much, but I think I can fake it. I would LOVE for the mesh to be updated and bendable, as well as being able to delete unwanted diamonds. And for some reason the actual leaf enlarged itself! (I had to delete the stem as it didn't bend quite right, that really messed it up). In using env def the sides switched (left was right), and one side wouldn't bring up the bar to bend it. just wonky. Will post an update once I've finished it.
I did at one time attempt Blender a couple of times, wasn't my thing, but I was really ill at the time, and didn't know Inkscape enough, maybe in the future will attempt it again. Right now am trying to re-learn Inkscape things that i've put off learning.
ok, didn't have much time today to work on this but I did manage to get the slight bend that I wanted. Pretty much started over, the mesh isn't as nice as the straight one, but it'll do.
Hi Flamingolady,
You know what I would try? I would make a bitmapcopy of the leaf, with a high resolution, let's say 300 dpi.
And then I would trace that copy with paths > trace bitmap. Multiple scans, colors, perhaps 20 scans. If your computer is fast, you can also use more scans.
That creates a group of paths which looks like your old leaf, including all the gradients.
That new group of paths can be bent with all the Path effects or with the Tweak tool.
That's an idea Kirstie. I just hate using trace bitmap, it's really hard to edit it later on (for me anyway). I've started redoing another one manually. Will play around with it, thanks for the recommendation.
Yes Flamingolady,
You are absolutely right. The traced image cannot really be changed afterwards.
It would be the final step in the process. Or just to quickly create different leafs, to test some ideas.
Kirstie. question. how do you (or can you) change the bitmap resolution? No menu pops up, it just makes it. I export pngs all the time, but don't do bitmaps much because I haven't figured out resolution.
Making a bitmap copy is the same as exporting as png and then importing that png again, but faster.
You can change the default dpi for bitmapcopies under
Menu > Edit > Preferences > Bitmaps > Create.
(Many people use the word "bitmap" instead of "raster". JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP and some others are all raster formats. I try to avoid using "bitmap", because people get it mixed up with the file format BMP, which is also called bitmap. I actually made a bug report, to change Trace Bitmap to Trace Raster, and Create Bitmap Copy to Create Raster Copy or Create PNG Image. I got tired of answering messages from users who say they converted their PNG or their JPG to a BMP, so that they could use Trace Bitmap. I doubt if they will change any of it though.)
Kirstie, haven't ever seen that I could chg the resolution in preferences, off to check and change. thx
Good point Brynn, a name chg would help clarify for some people at least.