Category Archives: orb

May 24 2007
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art, ball, bubble, clipart, geek/nerd.net, inkscape, openclipartlibrary, orb, Projects, tutorial

inkscape: how the clip function works (mini-tutorial)

Recently, Lensman posted a comment on my simple orb bubble tutorial. He was asking a question about how the clipping works in inkscape. I understand his pain, because when i started with inkscape, i was not sure how it worked either, until bulia posted his ropes and tubes tutorial.

So i decided to post this little mini-tutorial thingo to help anyone out there who wants to know.

Basically, what clipping in inkscape does, is takes the top path in a selection and clips all the paths below it (in the selection) to the shape of the top path. Confused? Let me walk you through a simple example:

  1. Draw some simple shapes.
  2. Now draw your clipping path. (mine is a pink star). And make sure this path is on top of all the other objects/paths (don’t worry about colour, after the clip this path will not be visible)
  3. Select all the paths now, and go to Object > Clip > Set. You can see the result below.

clip1.png

So how does this tie in to the orb tutorial i did before? I have done a simple example of the workflow again. (this time only the clipping part of the tutorial…)

clip2.png

and thats about it. Please tell me if this has helped you, and i try to answer any comments & questions as soon as possible.

Feb 16 2007
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ball, bubble, clipart, inkscape, openclipartlibrary, orb, Projects, tutorial

simple bubble in inkscape (orb, ball, bubble)

Inspired once again by nicu’s post about his orb research i have decided to write a simple tutorial on how to make a basic bubble (bubble, orb, ball, whatever you want to call it.)

This Tutorial uses the blur filter that is only in Inkscape version 0.45 and later.

Step One
Open Inkscape and draw a circle.

click for the full image

Step Two

  1. Set the Fill colour of the circle to None
  2. Set the Stroke colour of the circle to the colour that you want, I chose blue.

  3. Make the stroke width nice and thick.
  4. Play with the blur amount in the fill/stroke dialog to blur the circle up a bit.

This is how it should look:

Step Three

  1. Now, take the circle tool and draw an ellipse towards the top of the original circle.
  2. Set the ellipse fill colour to the same colour as the blurred outline circle
  3. Set the ellipse stroke colour to none

    This is how it should look:

  4. Now, change the fill of the ellipse so it is a gradient from the colour you chose before to transparent


    click for the full image

Step Four

  1. Now, Duplicate the outer blurred circle object (Right Click on the circle and choose duplicate)

  2. Set the blur of the newly duplicated circle to none
  3. Make sure the unblurred version of the circle is on top of everything.
  4. Press Control+A to select all the items
  5. In the menus up the top choose Object > Clip > Set

Step Five

  • Add a little light spot on your bubble and blur it up a bit, and you’re done!