Inkscape Stuff...
 

I've been using Inkscape quite a bit to modifiy the L-5 kit. Am finding it easier to manipulate new lines and such while in the beta testing for the ambulance version. While doing some related research, I discovered something that may be useful to folks trying to work with drawings of aircraft that have cross-sections, but not enough of them! See the Inkscape tutorial for the Interpolate tool here: Inkscape Interpolate Tutorial. Also check out the Blur Tutorial and Creating Woodgrain Effects.

Ryan

Thanks Ryan.

cool ;) Thank you very much Ryan, I think to use Inkscape too but need time to learn...

Well, after a bit of experimenting I think I've finally hit on some techniques for camouflaging aircraft with Inkscape. The picture below shows one attempt. You draw out the shape, fill it, color the outline the same as the fill, then use the blur feature on the lines to make the sprayed-on look. You should make the outside edges of your piece slightly larger than you really want them to be - for a good reason. After you have the camouflage approximately like you want it (and it's WAAAY easier to do with the bezier curves than what I've been doing in GIMP (Which BTW is still a good program)) then you duplicate the pattern piece and use the move object and down features to move the duplicate to the top. Then, you can use the "clip" feature (See above) to clip off the offending edges and conformn the camouflage to your part. Then you can delete the duplicate pattern piece, and the blurred edges only exist where you want them!

http://lh4.ggpht.com/doolittleraider...ape%20Camo.jpg

Ryan

I'm watching this very carefully Ryan- thanks! If we can eliminate a step (coloring in Gimp) from the design process, so much the better!
Cheers,
Bruce

Cool........... of course I use Inkscape in it's basic form to do my drawings (like my avatar) but this is a very powerful tool and it is nice to see someone using it for our hobby.

Thanks Ryan......... I too will be watching.

john

Well, Inkscape doesn't convert the blurs to PDF, but it looks like I can export it as a bitmap (actually PNG) and it turns out pretty decent.
Here's a thought. For those who want to "play" with their models, would it be worth a few extra dollars to purchase the Inkscape version? Another question is if enough of our fellow modelers would be willing to download Inkscape to make it worthwhile only releasing the model in SVG format! The biggest concern then, is that they can modify it and do all kinds of things with it, if they're not honest... But then, you can kind of do that anyway.

Ryan

Ryan, Can you zoom in area what use Blur function in Inkscape? I want to see how Inkscape's blur function work. Thank you very much in advance.

John, I really like the way you did to convert Photograph into drawing...really amazing

http://lh3.ggpht.com/doolittleraider...20Camo%202.jpg

Here's a screenshot. If this gets re-sized too small, click the link below:

http://picasaweb.google.com/doolittl...35794560818962

I'm signing off for the night!

Ryan

Another lesson learned
 

When using Inkscape and exporting to PDF, I find it's best (in this version of Inkscape 0.46) to use the internal PDF creator (PDF via Cairo). CutePDF, which has worked well for me in the past, has some serious issues when it comes to Inkscape, as do several other PDF creators that I've tried (I'm still overall happy with CutePDF). PDF DOES NOT LIKE transparency. So, the workaround is to use the Gradient Editor (under the Fill dialog) and select the colors on either end of the gradient that you want to use. You can't just be lazy and use one color with a transparency... If you don't do this, you may see some wierd things!

Another thing I've learned is that sometimes things that don't appear on the screen in Inkscape - show up in the PDF output! The way I've found to work around this is to group the objects together as you want them and save the first file. Now open a second file and import the old file into the new file - OFF of the new page. Then move the stuff you want back onto the page. And yes, the first L-5 ambulance variant is almost ready for launch!

Ryan