Western Text

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Espermaschine
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Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Mon Mar 09, 2015 7:08 pm

Today i made this text for my new tutorial, and it was a big headache.

Image

The inspiration came from a gallery on myfont:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/parkinson/ ... llery.html

but i used the font: 'Chunk' from the leagueofmovabletype:
https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/chunk.

I had looked earlier into this kind of pattern, here:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18124

and it seemed i solved the problem, but it didnt quite work out with my text.

So i used a different approach and it took hours to get right :|

Anybody interested in taking the challenge and making a text like this ?
Would like to see how you masters do it !

tylerdurden
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Location: Michigan, USA

Re: Western Text

Postby tylerdurden » Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:39 pm

That's a noble effort and a fine result.

That example on myfont is a lot of work, considering it is actually six fonts.
Have a nice day.

I'm using Inkscape 0.92.2 (5c3e80d, 2017-08-06), 64 bit win8.1

The Inkscape manual has lots of helpful info! http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:16 pm

Here is a "first try".

Wondering what exactly was causing the headache.
Adjusting the stripes to the crossbar? (I haven't done that.)
Using clipping/masking on individual stripes/group of stripes?
Or brute-force intersecting them?

For a font, the latter is necessary, but for a simple banner, using a gradient fill can reduce file size and produce a cleaner structure.
And gradient fills are rendered somewhat aliased -you will get an even crisper result than with vectors(?).

Contrary how primary looks, I would rather use it as a union with the fill for a basic shape of the sides.

In my humble opinion the real painful part comes when you try to add the stripes to the sides, because then you need to rethink the whole geometry.
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sw2.svg
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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:24 am

@tylerdurden: thank you !!

@Lazur URH

the headache came from the pattern and the stroke

at first i tried to make the pattern with an interpolation, but got very weird results
then it tried to wrap my head around how they made this pattern without a computer in the past :shock: :lol:
it must be some kind of calculation...
then it dawned me that this pattern is basically the same pattern twice, but mirrored once and then combined with the other
each time one bar grows, the bar on the opposite side shrinks by the same amount

so i did it all manually

for inserting the pattern into the text, i tried several things:
patternfill, clipping, the group/clip technique from Full Circle Magazine

btw, your result is excellent
much better than mine


EDIT: by the way, i forgot that you can make the pattern with the stitch subpaths LPE
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Western Patternproblem.svg
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Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:27 am

Thank's!

Still it could be refined much, to add those side fills right.


For the base of the fill pattern I used interpolate subpaths lpe too. I'm guessing the path directions you used were mixed.
The easiest to get to the right source is by duplicating a rectangle, moving and scaling -without flipping- it before combining the two together.
Then snapped guide lines to the lpe generated path's nodes, and snapped the gradient steps to the guides.


Without a computer, horizontal and vertical lines can be drawn well with a ruler through any given point.
Similarly as a Vernier scale is used, can a linear halftone pattern be constructed.
example
Calculating and measuring such distances otherwise is not an easy task.

Edit: shrinking.
Western Patternproblem2.svg
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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Thu Mar 12, 2015 2:00 pm

@Lazur URH

Im still trying to reverse engineer how you got your excellent result...
The 3D is pretty obvious.


How exactly did you create the woodcut layer ?
Questions:

1. The Strokeffect.
Is that an inset, a dynamic offset or a boolean operation ?

2. The woodcut pattern.
a) So its a gradient. Did you use interpolate subpaths LPE as a blueprint ?
b) It seems there is something going on with grouping, but im not sure what. I can enter this group but nothing seems to move (or maybe its lagging ?)

Can you please clarify ?!

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:26 pm

"Western text" made me think of woodcut but maybe it wasn't the best name choice. Those "wanted" posters with the same letter shape were made with letterpress and woodblock letters.
An example from 1870 shows such a lettering, with the 3D part probably drawn manually (?).
There may be some fancy old letters out there, today's laser cutting got it further with no restrictions.
Not sure how it was meant to be, all the "authentic" aspects are coming from my assumption.

The attached example "sw2" was made by dynamic offsetting, probably the reason why it crashes that easy.
-Objects were grouped together and scaled, page borders resized to content, resulting the offset to be off when ungrouped.
Entering the group/or using the node tool to select the objects still works.-

There are some aspects on the 3D and the "insetting" that could be improved/redrawn.


Used the interpolate lpe for making the gradient as described above, but it's really a cheap trick compared to that example which can represent a linear tone transition the best.
(Hmm for practical reasons the 2nd and 3rd slides should be transposed.)

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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sat Mar 14, 2015 12:02 pm

I was planning to write a tutorial for this kind of texteffect, but i cant find an elegant solution that satisfies me.
Its all very fiddly with lack of control....

For the stroke, insetting or dynamic offset give results that are ugly.
It would be much easier if IS had an option to set your stroke-direction (inside, outside, or like it is now: equally distributed to both sides).

Especially when i want to create the extrusion, the stroke is the problem.

Btw, thanks Lazur URH for the linear tone transition chart,
that was really an eye opener and very helpful indeed !

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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sat Mar 14, 2015 3:02 pm

So i made a little tutorial on how to create the basetext with the pattern (well one way of doing it).

Now the problem is, how can i extrude the text when it has a stroke ?
Is there a way to convert text with a stroke so that the nodes are at the edges of the text and none inside ?
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Westerntext Tutorial Version 1 incomplete.svg
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Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sat Mar 14, 2015 9:38 pm

Converting the stroke to path, breaking apart, deleting the unnecessary subpaths and combining back together may work.
Though there are details that wouldn't look right -cusp corners with a large miter height.

Westerntext Tutorial Version 1 incomplete II.svg
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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:20 pm

Lazur URH wrote:Converting the stroke to path, breaking apart, deleting the unnecessary subpaths and combining back together may work.

i did that once but its a crazy amount of work


why did you convert the pattern into clones ?
easier on the CPU ?

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:22 pm

You can type in other text as well this way.
(Parent may need to put inside a group too.)

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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:29 pm

my goodness, Lazur, you're so far ahead in this game, i need to think over everything you post, at least four times :)
Last edited by Espermaschine on Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:40 pm

Here is a simple "3D" effect made by clones.

The parent text is now put inside a group
-the reason why is because if it is moved by itself, the gradient fill on the clone is shifting away;
to move the text somewhere else, you need to move the group instead.


Still for a "proper" one it would take alot of work and it couldn't be modified after as a text.
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Westerntext III.svg
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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:43 pm

Lazur URH wrote:Here is a simple "3D" effect made by clones.

Still for a "proper" one it would take alot of work and it couldn't be modified after as a text.

did you interpolate the clones ?

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:47 pm

No, just aligned separate duplicants equally.

Edit:
Added inline and outline.
Westerntext IIII.svg
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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:56 pm

i meant the extrusion

when i ungroup it, it says 34 clones

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:18 pm

The parent text had unset fill and stroke.
Made one clone of it, and duplicated that clone.
The extrusion had 34 clones, made by duplicating.
Used the align and distribute panel, to position them in even distances between their axises.

Westerntext V.svg
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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:26 pm

Holy batman, version IV is awesome !!

EDIT: also crashed my IS, lol

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:35 pm

Thank's!

To be honest I like the cloning part of it only, because other than that, it looks way off compared to the "real thing".

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sun Mar 15, 2015 2:28 am

Here is a compare between the generated and constructed lettering:

SVG Image

Will try to split it into less complex parts with explanation sometime.

Lazur
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Re: Western Text

Postby Lazur » Sun Mar 22, 2015 12:05 am

An oldie.

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Espermaschine
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Re: Western Text

Postby Espermaschine » Sun Mar 22, 2015 12:31 am

Lazur URH wrote:An oldie.

good find !

and ChrisF is in that thread too :)


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