Good morning,

I've been using Inkscape for a while but I still have a lot to learn so sorry if my question is a bit stupid.

Basically I'm trying to get an effect similar to the shading you get with charcoal which you can see very cleraly in this image (sorry I didn't know how to make images smaller):




As you can see the shading is similar to a gradient but instead of getting the color going from black to white what you have is a series of Black and white "dots" The darker the shadow the bigger the proportion of black dots. The lighter it gets the bigger the proportion of white dots.

I've tried to aproximate it with "Dots Transparency" and "Air Spray" Filters but the effect is not even close and I don't get that darker or lighter part of the shadow.

So I would like to know if anybody knows any way to approximate this effect or could point me towards some info that could help me. As I've been looking around but I haven't found anything really useful. I'm even thinking that I'm using the wrong program for that sort of effect.

Eventually my goal is something like this style


I still have a lot of steps to get through but I thought I could start with the shadows.

Thank you for reading this. Any help will be highly appreciated

Welcome aboard!

That problem covers most of the vector vs. pixel format range.
What exactly you want to use this for?

Vectors can make it scale large. Drawing dot by dot as vectors would result in a ludicruosly large file, with millions of nodes.
See this for an example on a similar problem.
Or this topic:
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16339

Using filtering? That is raster based. Once you save it as a pdf, it will get stored as rasters.
It might take less effort then to use a raster program in first place.

So, what will be the final format's px size, one stroke's size on that format, and the texture's detail's size?

Made some lpe tests for the charcoal effect.

Basically it's adding a shape pattern on a path, applying a hatching effect, then a sketch lpe and a pattern along path on top for a single charcoal stroke.
No thumbnails this time, because browsers may give up on the rendering.

stroke 1

stroke 2

stroke 3

stroke 4


The first two is taking advantage of the envelope lpe to create the basic shape of the stroke.
The idea was to keep the control with the pattern along path lpe on the width of the stroke as well, but it's not how it works, so removed that part on the second two. Which means, there the width can be modified easier.

To map this stroke on a path, a simple pattern along path doesn't work because that only applies the result shape and not the other lpe-s. Thus, a bend lpe is needed.
Maybe with the xml editor you can paste in the core path into the bend effect, otherwise it could get too much effort setting up one stroke.

The details are mostly related to the sketch lpe's settings:
the number of strokes -better keep it low-,
max stroke length -the shorter it is, the more the node numbers will be at the end-
max tremble and tremble frequency.

By changing those values you can end up 100000+ nodes on such a short stroke.


Which brings to the limits of this aproach. Even ten times less nodes can be too much sometime. And this is just one stroke of a drawing.

Thank you very much for the answers! even though I didn't answer before (mainly because I'm in the middle of the forest and I only get Internet access when I visit my friends) they have been of much use.

So, first of all i'll explain a bit better the problem and where I am now.

The drawings I'm trying to make are going to be used for a phone videogame (just regular 2D platformer) that's why I was looking for a vector based solution (easier to scale, make the animations...) But soon I run in to a choice, as you said, if I want it to look realistic the number of nodes grows exponentially. The examples you posted look like a good middle point. I specially like stroke 4 for the drawing I'm planning but I don't know if it will be too much to use it in all the game (or at least the characters).

So now I'll try to make an example, post the solution and see how many nodes it uses. if I see it's too crazy I might look for an approach using inkscape for the basic drawing and gimp or some other program for the textures.

Probably a filter would be a better choice.

Got this link from the live chat board, with some nice effects based on perlin noise:
https://glennmarshall.wordpress.com/tag/perlin/

And, not to forget v1nce's progressive images.

Hi.

Lazur, what a "nice find"!
Love the use of "programming to create art"!

Will have to start using IRC, do you have any advices on how to join - which channels to visit etc?

RGDS
Ragnar

Hi.

I'm not that familiar with that IRC module, but #inkscape and #design channels are quite active these days.

For those who still find this topic by accident, made a filter pack on pencil strokes here.