Hi Friends,
I've been working on an image of a realistic pear (RM.'s "challenge"). And I've come across a weird thing that I can only call a glitch, at this point. It's just a simple stroked path, but when I apply a blur, it becomes a sort of dotted line. Here are some screen shots and I've uploaded a copy of the SVG file.





I first noticed it on the black line, as seen in the screen shots. But the brown line behaves the same way.
Whoa!! The base pear shape itself (in Layer 1) also behaves this way (after adding a stroke and blurring). Yeah, but I created the black and brown lines from the base pear shape, so that makes sense. I just can't figure out what's causing it or how it got to be that way. Why does the stroked path look normal without any blur, even at 10,000% zoom? But as soon as I add a blur, it becomes broken apart, or dotted.

I suspect the base pear shape is not the original shape I drew. I've duplicated the original many times, to get various segments, clipping paths and shadows shapes, etc. It's altogether possible that I somehow either deleted the original, or accidentally used it as a clipping path, or something like that. So that's why I've included the SVG file, so you can examine what all I've done in the image, and hopefully find clues about what's causing the problem. In any case, in this same doc, I can draw a new shape with stroke which does not exhibit this problem. So it seems NOT to be a corrupt document.

The way the blurred, dotted stroke behaves when I move a node or handle, reminds me of the speckles (in hidden Layer 4). I used the Envelope Deform LPE to make them look right. And when I edit this path, it looks a lot like it looked when I was doing the live LPE edit on the speckles. As I said, it's possible I could have accidentally deleted the original shape, and somehow a duplicate used with the LPE became the base shape now. I just can't figure out how the LPE could be affecting this base pear shape. Plus Path menu > Remove Path Effect doesn't fix it.

I looked in the XML Editor, hoping to find a clue. But I don't know enough about XML, to understand what it says.

Well, I know there's not much to go on, but I'll appreciate any help you can offer

brynn wrote:And I've come across a weird thing that I can only call a glitch, at this point. It's just a simple stroked path, but when I apply a blur, it becomes a sort of dotted line.

Works for me without issues [1] - did you try again after closing Inkscape and opening the document in a new Inkscape process? Possibly a temporary memory glitch, maybe after testing several times the path effect on those big groups of dots/speckles or else - if it persists - a change in your preferences for the filter quality settings used for display?


By the way - your original drawing took almost 4 minutes just to select in the file chooser dialog and another 3.5 minutes to open in Inkscape: caused by the Envelope Deformations you have applied to two groups with each 449 objects. If you no longer plan to 'envelope deform' those dots, I recommend to convert the path effect to normal paths by selecting each group and using 'Path > Object to Path' (yes, 'Object to Path' on the group, to convert each object within the group to the resulting path of the path effect applied to the parent group). After that and doing 'Vacuum defs' the drawing opens within seconds. The blur however worked with or without those changes right from beginning, for all paths (layer "Shading", as well as the base figure on "Layer 1").

[1] using Inkscape 0.47 r22583 on OS X 10.5.8

Thanks ~suv
I did close Inkscape, and opened again. But the problem persists
When you suggested changing quality settings in Prefs, it made me wonder if these are isolated cases. And no, I applied strokes temporarily to some other object/paths, and find some of them display the blur properly, but others also share that dotted appearance.

But good news now. I changed the Inkscape Prefs > Filters > Gausian and Filter effects quality for display from Average (recommended) to Better (slower). The changes took effect immediately, which makes me hopeful that they will not be slower to display. I don't know if it matters, but I'm on a new pc with blazing speed, ram, processor, etc. So maybe I can handle this setting for awhile, without serious consequences?

I know that the group of 2, 449 dots is a drain on the system, and even ungrouping them takes a 3 to 5 minute wait. But also in the image are objects blurred by up to 50% or more, and there are several of those indeed. But this "challenge" is to create a realistic fruit. And when one is going for realism (reality? ), lots of extreme blurring is necessary. Although if there is a better way to do it, I'd love to hear about it. I don't know which is more resource intensive, blurs or gradients? And to be honest, I do blur gradients a lot too!

But I am definitely utilizing Layers, as you can see in the file, and hide and unhide as necessary, to keep things moving along. I suppose it's good news that I have not had a single crash yet. On my older pc, I'm not sure I would be so lucky.

Anyway, thanks again ~suv

brynn wrote:I changed the Inkscape Prefs > Filters > Gausian and Filter effects quality for display from Average (recommended) to Better (slower).

These are the default preferences settings (the same I used in my test):

The default settings are the same with both Inkscape 0.47 and 0.48pre1 or development builds (I tested with both versions). I have no idea at the moment why they seem to fail for simple Gaussian blurs on your computer.

brynn wrote:I know that the group of 2, 449 dots is a drain on the system, and even ungrouping them takes a 3 to 5 minute wait.

Hmm, ungrouping one of the speckles groups is done in below 30 sec on my system. Odd. Maybe this is connected to the same issue that causes rendering of those paths with a blur to work on my system (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2MB RAM - that's modest compared to current laptops), but not on yours? We'd need a tester with a comparable system to yours (Windows version + hardware)!
My thinking when proposing to convert the live-updating path effects to static paths was that you possibly could spare some system resources needed for the rendering of filter effects (blurs), but I don't really know...

brynn wrote:(…) But this "challenge" is to create a realistic fruit. And when one is going for realism (reality? ), lots of extreme blurring is necessary.

Of course, and the blurs are not causing the long time it takes to load the document (that's because of applying a path effect to a group with hundred of members) - blur mainly affects refreshing/repainting the canvas when zooming. I certainly did not want to imply it would be possible to not use blurs and (clipped) gradients and still achieve a photorealistic effect.

brynn wrote:But I am definitely utilizing Layers, as you can see in the file, and hide and unhide as necessary, to keep things moving along.

I did notice that!

These are the default preferences settings (the same I used in my test):

So you're saying the default is for the Guassian quality to be Average, while the Filter Effects is Better (slower)? Mine were originally both Average, and I changed them to both Better (slower). (I don't know where I got the "recommended'' )

We'd need a tester with a comparable system to yours (Windows version + hardware)!

If anyone is interested, I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit version
Intel Core i7 CPU, Q 720 @ 1.60 GHz, 4 GB RAM
So it looks like I have a whole lot more RAM than you, but less GHz....which seems odd....actually I don't know what Q 720 means, so maybe that explains it?

My thinking when proposing to convert the live-updating path effects to static paths was that you possibly could spare some system resources needed for the rendering of filter effects (blurs), but I don't really know...

Well, my alternative is to manipulate each dot individually, one at a time. So I'd rather keep the LPE, and bump up the quality -- just for drawing this image. After I'm finished, I'll return the settings to Average (unless I continue to see this problem). But like you, I'm not sure it's a resource issue. In my past experience with resource-related issues, problems eventually resolve after waiting for the computer to catch up to what I've asked it to do. That was on an older XP desktop with only 1.24 GB RAM, and I forget about the processor specs. And I would always see a big drain on the CPU in the Task Manager. I haven't seen that at all on this machine, although there are still delays. But in this case there was no delay -- it just never did resolve.

You know, I noticed something the other day that wasn't working properly, about which I need to contact tech support. Ok yeah, Intel Turbo Boost Technology Driver. I'm not sure what it is, but then again, I don't see this as a resource issue, and that sounds like a resource-boosting thing. But if it might be related to this problem, I'll look into it sooner than later