First of all, hello everyone! I'm somewhat new to Inkscape and I've been tinkering with it for about a day now. I'm really liking this program, and I hope I'll have a jolly good time here with you guys as I learn about both the program and more about art.

Now for my actual question!


I'm working on a drawing that consists of yarn and fabric. You know, trying to make it look like some kid cut up some crafts stuff and put it all together to make objects in a picture. Playing around with it a bit I found a "cloth" material/texture that I could apply to objects. Pretty cool. Now my main problem...

...is separate strands of yarn...

So how am I doing this? Am I drawing a texture in The Gimp and then making it a texture for Inkscape? I tried to do textures with curvy lines (thicken some lines and apply the texture on top) but the textures won't bend with the lines (and it looks pretty nasty).

To give a better picture of what I'm trying to achieve, here's what I got so far in my little experimentation:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/ ... imbs-1.png

I want to make his limbs (and eyes and mouth) just single strands of yarn.

I'm also gonna put on buttons and candy and junk later but I should be able to figure that one out on my own.

Anyone got any ideas? I'd like for the lines (his limbs) to be able to bend too, and have the texture bend with it. This is particularly important because I wanted to make an animation out of this. (Easy bend limbs for every frame is desirable)

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

Hhhm..... It's going to be hard to make a realistic looking yarn. At least as realistic as the fabric. Or maybe I should say "hard for me" lol. Well, yarn can resemble rope, and there's a recent topic with tips on making rope. Let's see if I can find it....ok, here's that: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9855&. Also, included with Inkscape is a brief tutorial (look in Inkscape/share/examples/rope-3D.svg). In the topic are some excellent tips near the end of the discussion on making the twisting appearance. And the tutorial shows how to give the 3d appearance. I'm thinking you could use both of them, and end up with a fairly nice representation of yarn, although it still might require some tweaking to hit the mark.

If you use Pattern Along Path, a la ~suv in the ref topic, you should be able to bend and re-bend (by drawing different paths).

Hi, not sure if you have seen this: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/episode-071/ which is about how to do a stitch effect in Inkscape. Not exactly what you want; but I thought close enough to be worth a look

Attached is an svg with a filter I made called FuzzyYarn.

You may have to play with the parameters but it works will on strokes of 6px.

-Rob A>

-Rob A>