Inkscape tutorials

Hey everyone feeling good today? With a smiley face in my list of Inkscape creations I felt that I was ready to attempt some of the tutorials I found on the internet. After googling I found this website http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com//. I was glad to have found this website because it is full of tutorials which should help me learn this program quickly and the less time I spend on learning the software the more time I can spend on using the software. The easiest tutorial I could fine was called 'Illustrating Chain Links' (which can be found here: http://kalaalog.com/2008/06/22/illustrating-chain-links/).

Once I actually looked at the tutorial I found out that it was in fact not an easy tutorial but rather an intermediate one (Highlighted above in the screenshot). So I thought might as well go straight into the deep end and hope that I won't drown. Reading the tutorial I came up against some things I had never heard of before in regards to Inkscape. The first example of this was the use of 'Guides'. After some looking around in the program I found that under the 'View' drop down menu there was a button called 'Grid'. I clicked it and as the name suggested there was now a grid over my work. Also right below the 'Grid' button there was a button called 'Guides'. I thought I had found what the tutorial was talking about and clicked it with haste. I was then disappointed to find that it did nothing. I clicked it several more times and still nothing happened. So I thought that I must be doing something wrong. I placed my mouse upon the button and a tool tip came up (at the bottom of the screen in a rectangle that normally states 'No object selected.') saying, "Show or hide guides (drag from ruler to create guide)." Luckily and thanks to the creators of Inkscape I know found out how to create guides. So now being able to make guides my document ended up looking like this.

Now with my guides in place I could now begin drawing the shapes I needed. The first shape I needed was a rectangle with curved corners. At first I thought this would have been really hard but it turns out it was not very difficult at all. The curved corners looked like this.

The blog entry about the chain link tutorial will be stopped for a little bit here in order to provide a photo tutorial on how I got the nice and even rounded corners.


Start off by drawing your desired length of straight line

Then where you want your curve to be, hold the left button until your red line is curved and a straight blue line appears

Then with your left mouse button still held place your cursor two blocks <- that way

This should be your end product. To make a square just do this four times but you need to do it with one line (so don't push enter after each curve)

This concludes the tutorial of how to draw a curved corner.

Before I did anything else I changed my curved square a bit by making the inner square a bit smaller.

At this point I was all excited and happy with what I had done and I thought that I would be able to finish it with ease. I was wrong. I got stuck when the tutorial asked me to use the 'Difference' button from under the 'Path' drop down menu. I clicked this and nothing happened. So I decided that I might attempt some easier tutorials before tackling this one again.

The end of my Google SketchUp project

It has taken awhile but I have finally finished my Google SketchUp part of my overall S.E.A.L I.T project. I feel that I have really learned a whole lot about Google SketchUp. I went from never having heard of the program to actually being able to use it and make things in it. The easiest way for me to show this to everyone would be to compare pictures of the first and last thing I made in Google SketchUp.

I almost forgot about my duck. I still can't believe I made something as bad as that but we all got to start somewhere. Now after watching many tutorials and making lots of models I finally got to a point when I could make all this.

A door

A book shelf

A desk and video game cases

A futon

The bare basics of my room

Whoa I have come a heck of a long way from my basic duck. I feel quite proud of what I have achieved. However there is still one massive problem which I have not yet addressed in enough detail. In my last post I mentioned that everything in my room is crooked. I also mentioned that this was due to me not building from the origin point. When I realised I was puzzled that not one tutorial I took mentioned to start from the origin point. So I warn all of those who read this, "ALWAYS BUILD FROM THE ORIGIN POINT!". So what does this have to do with my project some might ask? Well in order for me to correct this issue I would need to start from the beginning again and time does not allow for that. So to prove that I can build non-crooked buildings I made this simple box with a window. Why a window? Well in my original after downloading and placing a window I realised how crooked my room really was so I thought the window would be befitting for my example of a non-crooked creation.

Now I know what you are all thinking, "That room is crooked. The bottom line of the wall looks to be sloping upwards". I would agree with this as well but it was built from the origin point on the green axis so there is no way it could be crooked or sloping.

In conclusion I have learned heaps about Google SketchUp and I'm very proud of what I have completed and out of everything I learned the one thing that will forever stay in my memory is to always build from the origin point. Even though there were many times in which I wanted to kill my computer I still did have fun using this program. Now this concludes my Google SketchUp part of my project. Onward to Inkscape!

Fatal error

Sometime during my project my walls somehow turned out to be un-even even though they were even at the start. All my walls seemed to no longer match up with each other which did prove to be very bothersome. The only solution I could see to this problem was deleting all the un-even walls and then creating all the walls again. This is what it looked like after I raged and deleted all my walls expect the ones I needed.

Now with the old walls out of the way I could start making my new ones. Sounds easy right? Wrong. All I needed to do was draw a line on the green axis which will give me a straight line in  > this direction. When I tried to do this, this happened.

There is no way anyone can say that that line is a straight and flat line. It drew it on the green axis but it still did that whole arching up thing. Why is it doing this now? It did nothing of the sorts before when I drew lines on that axis. I googled and googled and found no help what so ever. I had a problem which I had no idea how to fix. But then it hit me. I didn't start off from the origin point. This one little thing messed up my whole project from the start and I didn't notice it till the end.

The end is near

Hello internet, I hope you have had a good day. With my Google SketchUp project I plan on making one more thing then my room will be complete. This will be my futon. After doing this my room will basically be complete, minus a few things like random junk on the floor, my stacks of video games and a window. The first thing I needed to make was a black rectangular prism which will be the mattress of the futon. This is what it looked like.

 With this finished I needed to add the base of the futon which was just a matter of me adding a few rectangles and some lines to separate things that needed to be separated.  This is what the base looked like once I did this.

I also painted the top half brown to represent the cover of the futon. My futon was nearly complete all I needed to add now was the feet of the futon. All I needed to do is add four circles in the corners of the base. This is what it looked like.

My futon was now complete and ready to be moved into my room and with that my basic room was complete.

Desk thingy

Hey internet how was your day? I thought I might as well get some work done on my Google SketchUp project so I decided to make my desk thing that holds my T.V. The first problem that I faced was one of my most hated Google SketchUp problem, "Cannot Push/Pull curved or smooth surfaces". Now I am not very sure on how to un-smooth a surface but Google was no help. So to fix this error I just drew lines on the floor and wall and then used these as guides for a rectangle which I drew upon them. At this time I realised that building this desk would be very similar to the things I did with my book case. So like the sides of my book case all I needed to do was make one side, group it and then copy move it to the desired section.

See similar to my book case but just different sizes.

At about this point I was feeling pretty bored with Google SketchUp because I was only really doing the same thing again so I decided that I might try something new. With my desk thing there is a little box on the right hand side which holds some of my most played games. I wanted to see if I could import a image of, in this case, a video game cover art and then place it on a rectangle so it looks like a game case. This is what my desk looked like when it was finished being made.

With the desk being built it was now time to attempt to import a jpeg in Google SketchUp. The image I chose to first test out was this one.

One of my favourite PS3 games.

I needed to find an import option in Google SketchUp so I thought the best place to find this would be in the 'File' drop down menu. I clicked it and looked through the list and as I guessed the 'Import' button was there. Once I clicked it I got to this screen.

There were some things I needed to do before I could just click the 'Open' button. I first needed to get to the folder in which the jpeg was located, fairly basic I know. I then needed to click the 'Type of file:' drop down menu and select jpeg so I could see all the jpegs in the folder. The thing I did was click the 'Use as texture' button which is located below the preview box.  I did this so I could just use the paint bucket to apply the image to, in my case, a rectangle. However there was one problem with this. I needed to select the object I wished to paint straight after clicking 'Open'. So I needed to create my rectangle first then do all the necessary steps for importing the jpeg. However I faced yet another problem.

It would not let me paint my rectangles with the jpeg. After a few minutes I realised that the rectangles were grouped. This means that in order for me to have painted any of them I would need to double click them, do the whole import jpeg thing again and then it would work. Or I could just right click the objects and then click 'Explode' which un-groups them. After painting one of the rectangles I faced yet another problem.

The surface was painted however it was tiled and not facing the correct way. So my plan B was to try to import the jpeg but instead of clicking 'Use as texture' I clicked 'Use as image'. Once this was done a object was created which was the image I imported. This was what I needed because I could move, scale and rotate the image just like an object because it was one. With it in place I the continued to do this for the three other cases. I also downloaded a T.V, PS3 and a PS3 controller to add to my desk thingy. This is what it looked like.

I was very happy with what I had done. It looked really good and it did not take too long. This was most likely due to the fact that I downloaded many of the things I used, but hey sharing is caring. I was also very happy with how I learned how to import jpegs and I didn't even have to Google it.

First attempt

Hello everyone again. Since I wanted to get a starting point of what I can do in Inkscape (like I did with my duck in Google SketchUp) to compare it to something at the end of this project I decided to make a quick and easy smiley face. I used the 'Draw Bezier curves and straight lines' tool to draw the eyes and mouth. Once I did that I used the 'Select' tool to move it around. Now with the eyes and mouth done I thought I might as well use the 'Create Circle' tool to make a head for it. I then messed around with 'Fill and Stroke' tool which can be found under the 'Object' drop down menu. I turned the circle I made yellow but then I could not see the eyes and mouth. So to fix this I turned down the opacity slider (the A one out of the RGB A sliders) to about 142. With this now done I felt that I was fairly happy with my first attempt and wanted to export the image. I first tried doing this in the 'save as' option but found out that did not work. So I then checked the 'File' drop down menu and found the 'Export Bitmap' button. Once I clicked this I was given a whole bunch of options which I pretty much ignored. I went to click the export button but I was then given this error, "You have to enter a filename." So I did what the error told me to do and then clicked the export button again. I was once again faced with the same error. So this time instead of just entering a name I clicked the browse button. I then realised what my issue was; I had not stated where I wanted the object saved in the file name. So instead of typing 'Smiley face' I should have typed 'K:\smiley face.png'. With this issue finally fixed I ended up with this.

Simple I know but I wanted to see what I could do first without the help of tutorials. I was fairly happy with my first attempt and I thought learning how to export an image from Inkscape is really important so I am even happier.

New plan of action

Hello everyone how are you all? Today we were shown a bit about the program Inkscape. It uses vector graphics so it uses maths to draw lines and such. Since I have yet to finish my Google SketchUp part of my project I will spend the first session of class working on that and then for the rest of my class time I will play around with Inkscape and learn more about it. I hope to finish my Google SketchUp project by the end of this weekend so I can focus on Inkscape. Wish me luck internet :D. Now you can enjoy this picture of a tea cup pig.

Book Case

Now that my door is finished I can start making my book case in Google SketchUp. Like always I started off measuring the book case which was not very hard at all which I was happy about. Once I made I note of the measurements I started to make the basic skeleton of it. However the walls were starting to annoy me so I hid them all and this made it much easier to zoom in and out without getting stuck behind a wall. With the walls out the way I made a rectangle in the floor, which was painted with the paint bucket tool to look like carpet, and then brought it up to the correct height of 208cm. The only problem with my doing this was that it was still part of the wall and carpet. To separate this I turned it into a group but this left me with this.

 

This is what I wanted however there was now a hole in the wall and floor. To fix this all I needed to do was use the line tool to close up the gaps and then heal the surface.

 Before I continued working on my shelf I felt like I needed to find a good wood texture for it. To do this I googled wood textures for Google SketchUp and I found this http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=b403bbf532f39349da1ccb9f866cdc0d. It was a model made in Google SketchUp filled with different wood textures. To import a texture I needed to open up the model in Google SketchUp then go into the paint bucket tool and from the drop down menu (next to the little home icon) I selected 'In Model'. This shows all the textures in the current model. In this section I found the texture I liked best and then I right clicked it and selected 'Export Texture Image'. With this image now exported onto my USB I was now able to click the 'Create material' button, which is second button down on the top left on the paint bucket tool, and then click 'Browse' which was under the 'Texture' section. Once I was in browse all I had to do was select the image of the wood texture and then I could now use it to paint objects.

The 'In Model' section of the drop down menu.

The thing you must click after right clicking the desired texture.

The Browse button were you select the jpeg.

After finally importing the new wood texture I could begin work on my shelf again. First thing I did was make a copy of my shelf's side and then moved this 75.5cm away from the original shelf. Once this part was done I could start working on the shelves of the book shelf. The shelves were easy to make because all I needed to do was create one rectangular prism and then copy (holding the Ctrl button while moving the object with the move tool) said prism seven times which looks a little something like this.

The copying process.

The near final product.

 I was quite happy with my shelves now but they were missing one thing: books. "What book shelf doesn't have at least one book on it?", I thought. So I decided that I would need to make some books to place on my shelf. I decided to cheat a little bit and download some books from the Google 3D Warehouse just so I could save some time. After importing a group of books and copying them several times I got to this stage.

I then had another idea to save even more time which was to select all seven books as they were then, make them into a single group and then copy this one big group several times.

And my idea worked!

And this was my end product which I was quite happy with because it is very simple but I think an effective book case.

The door!

Hello internet. It is me again and this time I am working on my door. Once again I measured everything that needed measuring and once again height was a issue for me with measuring some parts of the door. So to fix this I brought back my chair and measured all those hard to measure places. Whoa, I do say measure a lot. I also took a few photos to compare the door in real life to my door which will soon be created in Google SketchUp.


The first problem I faced before I could even start was that my roof was hidden and I did not know how to un-hide it. After some clever Google searches I found out that to un-hide something I first need to see hidden surfaces and in order to do this I need to click 'View' in the tool bar then select 'Hidden geometry'. Once I did this I could see my roof well sort of at least. This picture will explain what I mean.

Now that my roof was un-hidden I could then begin work on my door. First thing I needed to do was mark out the door frame which was really easy because all it took was a few well placed measuring tape lines and a few lines drawn by the line tool.

Now that does not look too bad however it was lacking a few details which will make the door frame look even better. I still needed to add a curve and cut out a 0.5cm square section from the whole door frame. To do the 0.5cm squares I used the measuring tape tool and the line tool. I then used the push/pull tool to push the square all the way up the door frame so it was leaving a 0.5cm square gap as it went. This worked perfectly for the two side doors however not so good for the top of my frame. Since I healed the surfaces of the door frame it was one whole surface. This gave me problems when I was trying to measure the square. Though I placed the measuring lines they would not show up. To fix this I thought I might as well add a couple of lines to separate the surface again and it worked. I was surprised that this fixed my issue but glad.

From this

To this

Once that was done I used the push/pull tool to finish off the rest of the door frame and ended up with the door frame looking like this. Now the door frame is looking a little bit better but it is still missing a bit of a inward curve.

 To start off I measured it and drew a curve on the door frame that is 2.5cm long and 0.2cm deep. Now I would normally use the push/pull tool to get rid of this but I decided to give the follow me tool go.

In order for the follow me tool to work I needed to use lines to separate the curved bit from the rest of the door frame. This was because I only wanted 2.5cm of the door to have the inward curve while the rest of the door frame should remain the same. In order to do this I measure out 2.5cm from each side of the door frame. I then used the line tool to mark these measurements. Once this was done I had a complete whole surface which was 2.5cm in width. This was what I needed to have and now all I needed to do was select the parts I wanted to have the inward curve then click the follow me tool and then finally click my curve (the picture above this text). Once I had completed this long process I was left with this.

 

It was perfect and I was so happy that it worked. Now that my door frame was complete I could finally start building the actual door. The door knob and the four panels on the door needed to be made and I decided to start off with the panels. The top two panels are identical while the bottom two panels are identical to each other only, differing in height from the top two panels. I started work on the top two panels first. The first thing I needed to do was to mark out the 92cm X 24.8cm rectangles which will soon become the top panels. Now that I had the rectangles I needed to make them look more like the panels on my door. In order to do this I measured out yet another rectangle but this one was 4cm in from the first rectangle. I then used the push/pull tool to bring out the rectangle by 1cm. Now I needed to put a triangular edge along this rectangle. In order to do this I drew a triangle using the line tool. Once this was drawn I used the follow me tool and was left with this.

Once again I was happy with what I had done and surprised that I had no issues in doing so. I used the same process again to give the big rectangle a triangular edge as well. Now one of my top panels were completed and since I am lazy and wish to save time I made my front panel into a component and then copied it over to were the second top panel should be. Since they are components if I were to edit one of them the other one will have the same thing done to it. I did this on purpose because both panels are identical. Now that my top panels were done I needed to repeat the entire process again but this time for the bottom panels. This is what the end product looked like.

I was proud of what I managed however I was still not finished. My door was missing a door knob so I started work on this straight away. First I placed a rectangle and marked out the middle point using the line tool like so.

Now knowing were the middle point was I could begin drawing my circle. I started off by drawing one circle with the radius of 3cm. I then drew another circle within this one with the radius of 2.4cm. The inside circle will become the handle while the large circle will be the metal part of the door knob.

 

Now I needed to use the push/pull tool to pull out the inner circle 4cm. However it turns out I cannot push/pull a curved or smooth surface. In order to fix this problem I drew 5 lines marking out the size of the inner circle. I then drew the circle upon these five points and was now able to push and pull this circle. I am not quite sure why this fixed the problem however it was still fixed so I am not complaining. 

 Now that I had fixed this problem I then needed to pull the circle 4cm towards the door and then give it a 2cm deep inward curve. After having struggling with this for more than 10 minutes I had finally given up and decided that the best option would be to download a door knob from the Google 3D Warehouse.

Now that my door was complete I realised that I would need to duplicate the door and put them back to back in order to get the same design on both sides. Once I did all this I made both sides of the door a single object then moved them back to where they needed to be. After hiding a few stubborn lines and filling in some blank spaces I managed to place my door into my room however depending on the angle you look at the door will appear to have blank spots but you know you can all ignore that...right?

All in all I was pretty happy with the work I have done. I was happy I didn't have many issues and any issue I did have I was easily able to fix without too much stress. I have felt I worked pretty hard on the door and it turned more detailed then I originally expected.