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Alfred Scott
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 633
Location: Richmond, VA
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 Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 7:52 am Post subject: Graduated/Blended Shadows |
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Time Magazine had a cover article on D-Day recently, and there was a big illustration of the invastion. At the shore line, they had a graduated or blended shadow. The sea bottom was gray, and there was a very dark shadow right at the shore line, blending to gray.
It's a very similar effect to the shadow that OS X uses around a window.
It got me thinking of how we could have such an effect in PowerCADD.
One way would be to have a graduated blend effect in the Thicken tool. In PowerCADD, Gradients are handled by drawing a series of overlapping lines or arcs. The tool could place a series of overlapping parallel offset objects with varying degrees of transparency.
In the case of most parallel offsets, the new objects are placed in the drawing on top of everything else. In the case of these things, I'm thinking they should go behind the object you click on.
If we do this, then this capability should be available in the 3D Thicken and Perspective Thicken tools. There should probably be some offset of the outermost objects to enhance the appearance of depth.
Are there any other effects that might be included with this? Brian Huculak likes to create this effect with stippling around a shoreline, and he now does it with the Linear Patterning tool.
And if you follow the logic of all this, I suppose it means that gradient fills in PowerCADD should also have gradients of transparencies in them.
Anybody got any thoughts on this?
Alfred |
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huc
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 659
Location: ::caddpower.com:: (Aurora, CO)
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| Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 8:16 am Post subject: |
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Alfred
1) opacity is a global issue - there should ideally be object level controls over opacity. At a min. layer level opacity controls. 100% opacity being what we see now, solid. 0% opacity being totally transparent / invisible.
2) drop shadows: Should be an object attribute setting. Shadows on/off, distance, offset, color, blur, etc. similar to how Panther provides text block level controls over drop shadows now. It should not be necessary to draw another object to create the shadow. This makes object editing much faster and easier (i.e. resizing a rectangle with a drop shadow would resize the associated shadow). For an example, launch Text Edit and assign a shadow to some text.
The above would permit the shadow you described to be created and edited easily. It would also apply to all objects, whether they be created by a gradient tool or anything else which is more desirable than having to create shadows manually with a particular tool.
Brian |
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Alfred Scott
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 633
Location: Richmond, VA
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| Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 9:51 am Post subject: |
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Brian,
I hadn't thought of that. If Quartz will do this, then that may be all that's needed.
Alfred |
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huc
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 659
Location: ::caddpower.com:: (Aurora, CO)
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| Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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Alfred
Based on all my R&D the features being discussed are at the heart of Quartz and should be standard API's.
Having said that - I know less about programming than I do about women so take that bit of info for what it's worth  How to make it work is up to folks smarter than I.
Brian |
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