Advanced Mesh Fill Issues

[impulselondon]

Hi all - I'm using CorelDraw 12 now and am trying to master mesh fills. The issue I'm having is that Corel's node creation is neither intuitive nor visually based - nodes are placed mathematically relative to the object's outline.

What I would like to figure out is if there's a way to 'tell' Corel where to place the four 'corner' points from which it draws its reference, without changing the object's core shape?

(I know the question's a bit convoluted, so if no one knows what I'm talking about I won't take it personally, but if anyone might answer it with more information, feel free to ask - please).

Thanks

- Anthony

 

[javabearSTL]

The only way I could think of is to have one shape as your "outline" and then manually create another shape with the bezier tool and use that new shape where you've placed your where you want your four corner points to be placed to be the object that the mesh fill is based on. and then group the two items together.

 

[esigus]

Huh?

 

[javabearSTL]

When you use the Mesh Fill tool, a series of nodes are created on/in the object - you can define how many nodes there are on the property bar. The outside nodes are based on the physical shape of the object, the inside nodes are mathematically based upon almost a row/column layout that is defined on the Property Bar. Impulselondon didn't want to use nodes that were based upon this particular layout, so my suggestion was to create another object that was shaped more of the way he wanted the node layout to work.

 

[esigus]

Sorry to be sub-par, but I wanted to better understand your answer to Impulselondon's question as it is applicable for us as well.

Thanks for the question & the answer.

 

[javabearSTL]

Nope, you're not being sub-par. Probably the best way to see what the Mesh Fill tool does would be to draw a shape... say a circle, give it a fill color... then click on the Mesh Fill and you should see some nodes in there now - you can change the amount of nodes via the Property Bar... then drag a color swatch over to one of the nodes and let go... or drag a color swatch to a space between the nodes. it's something that's better seen than described.

 

[impulselondon]

Javabear - you're the best man. I couldn't even understand my question after I wrote it. I have discovered that creating a rectangle or elipse first, then mashing it onto the shape I actually want is the only way to control those four corner nodes.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[javabearSTL]

Impulse, you're more than welcome - you can get some pretty cool effects with Mesh Warp... I mean, this will give you soft highlights, etc, almost like using an airbrush tool in a bitmap app, but it's all still vectors. If you're wanting other shapes, Do a ctrl-F11 to open up the Insert Character/Symbol Docker and go to a Symbol Font and just drag/drop a character from there (it will automatically be converted to curves) and use one of those funky shapes. Mesh Warp can be used on any vector object. You can use it on Text, too, but I think you have to convert the text to curves first

 

[impulselondon]

I have done a entire drawing in mostly mesh fills now, and would like some feedback - anyone have a way to exchange files?