Editing 'fill' in Inkscape

I want to try to 3d engrave ‘slider buttons’.
In inkscape (still new to me), I’m trying to edit a greyscale fill so that the finished profile is like the one I’ve attached, the upper diagram.
So far, I’ve just found a linear fill, as shown in the lower part.
I’m used to doing this in Corel, but can’t find the appropriate controls in Inkscape.

Can anyone point me to the process, or to any tutorial that covers this sort of thing ?

:upside_down_face:
buttons

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Are you using the newest version of Inkscape? There are recently-released things called mess gradients that should do what you want or close enough to bodge.

But you will have to convert to raster in inkscape before uploading – the GFUI doesn’t handle that kind of thing.

There are mesh fills and linear and concentric gradient fills. Check through this topic for some hints.

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Ah, looks like homework for tonight. Thanks.
John

@paulw Using 0.48 at the moment.

Definitely upgrade. .92 is much better. If you use a lot of custom plugins it’ll be a tiny bit painful but in general .92 is much nicer. (Says me, with zero authority)

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Something like this, where it’s a pretty standard, straight-forward gradient all the way out, you’d definitely want to use a radial gradient rather than a mesh. I didn’t know Inkscape had gotten a gradient mesh, but it’s an amazingly powerful, time-consuming tool in Illustrator.

Gradient meshes are best used (imo) to realistically mimic light and non-linear tonal changes. Imagine light at a 45 degree angle wrapping around an apple. Or, small tonal changes across someones face where light is wrapping around smile lines or wrinkles, the bridge of the nose, etc. Gradient meshes are incredibly powerful for dealing with this kind of thing - but time consuming as they can be hundreds and hundreds of different points that you are applying different colors too.

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Thanks all, 0.92 now installed.
:upside_down_face:
Merry Christmas, one and all.

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Open the “Fill and Stroke” palette, select the “Fill” tab, click on the “Radial Gradient” style, then select the “Edit Gradient” button (next to the + sign at the bottom of the palette) This will allow you to double click on the horizontal or vertical line to add control points to the gradient, then you can change the color of each point to alter the gradient.

It’s easier to do, than read about doing it. :slight_smile:

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Am I right in guessing that to create the example I posted, that I will only be able to approximate to the curve, by adding quite a lot of ‘stops’ ? That the rate of change between two adjacent stops is linear, whereas in Corel I could create an accelerating rate of change between two stops, and thus get closer to the smooth curve.
John

Since you need to rasterise anyway (since Glowforge cannot vary power on a vector fill), you don’t necessarily need to use Inkscape.

Would it be simpler to use Gimp to achieve this effect, then ?
I’m having to familiarise myself with SW that’s available to me in Ubuntu 14.04, my OS of choice.
:upside_down_face:

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I don’t use Inkscape or GIMP, so I can’t say which is easier. You’d mentioned it being easy in Corel Draw, so thought you might have other preferred options.

I can still use Corel, but that’s on a different laptop running win XP, and trying to simplify the demands made on my rapidly ageing brain, I thought that I’d move over to more ubuntu friendly software.
I tried setting up a VB , to run XP inside ubuntu, but got in a complete mess with that !
So as the GF is happy with Inkscape for vectors, I’m trying to set up a similar methodology.

Just the way my brain works, I suppose.
:upside_down_face:

Makes sense.

I wouldn’t let an XP machine near the Internet at this point. It’s not getting any security updates any more.

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I agree. My XP is strictly off line, and has only been kept for my familiarity(about 20 years worth) with Corel.
:upside_down_face:

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I’m a bit embarrassed to discover from your link, that we had this conversation almost a year ago, and it’s taken me that long to get it sorted.
Better late than never, I suppose.

:blush::blush:

:upside_down_face:

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I believe you are correct, AFAIK Inkscape does not have the adjustments to do non-linear changes between color, unless you are using the gradient mesh tool, which would take some time to setup.

I’ve used Gimp a little, and it might be the thing. Although if I were doing it I might use Openscad or some other 3D design program and then export to Meshlab where I could produce a depth map. (I know it seems a little rube goldberg, but at each step the conceptual thing would be in synch with what you’re doing, and all of that is available on ubuntu)