Inkscape Explained: Editing Nodes, Paths & The Bezier Pen

this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and in today's episode of Inkscape explained I'm going to be going over nodes and paths and the bezzie a pen in Inkscape and particularly what I'm talking about is this tool here the edit pads by nodes tool and when it comes to vector graphics nodes are the framework of any vector graphic when you're using something like or Photoshop you're working with rasterized graphics which are comprised of pixels whereas with vector graphics when you're using something like Inkscape or illustrator or Coral draw you're using you're creating graphics that are made out of mathematical equations which give you different anchor points notice nodes which I'm going to demonstrate for you here so let me get started here let me open up my line and distribute in my path and Stroke menu and I'm just going to create a polygon and create a polygon and I'm going to create a circle and I'll take these and I'll bring the opacity down and I'm going to duplicate this one and give this one a stroke so I'll give that a red outline and so what we're going to start out with here is the edit path by nodes tool up here now this is the heart and soul of a vector a vector graphics because it shows you the framework of how a vector graphic is constructed so let me click on this with the with the edit pads by nodes tool and there's nothing here there's no nodes or anchor points here well except for this one right here because Inkscape still recognizes this as a star of polygon so I'm going to go to path object to path and now you're going to see we have all of these nodes here that comprise this graphic okay so let me do the same with the rest of this stuff here let me do convert all this to a path I'll go to path object to path and now we should have nodes on every one of these graphics like if I click on this circle here we now have all of these nodes that this graphic is comprised of which we can edit and manipulate however we'd like as you can see there so up here in this toolbar you'll have all these little options on how to you know further manipulate these nodes so let me start by showing you this the first one up here insert new nodes into selected segments so let me click on this polygon right here and you'll notice we have our nodes if I select that node and then hold shift and select that node so we haven't both selected I can insert a new node halfway between those points using this tool right here I'll click that insert new nodes and two selected segments I'll click on that and there I have a new node to play with so I could further manipulate this graphic and it works the works the other way around as well if you select all of these nodes and select insert new nodes you get a whole bunch of new nodes in there and you can click it again and again and again and you could create just tons and tons of nodes however much your heart desires so let me undo all of that and we'll go over to the next one delete selected nodes okay this one works the same way as this tool does but in Reverse so if I click on just this node right here and press delete it deletes that node and it kind of automatically generated curves based on that where the where the the anchor point was and it gives me these handles that I could play with and you know manipulate however I like so I'll undo all of that the next tool is join selected nodes so let's say I take this node here and then hold shift and take that node there so I haven't both selected I'll click on join selected nodes and it joined them together into one point so that's how that's will works the next one here break paths at selected nodes this one's interesting okay so I'll click on this one here this uh this polygon with the stroke around and I'm going to use this one because the stroke helps further illustrate how this works if I click on those two nodes right there click and drag over both of those and if I go to what was that break path at selected nodes I'll click on that it broke the path it broke it up into separate segments so you see we now have these separate objects that we could play with however we'd like and let me show you another way that works I'll click on just that node and I'll click on break path at selected nodes and you can't see it but there's now two different nodes there and it kind of broke it up and let me turn the fill off to show you it gave you a starting point and an end point for the graphic as as opposed to previously where it was all one fluid joined object so that's what that tool does and the next one here join selected edy nodes with a new segment so this takes two nodes like well actually two or more I'm going to select these two nodes right here and then I'll hold shift and click on that on that one so I have all three beams selected and if I click on this join selected and EDD nodes with the new segment it joined them all together with one straight line like that and that's kind of similar to how the delete selected nodes works but when you do is when you do when you use delete selected nodes it automatically generates curves there if you don't want to do that if you just want to have a straight line you could use that tool right there or is that delete select a segment between two non endpoint nodes so that's what that does that's how that works and the next thing we have here make selective nodes a corner okay so there's really two main different types of nodes you'll have a corners and smooth nodes on this polygon this node here is a corner whereas on this circle here this node is a curve because there's two different you know what I have to convert that to a path path object to path okay so this node here is a curve it given when you click on it it gives you these handles that you could play with now if I want to turn that into a corner I could just click on that and it turned it into a corner meaning I could take this handle and bring this in and take that handle and bring that in and you can make like kind of like a water drop I guess let me undo that that's how that works you know what gotta undo that again okay so the next one here makes selected nodes smooth okay this works the same way as the corner one but just in Reverse you could take a corner node and make that smooth just like that and you could take this and play with that and you know move it around however you'd like and the next one here makes select nodes symmetric okay so this is different I'm going to do that I'm going to leave that how it is right now and I'm going to come down here and then I click on make selected nodes symmetric now these two look very similar but the difference between the two of them is this one here is not symmetric meaning I can take this handle and move it in and take this handle and move it out whereas this node here is locked for it to be symmetric so if I take this node and pull it out the other the other handle scales accordingly so it ensures that this node remains symmetric okay so let me undo all of that I'll see the next one is here make selected nodes Auto smooth okay now Auto smooth is very similar to make node make selected nodes smooth I'll to go back to this I'll make this one smooth and then I'll make this one Auto smooth okay with this one here if you notice the difference in appearance this node up here is a square whereas this node down here as a circle the circle means the node is Auto smooth meaning it locks it well you know what if you click and move the handle it automatically turns it into just a regular smooth node you notice it turns back into a square if I do that it's a circle there and now it's back to a square and with this one here this one is just a regular curve or this one or as this one here is Auto smoothen I'm not really quite sure with the difference between the two of those is I've never really found myself in a position where I needed one and not the other or the other way around but that's what that is and that's what it does so let me undo that this one here makes selected segments lines if I click and drag over those top nodes up there I'll click on this make selected segments lines or you know what I could do the circle I click over those two right there make that a that align it creates a line a straight line out of those the space between those two segments and the same works for this one here which is the same thing but in Reverse make selected segments curves if I click on this and then I click and drag over those two right there and I can make that a curve the only thing that happened was it gave me these nothing happened to the overall appearance of the graphic but it gave me these nodes or these handles rather that I could take and play with and move around like that and you know manipulate the shape you know the edge of the shape accordingly so the next thing here converts selected objects to a path this is pretty much the same thing as path object to path and the same thing with this one here converts selected object stroke to a path which is the very same thing as path stroke to path and I'll show you here let's say we have let me create a square let's say we have a square like that I'll just make that black and a bit of the edit pads by nodes tool and there's really no nodes for us to work with we have this the square rectangle nodes where we could change the corners if I click on this it turns it right into a path just like that so it's the same thing as going to path object to path if we go to path object to path the same thing happens so I really don't really have much of a use for that one and the same thing with this one converts selected converts selected object stroke to path so click on that and now we have the stroke converted to a path which again is the same thing as path stroke the path so that's what those two things to do there and of course we have our X and y axis if I take this node here I could change the x-axis bring that to the left by bring it down or bring that to the right by you know clicking up same thing with the y-axis I could bring that down by clicking down bring it up by clicking up and the unit of measurement here which is pixels and this here show clipping path that objects okay so this this is for this is for when you're working with a clip and a clip is pretty much something to do with raster images let me just import an image in here so I could show you because I can show you better than I can explain it so I'm going to hit ctrl I am an import an image of a cat I have this image of a cat here and I'll take this circle and I'll duplicate that and I'll put that on the over the cat I'll scale this up you turn that red just to ensure that you can see it or green or blue green works so I have this circle over the cat if I select both of those objects and I go to object clip set it takes the object and grabs the image of the cat within the boundaries of that shape that I clipped it with so this is what's considered a clip here and if I go to the edit pads by nodes tool let me make sure that's converted first and I'll click on this tool right here show clipping path of selected objects click on that there we have our nodes right there so I can take this node and bring that in like that or bring that out alright you take this node and I can make that a corner and play with it like that and that's pretty much what the purpose of that is and the next one here show masks of selected objects I'm really not sure what this does I've tried it and I know what it does in theory it does it just doesn't work on my system for some reason and I've never had a note never had a use for this tool so I can't really tell you what that one does let me go back to this this one here show next editable path effect parameter I'm not sure what that is either I don't know how to activate that tool I'm sure if I looked it up and read through the documentation and Inkscape I could find it but I've never found myself needing something like that this one here is really interesting show transformation handles for selected nodes let me take this make a duplicate copy of that one if I go to the edit path by nodes tool and we have all of our nodes and I select it it highlights let me select these three actually if I select them all they all highlight but if I click on this show transformation handles it gives me handles that I could scale just like when we're using the select tool and scaling objects I could hold ctrl and shift and scale that in like that that's really cool it's really useful this is something I use a lot and again just like the Select tool if I click on that node again it gives me rotation handles where I could rotate it around like that you zoom out to show you you know you could rotate it around like that or you could slide it over like this and I think that's a that's pretty cool so I'll just go and turn that off for now and the next one here which is show path outline with path effect so if I click on that you'll see we have our nodes if I turn that on it just gives us a red outline that we can see going around the edge of the graphic which I guess it's just a matter of personal preference I personally don't like having the red outline on I can see it being useful if you're working with two different colors on top of each other like let's say I want this to be a white circle for whatever reason I'll bring that up and I'll make that white and I'll go to deatta path by nodes tool and you'll see it puts a red outline around it so I could actually see what I'm doing but it's not something I use often I made that black again bring that down and we have this one here show Bezier handles with selected nodes you're going to want that turned on if you turn that off it gets rid of those handles on curved nodes so you can't really see you can't really play with the nodes other thing clicking on the actual edge and moving it but if you turn that on it shows the handles so you can you can even grab them and use them pull them out rotate it around so I really don't know why you wouldn't want this turned on but they give you an option to turn that off if you like so that's how all of that works and another thing I wanted to go over is the align and distribute menu because you could align and distribute nodes just like you can objects so let me go back to pet the Edit path by nodes and I'll click on this if I select these three nodes right here I can click this button to align them all on common horizontal line like that and it puts them all in the same horizontal plane and I can do the same thing with the vertical align selected nodes to a common vertical line and it lines them all up on a vertical plane like that and with this one right here you can distribute selected nodes horizontally this pretty much spaces all the nodes out evenly so if I have five this node here I have that node up here and this one up here you'll notice that this node is closer to this one than this to this one but if I want them to all be spaced out evenly I can click on that and I can click on distribute selected nodes vertically and it space them all out equally and the same thing is true for the other one so let me pull this one over here if you notice this node is closer to this one then this one is to this one so I can click on if I click and drag over all three of those I can space those nodes out evenly on the horizontal plane then I can space them out evenly on the vertical plane so that's pretty much how all of that works so that's the the basics of the edit path by nodes tool now if I go to the Bezier pen which is right here and if you're not using this icon pack that I created for Inkscape add your veggie a pen icon is going to look a lot different you could just press B on the keyboard to grab it and with the Bezier pen is it pretty much just allows you to create objects based on where you want the node points to be so you see I just created that object there and I could turn that red or you know do whatever I want with that and the same thing is true if you just want to create a line like that and click enter and there you have a little line like that and you could even if you click and drag it'll let you create curved nodes like that you create like a little spiral or something and then click enter and there you have that and let me go back to the Bezier pen this option here creates spiral path this pretty much lets you create spiral paths and if you click enter it gives you those paths with Auto smooth nodes instead of just regular smooth nodes so it creates a more fluid and not you know more fluid and nicer looking shape so we'll get rid of that I'll go back to the the pen this one here create a sequence of straight-line segments this works the same way as the the regular way only it doesn't let you create curves if you click and drag it confines you to straight lines like that which is um on my opinion it's pretty useless because you can just do that with the regular pen I guess if you just want to ensure that you don't accidentally create something a curb I guess it's good but otherwise I don't really use that and the same thing with this tool right here create a sequence of para para Co line segments this pretty much just locks the lines that you can create to either the vertical or the horizontal axis you can make them going horizontal or vertical but you can't make them going diagonal it locks it to the X&Y axis so that's what all of that does delete that let me put this mode back here but like I said this is the mode I use more than anything I very very rarely use these in fact I know for a fact that I've never used either of these two and this one is useful for different things but generally I like to work with just the regular create regular Bezier path option and up here we can choose the shape that we use if we have none selected which is the default it just creates a regular stroke like that but if we choose triangle in we can create a triangle press Enter it took a triangle and stretched it out in the shape of the path that we just drill and the same thing for triangle out triangle out I'll go and draw that same shape again it did the same thing only it started with the point of the triangle and ended with the base of the triangle whereas this one started with the base of the triangle and ended with the point of the triangle so that's what that option does what else do we have ellipse it does the same thing as the trial only it creates an ellipse instead of a triangle go ahead and click and there we have any lips it doesn't look like any lips but it technically is it gets fatter at the center than it does at the edges and if you zoom all the way and you could see it has a curved node just like an ellipse would so that's another thing you can use and that's what I like to use to create like um whenever I'm doing line art logos like that I made a tutorial a while back about creating line art logos and for that I used I believe I used the ellipse with the spiral path and that's pretty much how that works so I guess you know that's this useful sometimes I think it looks pretty nice when you want to create like a nice looking fluid line instead of just a straight abrupt line like that and finally we have from clipboard and this is interesting too let me create a custom shape here I'm going to create some random custom shape I have like this little eye shape here and I'm going to copy that to the clipboard I'm gonna go to I'm going to right click that and go to copy I'll go back to the Bezier pen and I have from clipboard selected if I go and click and create a shape it's going to take that shape and stretch it out in the shape of the path that I drew which i think is pretty interesting if you go back to one of my other older tutorials from a few months ago where I showed you how to create a flame icon I used that technique from using the from clipboard option so that's what that does and I think that pretty much covers that pretty much covers both of those tools so hopefully that gives you a better understanding of how nodes and paths and the Bezier pen works in Inkscape but if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 156,195

Rating: 4.9461884 out of 5

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners

Id: dVjJfx2oc5w

Length: 21min 28sec (1288 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2016