Inkscape Interpolate Tutorial: Step-by-Step How to Create Retro 80s Perspective Grid

i'm rick johansen and this is the iron echo design channel in today's inkscape tutorial i want to go through the interpolate feature it's a great tool inside of inkscape it's very easy to use and i'm going to walk you through the steps for a beginner beginner intermediate level to make this 3d 80s perspective grid because this is how i remember the 80s and i'll show you what we can do with the tool but first what the heck is linear interpolation if you have a line and you have a second line you can then tell inkscape i want to create that type of line in between the two it's just a feature and i'll show you all the settings you can do it with the curve and take this curve a second curve and then create this type of thing i have a tutorial on this almost exactly like this one if you want to delve into this more but for today we're going to make this 80s thing if you're going to play along the settings on the welcome page you'll be on the print a4 which is just 210 millimeters by 297 millimeters this creates the grid looks like this that i don't use but at least you'll have the right settings and um scale if you already know how to do interpolate skip ahead to the grid that's fine if you want a refresher or if this is your first time this is how it works here i have a line i've duplicated it and made a second line to get the interpolate feature you want to go to extensions up on the top generate from path interpolate and it'll give you this box and this is the default 0 for the exponent 10 steps interpolation method 1. if you do live preview nothing will happen the key is to always select both lines you need a starting path and an ending path so close out of that so you click the first one hold shift click the second one now it will work extensions generate from path interpolate and we'll just try it here i said 20. we'll just do the the full 10 here live preview and there it goes so you have 10 steps in between the first and second so don't worry about the other parts yet we're just focused on the steps let's change it to 20. you have to unclick live preview and then re-click on my computer it should do it in real time but for mine i have to unclick re-click and there's your 20. so that and i'll do apply there or close so that is the basics you're taking a starting path and an ending path and telling the computer to say i want you to do this many steps in between the next basic skill with interpolate takes into account the exponent factor and the confusing thing is it will do the math based on which you click first so for this example i'm going to first click on the top path then hold shift click the second extensions generate from path interpolate i'll follow my guide here we're going to be on exponent 1.0 interpolation steps 20 live preview there we go whichever line you clicked first is going to have in my mind more gravity it's going to bunch up the lines there and it creates this look which can be very useful when you're making the 80s perspective grid just to drive the lesson home so the interpolate feature works the way that you want when you go to play with this and you don't have first click second click blatantly on the canvas let's do the reverse example so i'll do first click on the bottom shift second click extension generate from path interpolate same exact settings just click in a different order apply and there it is before we go on i want to show that it can also be used with curves here is a random curve made in two seconds i'll ctrl d duplicate it and then over here this changes directions so one of them will be we'll just leave it where it is one of them's already selected i'll hold shift to grab the other generate from path interpolate let's go with 30 steps and see what that looks like it looks like that just want to show you there's more applications than just straight lines on to the main event pop on some 80s music and let's go i've got my first line second line so i'll do first click on the top shift second click extension generate from path interpolate i'm going to go with exponent of 3.0 i'm going to really try to bunch up the top there but for interpolation steps let's do 20 apply so red okay let's grab the whole thing so i'm just doing ctrl g to group it all together i'll move it to some open space because i need it wider stretching it out won't mess up my interpolation effect and now we can add the diagonals to create that perspective look i've got the bezier pen tool i'll make a diagonal just eyeballing it about there let's duplicate that ctrl d and when you click the selector tool you'll get your directionals i'll change the directions so the second one is reflected to keep things nice and neat i'm going to hold ctrl as i grab the second one and by holding ctrl it locks in the horizontal axis so i don't make a mistake when i drag it over for the diagonal interpolation i don't need any bunching in fact i want it perfectly even between the the left and the right so my exponent is going to be zero because at zero it doesn't matter the order in which i click them so i've got one selected already shift get the second extensions generate from path interpolate i'll put this down here so we can see exponent zero so there's no bunching of the lines steps i had it on my guide there eight live premium gnarly i'd say we can lock that in apply close and let's grab the whole thing click on the no man's land capture everything control g i put a black rectangle temporarily just so we can look at that if you like it this way you can end right here but i'm going to add some extra parts to it first i'm going to take it and do ctrl d to duplicate it and back up on my directionals flip it vertical so i can create almost like a ceiling on there and i want to swap out the black for the space background if you follow along with some of my past tutorials i do like to bleed off the edge so i can grab the object there is a more advanced way to have all your objects on the sidebar but i like to flow and just go with it so i've got this purposely too big so i can select the top and the bottom i'm going to group them because i want to add the same type of blur effect which is simple to do by first duplicating it ctrl d and then we're going to send that see these here these steps these are hierarchy steps we're going to send that down one step so the blurred one is now underneath the top one it's not blurred yet down here you've got blur blur a little bit see that i do like the way that looks one more easy effect i'm going to add i'm going to create the rectangle here i'm going to draw it's just adopting the previous fill and stroke so fill and stroke me if you don't have it the menu is right here this paint brush thing in the corner let's get the stroke off of that so stroke x out of it and for fill i'll get the exact same color we had by the way i will have the color code in the description below i should have mentioned that before with this rectangle i don't want it full opacity let's go and see yeah see what we're going with just trying to have almost like the the horizon line was so bright it's bleeding some of the color forward but i'm going to blur it because i don't want to end just exactly on any of the lines i think that's pretty cool i could do it to the top but i'm not going to because i want to swap in space special thanks to nasa because they provide amazing images that we can use you can use i can use and the link will be in description below for this exact one it's called a cauldron of stars at the galaxy center so i've downloaded it if your inkscape starts to crash it's too big it's not that big of a file 7.4 megabytes you could always resize it before you bring it in i did resize mine slightly because i didn't want to crash while i'm doing this tutorial so i'll bring in this image for the settings i didn't change anything it's on embed image dpi from file okay there is our cauldron of stars let's resize it if i hold shift and control it'll resize in proportion i want to make a point here inkscape shines with vector stuff so the lines the interpolate feature we just did for photo editing and altering images there's a lot of other choices out there that have a little bit more muscle and capability but i want to do it this way to show you you can do some of this stuff inside of inkscape now if i throw in this purple orange pink space onto that teal colored grid we made it'll look terrible so i'm going to show you a simple way it's called simple blend how you can change an image on the fly inside of inkscape i've got the image selected i'll go up to filters color simple blend and here comes your menu now i've got a preset if you don't have it you could always eyedropper and choose the color this is just a matching color to the grid that we made again it's filters color not extensions color that's come up in the comments it can be a little confusing but this simple blend is found under filters color simple blend we've got it on our teal if you click live preview there you go now you've got your image with this uh teal space cauldron of stars apply one more piece of fine tuning and this is as deep as we're gonna go we did simple blend to create this altered image go back to filter filter editor don't be confused i have a bunch of stuff up here just go find the one we did so the filter editor would be under simple blend if you're on the convolve matrix you'll see something down here that says bias you can pull this slider and make it darker or lighter any way you choose and to really make the effect pop choose preserve alpha see that and then you got real dark space and some bright spot of the cauldron of stars in the center i think we'll go with this version so i'm going to drag it back up to our grid here's what i mean i can take the old black background just click on it and delete out of it and in hierarchy drop this down at the bottom and you've got space maybe i'll play with the filter editor a tiny bit more to get it darker how about something in there or it can pulsate if this was a nft leave it at that all right so there you go so there is the interpolate feature if you have specific just kidding i just realized i watched it back i didn't clip it out if you want to sometimes people ask if you want to clip this out for a project group everything together ctrl g then you can create a clipping box by making a rectangle over the part that you want it's too hard to see as black so i'll make the rectangle green move it around where you want it with the clipping box selected hold shift grab your group selection then go to object clip set all right how do you say goodbye in the 80s i don't remember so long [Music] i

Channel: IronEcho Design

Views: 7,771

Keywords: Rick Johanson, Inkscape, Interpolate, 80s, Interpolation, Bezier Pen

Id: Z6w0vSxLAns

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 08 2021