Inkscape Tutorial: Vector Dice

[Music] this is nick with logosbynic.com and in this tutorial i'll be demonstrating how you can create this vector dice illustration using inkscape and if you'd like to learn more about how inkscape works be sure to check out my inkscape master class it's a collection of over 60 videos where i go over all of the tools and features in inkscape and i explain what they are and demonstrate how they work i'll have a link in the description of the video if you want to check that out so to get get us started here in inkscape the first thing we want to do is set up our documents so that we are all working with a similar workflow to do that we'll come up here to where it says view make sure you have custom selected and then we'll come up here to where it says zoom and zoom in at one to one and then up here in the snapping menu i just want to click this icon over here to the top left that says enable snapping as you can see i already have it enabled and these are the options we're going to want enabled for this tutorial right here where it says snap nodes pads and handles enable that and then over here where it says snap to cusp nodes and then right next to it where it says snap to smooth nodes and once we've done that i'm going to open up the align and distribute menu with this icon over here or you can press ctrl shift a where it says relative to i want to set that to last selected and then i'll open up the um fill and stroke menu over here with this icon or you can press ctrl shift and f on your keyboard to get that open so once we have that open the first thing we want to do is create a polygon so i'm going to come over here to the stars and polygons tool and over here from these settings i want to choose polygon rather than star where it says corners i want to make sure we have six and then rounded and randomized both set to zero as you can see i already have these values set beforehand you will probably have to change these manually so go ahead and type those in and once you do that just click and drag on the canvas to create a polygon i'm going to hold ctrl and then click and drag the mouse up like that so that it creates the polygon where the points are going vertically as opposed to horizontally that right there is what we're looking for once we've done that i'm going to take this move this towards the center of the page i want to bring the opacity of this down a little bit i'm going to take this opacity over here and just drop that down roughly in half and i'm going to scale this down a little bit i'm going to hold ctrl and shift and just click and drag to scale that down what i want to do now is duplicate so i'm going to right click this and go to duplicate and i'm going to click and drag this up here until these two corners snap so we get something like this here where there's this diamond shape intersecting between the two of them and i want to make this red just so we can differentiate it from the original then i want to duplicate that object again i'm going to right click that and go to duplicate come over here snap this over to the left side over here and then do that one more time right click duplicate and snap this one over to this right side like that and with this red polygon still selected i'm going to go to edit select same and click on fill color it's going to select all of the objects on your canvas that have the same red fill which is these three objects right here and i want to combine those together by going to path combine and once we've done that i just want to click and drag over the entire thing entirely like that so we have everything selected including the red object and the original polygon in there and then go to path division and what's going to happen after you do that you can click off of the graphic to deselect everything you'll notice this has been broken up into three individual parts here so let me just undo that by hitting ctrl z now what i'm going to do is i'm going to create three individual sides for the dice here so to do that i'm going to grab the squares and rectangles tool and i'm going to hold ctrl and shift on the keyboard and i'm going to click and drag to create a perfectly symmetrical square like that and since this square is going to represent one of the sides of the dice what i want to do is round the corners of this because as i demonstrated in the um in the thumbnail the dice has rounded corners so i'm going to take this little handle up here to the top right this circle node i'm just going to click and drag that down like that so we get some nice rounded nice rounded corners like that and now i want to create circles for the inside of this rectangle that represent the number on the dice so i'm going to grab the circles and ellipses tool hold ctrl and shift and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle like that i want to make this a different color so i'll make this green let me grab the select tool place this over here in the center i mean the top left right click that go to duplicate hold control click and drag this over to the right and the reason why i'm holding control is because it's locking it onto the vertical axis like that and then i want to hold shift and click on the other one so we have them both selected right click that go to duplicate hold control click and drag these ones down here and then click off of it to deselect everything and then just take one of these right here right click them and go to duplicate and then hold shift and click on the red rectangle so that you have the circle and the green rectangle uh the red rectangle selected and center them up on the vertical and horizontal axis like that now if you notice here i made my circles a little too big so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to click and drag over those circles hold ctrl and scale those down a little bit i'll take this one hold shift click on both of those click and drag these down here click off of the deselect i'll take these ones as well again shift clicking them so we select them both bring them over here and let me try this again i'll take this one in the center hold shift click on the uh the red rectangle there center it up on the vertical and horizontal axis that's good now we can click off of that now we want to do is just make sure that we have these green ones in the corners centered up as well so let me click on the green one right here hold shift click on the other four on all four of them and group them together by clicking this button that says group selected objects or you could press ctrl g and then hold shift and click on the red rectangle and just center those up on the vertical and horizontal axis like that and then we can go ahead and ungroup them so this right here is going to represent one of the sides of the dice now i want to do what i want to do is create two more sides so to do that i'm going to click and drag over all of these and i want to duplicate them by going to right click by right clicking and going to duplicate then hold ctrl and just click and drag this over here to the right click off of it to deselect everything i'm just going to delete these two circles right here i'm going to click on it to select it and press delete same thing over here press delete so then we end up with the number three and then finally i will create one more of these right click it go to duplicate hold ctrl click and drag it to the right click off of it to deselect and then get rid of these on the uh on the sides here so that we have just the one in the middle so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to select all of these green ones right here i'm going to click and drag over those green objects to make sure you just select the green object make sure you don't select the red object as well so like just the green objects right there unify them together by going to path union and then hold shift and click on the red rectangle and go to path difference and i want to do the same thing over here select all of these go to path union hold shift click on the red rectangle and go to path difference and then finally i'll come over here click on the green circle hold shift click on the red rectangle we don't have to do a union on these ones because it's just one object and go to path difference so now we have our three sides to the dice here so i'm going to click and drag over all of these let me hold ctrl and shift and scale these down and i want to place these over where they're going to be implemented so i'm going to take this top one the number five put this on top i'm going to take this over here the number three put this on the left and i'll take the number one and put this on the right over here what i'm going to do is change the perspective of each of these objects so that they fit within this polygon so let me zoom in on this by holding ctrl and rolling up the mouse wheel let me click on just this red rectangle right here and go to path path effects and it's going to open up the path effects menu there it is right there and with the path effects menu open i'm going to press the plus icon and what i'm looking for is perspective so i'm going to come up here to where the search icon is i'm going to start typing p-e-r-s and there we go perspective envelope that's what we want and once we've done that come over here to the edit paths by nodes tool and what we're looking for right here if you notice there's different there's two different types of nodes there's gray nodes inside of the object and then there's white nodes on the corners what we're looking for is the white nodes on the corners that allows us to change the perspective so let me zoom back out again to zoom in and out i'm just holding ctrl and rolling up and down the mouse wheel to move the page around i'm just pressing down the mouse wheel and moving the mouse let me take this white node and snap this into the bottom corner of this top object let me take this white node and snap that into there take this node snap it into there and then this one into there like that and now i will finalize that by going to path object to path now let's do the same thing over here let's click on this go to uh we're going to come over here to the path effects menu click on the uh the plus button right here we're going to add perspective envelope and do the same thing i'm going to take this corner and snap it into here take this corner snap it into here this corner goes down here and this corner goes in here and again finalize that by going to path object to path and then i will do the same thing for this object as well so let me select that add a new path effect perspective envelope and then snap these to their respective corners as well i'll put this one down there and then again we're going to finalize this by going to path object to path so let me zoom out a little bit i'm going to hold ctrl roll down the mouse will zoom out let me grab the select tool what i want to do now is put a little bit of space between these three sides because they're all touching each other which is not visually correct for what we're trying to create so let me select each of these red objects by shift-clicking them and then just move them off of the uh the polygon for for a brief moment and i want to reduce their size by 95 so i want to come up here to where it says width and height or w and h i want to turn on the lock right here so it locks the proportions as we scale it and right here these units of measurement where it says px i'm going to change that to percentage and i'm going to change the width to 95 so we're going to reduce the size by 95 i mean by 5 hit enter and then just change that back to pixel so that you can use that later on and then let me click off of that to deselect everything i want to take this object right here hold shift click on the left side of the polygon center it up on the vertical and horizontal axis do the same thing over here take this right right side object hold shift click on the polygon center it up on the vertical and horizontal axis and then finally the same thing over here we're going to center it up on the vertical and horizontal axis and that's what we're looking for right there a little bit of space between those uh those sides of the dice now what we want to do is click on one of the black objects in the background the original polygon you'll know you have it selected when you see the black stripe down here in the bottom left make sure you don't accidentally click the the red object click the black object in the back there and go to edit select same and click on fill color and it's going to select all three of those objects and we want to unify those together so let's go to path union and now i'm just going to scale this up a little bit if you notice here this is the reason why we're going to scale this up if you notice here the padding between the red object and the black object is thinner than the padding between these two red objects i want to scale this up so that it matches that oops i want to scale this up so that it matches that a little more closely i'm going to hold ctrl and shift and just scale it like that if yours is too big you may have to scale it down just so just go ahead and manually adjust it so it looks about right right about there looks pretty good and what i want to do now is round to the corners of this um polygon here so to do that i'm going to add another path effect and the path effect i'm going to look for this time is called corners corners philip chamfer that's what we're looking for click on that and i'm going to click this button right here that says add a fillet or just click fill it and now i'm going to come back over here to the edit pads by nodes tool and if you notice we're going to have these green nodes in each corner so let me click and drag over all of those green nodes let me zoom in a little bit and i'm just going to take one of those green nodes and just click and drag and if you notice it's going to round to the corner as we do that and that right there is what we're looking for that looks perfect so let me finalize that by going to path object to path let me grab the select tool we can close out of the path effects menu now we shouldn't need that again so we have the structure of the dice in place all we have to do now is color it in so let me take this top object right here and let me break it apart by going to path break apart and then i want to hold shift and click on the large red object so that we just so that it deselects it and we just have these circles selected and i want to raise those circles to the top by clicking this button that says raise selection to the top and i'm going to make those white and i want to do the same thing over here select this object path break apart hold shift click on that red object to deselect it make these white and then raise them to the top and then finally the same thing over here select that path break apart hold shift click on the object to deselect it make that white raise it to the top now let me zoom back out let's click and drag over everything and bring the opacity of it all the way up so let's click off to deselect everything now what we can do is we can choose colors to use for our dice i know in the thumbnail i use the color green i think for this one i'll use blue you can use whatever color you'd like so i'm going to start with the base back here the black object and start with the darker variation of whatever shade you want to use if you want to make your dice green start with dark green if you want to make it orange start with a dark orange i'm going to start with a dark blue over here and then i'm going to click over here under the fill tab where it says linear gradient i'm going to click that to give it a linear gradient and then i'm going to grab the gradient tool which is over here or you can just press g on the keyboard and if you notice we have a dark blue on this stop and we have transparency on this stop so let me click on that stop to select it and i want to make this a lighter shade of the color we want so since i'm using blue i'm going to go with lighter shade of blue let me put this stop over here on the bottom we want the dark one on the bottom take this one the lighter one on top hold ctrl bring this straight up so that it locks it onto the vertical axis like that and uh it may be helpful to turn off snapping at this point because snapping we don't need it anymore and it's just going to get in the way from this point forward so up here where it says enable snapping we can disable that and now i want to click on this red object right here and i want to make this an even darker color than the dark shade of blue used over here so let me make this a dark shade of blue like that that looks pretty good and let me give that a linear gradient and i want to take this dark side and put this to the top left corner take this one bring it down here like that and then i want to take this object right here and give that the same gradient so we'll click on linear gradient and instead of creating that again we can just choose it from this list right here it's this one we just created put this one right here like that and put this one down here in the bottom right corner there we go and then up here we're going to use an even lighter shade of our color than we used for up here so i'm going to choose an even lighter shade of blue like that or maybe that looks pretty good and then we will give that a linear gradient as well take this and put this down here and then take the transparent stop and put it up top you can hold control to lock it onto the vertical axis like that now let me grab the select tool let me zoom out a little bit if you can see our dice our vector dice is complete what you can do now is click and drag over all of it group it together with the group selected objects button and i'm just going to give this a little bit of a tilt to make it look like it was just thrown so let me select this let me click on it until we get the rotation handles i'm going to hold ctrl and take this corner node and just bring this counterclockwise one step like that and then i want to right click this and go to duplicate ungroup it go to path union and then let's make this black click on it again to get back to the scaling handles and i want to take this arrow up here in the top in the middle and then just bring this all the way down like that and click the button up here that says lower select lower selection to the bottom and then just bring the opacity of this down this is going to look somewhat like a casted shadow right there that and now that is looking perfect so i think that should do it for this tutorial that's how you can go about creating these vector dice illustrations using inkscape if you have any questions let me know and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 26,809

Keywords: inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape dice, vector dice, logos by nick, logosbynick, nick saporito

Id: 3S-WVk3UwNc

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020