Using the Bezier Tool in Inkscape

okay i'm going to make another video on using the bezier tool to trace out objects and cars whatever it is you're wanting to trace out i've done a couple before but the previous ones i did was like a cartoon truck and then one of a cut piece that someone was wanting traced out so this is an actual car i'm going to trace it with the bezier tool i'm not going to do this all the way to completion because i mean a design like this i could spend an hour or two on so i'm just going to get the basics trace out the contour highlight a few inner details and from that point you should have a pretty good concept of how to finish the design up yourself for a similar design and go from there so i've brought this image in i'm going to go over here and select my bezier tool and then you just come down and pick a spot on this anywhere i usually start somewhere on the bottom this image is kind of tricky here because you see this stuff down here on the bottom but that appears to be actually a reflection off of this floor so i'm gonna not get this stuff here this is reflecting off the tile there but anyway you pick a spot on the bottom and start a point just by clicking and then you're gonna wanna go around it looks like this comes up to here and you're just gonna wanna work your way around this design and drop points by left clicking with your mouse everywhere on this design that you have a direction change you'll kind of get a feel for it after you've done it a few times you know how many points you need to make the curves are needing on something like this on the tires i see a lot of people cut them if i trace this exactly as it is this tire's flat you know due to gravity sitting on the ground but that it just looks when it's cut as a standalone looks kind of weird because it looks like it has flat tires so i always drop just a little below the actual tire and drop a point and then i'll show you later i'll round that off and it'll look you know more like a tire without flat spots so you just continue work your way around dropping points on this drop one here here here here here sometimes you'll have to on this it's pretty clear i can see where i'm at sometimes you have to zoom in and out to make sure you're capturing a detail on the actual vehicle not something that's in the background uh like there you kind of almost missed that door hinge there but continue working your way around dropping points on here this gets a little tricky but you can make out the details when you really look yeah maybe drop one here here if you get too many points you can always you know remove a few of them later too it's not critical that you i try to put minimal amount but you might end up deciding when you're done that you have a few too many points and you can always reduce those when you're finished with it so it's nothing to worry over and i'll just continue working my way around dropping points on here with the bezier and when you're finished you make it back around to where you started you hover your bezier over the start point and you can see it'll highlight there and you just click it and that'll close your path you now have a closed path for your outer contour there now as you can tell it's kind of hard to see especially in some of these dark areas it's kind of hard to see your path so you're going to want to change your stroke color by selecting it you come down hold shift and pick a color i usually almost always use this green here this lime or this red because they really stand out on a red vehicle i'm going to use the lime color as you can see that gives me a really bright stroke and i can really tell what i'm doing so then i will start going around and left clicking on these lines and pulling them around to more closely match the actual contour of this vehicle sometimes like here too as you can see i'm not quite catching the contour i could either just grab this by click left clicking it and dragging it back until it matches up or depending on the contour i might want to just double click on that line and add an extra node there to follow that a little better but you just keep working your way around grab these paths by left clicking and just pulling them down where you need then like this i want this to be smooth i don't want to a jagged or you know a point here i'll select this node by left clicking and dragging the box around it come up here hit make selected nodes smooth and that'll smooth that out to a nice smooth contour and as i mentioned before like down here i'm not perfectly following the bottom of that tire because i don't want it to look flat so i take a little creative liberty and make that a nice rounded looking tire and work my way around smoothing nodes pulling uh pulling these lines down where i need them smooth them out and you're just gonna work your way around the design doing this on the whole design now you can there's two ways on lines like this you know when you click this it's just two nodes you can move a path by adjusting the handles or by left clicking on the path and pulling it as you can see i'm gonna hit ctrl z before i did that these these nodes have no handles they're just perfectly straight line so to get to the handles you'll have to left click and pull this out now you have handles and you can fine tune that if you want with those handles pull that around where you need it so i just keep working my way around adjusting these until my entire contour matches up with the vehicle spots like this too depending on the size you're cutting it this may be a little tight for the torch to go through but you can you can come back around when you're done and make adjustments you might even just end this right here rather than have it go down there if that spots too tight but you can you can come around and fine tune stuff like that when you're completely done with the design so you're just going to work your way around adjust these pull them where you need them smooth them that could probably just stay straight this curves here there's a hinge on that door pull this around some of this stuff too if if you get you know this is kind of a grainy image it's not probably the greatest quality if it's a little hard to see your contour you can always go to your stroke menu which will be under object fill and stroke and that will open up this over here then you can select stroke style and usually it's always defaulted in millimeters you can click this minus a couple times as you can see that'll thin that stroke out and then i can kind of see a little better here where i'm trying to hit that contour so you can always thin the stroke down a little if it's too big and too obtrusive and you can't really see what you're doing so i'll just continue to adjust these all the way around smooth these out any node like these that's in the middle of a curve i always make sure those are smooth that way there's no little angle you know notch in that cut anything that's like this that's in a corner where you want to make a sharp contour i don't smooth those i just leave those so i'll continue working my way around adjusting these smoothing them out and as you can see it's slowly forming into the shape of our vehicle here the nice part about doing this versus a trace bitmap is if i trace bitmap this this image wouldn't trace very well but if i did at best it would be sloppy there would be a lot of nodes you'd have to go around and spend a lot of time cleaning it up if you wanted a really nice cut the nice part with using the bezier tool is it takes a little longer to get your shape traced out but when you're done you have a really nice clean contour with minimal nodes so there is a payoff to taking the extra time to work your way around this and trace it out okay so that is the outer contour of my vehicle that's complete you know now if i would apply a fill color here say black i got rid of my background my vehicle is completely traced out so now what you'll want to do is just work your way around this and add details for the purpose of this on a vehicle like this i'll use a mix of closed paths and open lines you know because a lot of details you don't really need a closed path to catch the details you need like these body lines and an open line will accent that it'll look good you don't have to you know draw out a closed path it'll just make a single line cut so then i'll go around with my bezier click and drop points just like i did on the outer contour and when you get to the end on an open line you can just right click and that'll end it and i'll go around and adjust those to match these inner details smooth these out leave the ends um and work my way around this design then i'll typically i will change these to by holding shift and you know make those the green color that i'm using that way they really stand out and i can see what i'm doing if at any point i want to see how things are coming together i can click on my outer contour add a fill color and as i work my way around i can see it's starting to come to life so i just worked my way around this design adding these open paths and start accenting all the body lines of this vehicle like here i could bring this all the way down but i don't want spots that come too closely together maybe i want to bring it down a little closer pull this handle up but i want you know some material here between these cuts i don't want them running together and burning through so then i can add another one here and i'm just going to work my way around this design adding these accents anywhere i need them now something i probably do too before i get too far into this something i normally do is i want to design this for whatever cut size i'm designing it for i want to make sure i don't have burn through and that it'll be a solid cut so on a vehicle like this i usually minimum shoot for you know 15 18 inch cut so i come up here and select inches and i'll highlight this hold ctrl i just drag about box around everything hold ctrl grab one of these corners and i'll adjust the size of this up and then once i've adjusted i can highlight just my contour there and see i'm at about 13 inches so i'm going to go a little bigger and there i have about 15.4 so that's that's close enough that i could probably make a decent cut file out of this if i want to cut it to 15 inches so now something i'll do i'm gonna select this outer contour i'm gonna put that in inches and i'm gonna set this back to the default which is usually ten thousands just to make that a little thicker and stand out and these actually since i scaled up it's changed the stroke style c to 21 000 so i'll put that back to 10 thousands so everything's the same but a little guide i'll do because i want to add like an accent here with an open path so i don't want to come too close to this edge and have a burn through if i select my outer contour now that i have this close to the cut size i want i can hit ctrl d and duplicate that you can't see it but it made a duplicate now if i hold shift and select blue that'll change that stroke to blue then i would page it down my page now is not working at the moment there we go page it down and while it's still selected i'm going to set that stroke at a quarter inch i might not be selected let me try that again okay my stroke disappeared for some reason i'm gonna control d that again change it to blue page it down one level it's still selected you can see down here that i have the blue path selected now i'm going to change that to quarter inch and oh you know what happened i paged that all the way to the bottom let me page there we go there it is so now i have that outer contour duplicated and i set a quarter inch stroke and what that does is gives me an eighth inch inside and an eighth inch outside i'm not really concerned with the outside but on the inside i want to make sure that none of my details come closer than an eighth inch to the edge that way i know i have a solid cut so i will leave that blue outline like that until i'm completely done and then i'll just delete it because i won't need it anymore but i use that as a guide while i'm going around now i don't have to worry when i add this hood line if i'm too close to the edge so i can just click in here and add that stroke change the color and i can go around and work and add my details and not have to worry about coming back and checking that spacing later and see it'll help me on things like this headlight i'm gonna wanna i might add a more detailed light later but just to get the the idea of the headlight in there you could just leave it like this but you know i'm gonna want a round cut but here i can see that i'm not going to get too close to the edge then i can control d pull that over here make it a little bigger because this one's close to us i might stretch that just a hair and start adding those details in but i don't have to worry about getting too close to these edges over here you know places that you are going to run into maybe i want to add a little accent for this chrome and add a stroke here to highlight around this headlight now here on this side i know i'm not too close to the edge but between these two i don't want any closer than eighth inch either so what i would do there is i would draw a circle by holding ctrl if i hold shift i can turn my stroke off and now i'm set to inches if i lock my ratio and make that 0.125 for an eighth inch sorry hit an extra key now i can bring this circle in here between these two details and make sure that i'm not too close probably best if you change the color of the circle too but i can see there that i'm not too close to the to my headlight where i'm gonna burn through so anywhere you're curious on details being too close you can use that as a guide to make sure you're not going to burn through so anyway i will continue working my way around this anywhere that i want to accent body lines i can come down click those change my color and start laying in these extra details i work my way around this here i might add yeah maybe a piece here i could could continue this line all the way down but i don't like to make lines that are too long without a break in them otherwise your your piece could get weak and flimsy and we don't want that obviously so i'll work my way around this design highlighting these body lines with open paths and you could do them with clothes pass but then you have to have the design might have to be a little bigger to allow for lead ins and you know ample space for the the details to cut so these open lines come in really handy for accenting body lines without having to cut a huge piece or make really big open contours that don't look good so i would just work my way around and like say on these open paths you draw that line on there let's see on the windshield say i'm gonna come over here here here now i wouldn't leave this windshield like this this is how i'll initially draw it when you get to the end you can right click and that will end your open line what i'll do too like on this windshield i'll draw the whole thing then i'll hold shift change the color but then i will come in because i don't i don't want this huge piece of metal here held on just by the sides so i'll either come in here and break it at both corners or maybe add at least a break here in the middle uh and what what you can do to do that is when you're in node editing mode you can just double click anywhere on these lines and select this here delete segment between two non-end points and that will remove that piece of the line that way you'll have a break in that cut so that the whole piece isn't just held on by this one side over here you know typically i probably would break it at each corner but i just did that for a quick example so just keep working your way around adding these body lines in you know in some places you might want to use closed paths like on the rims i would probably trace out these openings of the rims to add a little more detail so you're not going to not going to want to use open lines probably on the whole design you could if you wanted but you keep working your way around adding whatever details you want when you get to the end too you can hit enter that will end it or right click either one will end your stroke there so i'm not gonna like say completely do this design this could take forever to really go around and 100 completed but uh sometimes too you're gonna have to take a little creative liberty like here i can't really see that door line very well but i can tell that it would be right in here i can kind of see there a little bit where that door line might be so i'm gonna have to just wing it and add that line in there and hope that uh a true car guru doesn't call me out on it being just slightly off so you're gonna go around accent anything you want to accent like say i'm always changing the colors of these lines and that's very simple by just holding shift and selecting whatever color you want holding shift select stroke if you don't hold shift it selects your fill color so we'll just work our way around i just want to get enough here to where i'm done you can get an idea actually i'm gonna leave that out see like that mirror for example is probably one that i would trace that out and cut that as a closed path so i'm not going to go around it with a stroke um going around i'm smoothing these out like i said before and you're going to want to trace out your wheels you know your rims i generally will try to hit like the edge of the room for an accent like say on this design i'll probably do close paths on the wheels but just for an idea i'm gonna throw these open lines on the the edge of the rim there that just kind of helps accent and highlight where the rim is versus the tire ending and like say you can do the whole the entire design in open lines if you wanted and they they don't look bad but i like kind of a mix of open and closed paths to really make a good looking design okay i think that's probably enough to get the point so now i'm gonna change these color just for an example here i'll make them green yep make them green with fill now if i select my outside contour and change it to black as you can see my car is starting to come to life there so that's how you will go around with the bezier tool and trace out a design and you know end up with your cut file when you're done with this okay i've reached a point i'm going to turn the fill back off i've reached a point say that i'm done i'm not but if i were done i would select this blue contour that i made before and hit backspace and get rid of that you're not going to need that i'm going to page this down too because i think i might have one hiding yep that's the one the first one i did that i thought disappeared so i'm going to delete those i don't need those anymore now the way i do it when i'm completely finished is any open or sorry any close pass that i have i will select those and path union then i will page those all the way up select the outside contour and path difference that's differencing those closed paths out from the main contour so now if i were to turn the fill on you can see those are cut out but my open paths are still just laying there so i'm going to hit ctrl z and now if i'm completely done i would take and select my background and delete it now i would select everything i would change my stroke back to black i always use black when i'm finished and now i've selected everything i just simply hit path combine and that would be ready to send to the plasma and cut if the design were finished the only thing left to do for me and it's just probably ocd as i go to my document settings document properties hit resize page to content with the path selected and then hit this drop down you'll get resize page to drawing your selection click that and that will resize your document property to match your path it's not really 100 necessary but what's nice is now this is zeroed on the x and y axis of the drawing so when you convert it to a dxf it's zeroed on your x and y when you open it up in cad it's where it should be instead of way off to the side or you know whatever so now you can save this as a svg or dxf and send it to your cutter to cut hopefully that helps some people out hopefully maybe i touched on a few things i didn't in my last video on the bezier tool thanks for watching

Channel: Bad Dog Metalworks

Views: 3,011

Keywords: Baddogmetalworks, Bad Dog Metal Works, Inkscape, Ink scape, BadDog Metalworks, BadDog Metal Works

Id: vOLJXvMkeTM

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021