Creating custom Sketchy Edges

Creating custom Sketchy Edges

Notable, old forum thread introducing some innovative method of work.

Alan Fraser

1/15/07

The Help files deal with the general creating and editing of styles, but do not cover the production of the actual Sketchy Edges themselves. Attached is a step-by-step .doc file on how to to this.

CreateSketchyStyles.doc

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Alan.

Alan Fraser

1/15/07

These are 3 prototype line styles.

1 length 1 proto.style

5 lengths 3 proto.style

5 lenths 1 proto.style

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Alan.

Tyler

1/16/07

Thanks for posting these documents here Alan.

I'm the developer of the styles feature, so I thought I'd clarify a couple points:

1. The .style and .skm file formats are intended to be open formats so that you can create your own styles and materials, if you wish. This is something we're really encouraging, but we're behind on the documentation of the formats, so please be patient.

2. The CreateSketchyStyles.doc is just a brief document I wrote to help some of the beta users. It is not the final, nor complete documentation for the .style format, but it should be enough to get you started.

3. We'll have full documentation, including an XML schema that explains the document.xml file that is embedded in the .style file. For the moment, you can assume that the settings in that file correspond almost one to one to the UI elements on the edit tab of the styles browser. As such, there is almost no reason to hand edit this file.

I hope that helps,

Tyler

Google

Alan Fraser

1/16/07

Thanks Tyler. I was wondering who wrote the .doc as it's got no name at the end. One of the other guys mentioned somewhere that Google is working on some sort of Style Maker to bring all the style editing/creating into one easy-to-use package. I'm sure that most people will look forward to that.

One thing for consideration. In light of the fact that a style is embedded and can therefore be displayed on a target system that does no need to have that style installed, I've noticed a few comments about protection...like the old argument about protecting a skp.

Might it be possible in a future release to lock a style so that it can be shown but not extracted...like fonts in a pdf?

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Alan.

Tyler

1/17/07

Hey Alan. You are correct about the potential protection problems. The same is true with components and materials. File protection was one of the last things cut from the SU6 release, so I'm sure it will be high on Bryce's list for SU7.

Thanks,

Tyler

Google

Tyler

2/20/07

I've updated the CreateSketchyStyles document to include a section that shows how to create sketchy edges style with any number of stoke image lengths and/or prototypes. Enjoy!

CreateSketchyStylesV2.doc

6 lengths 5 protypes.style

Tyler

Google