Recently, Lensman posted a comment on my simple orb bubble tutorial. He was asking a question about how the clipping works in inkscape. I understand his pain, because when i started with inkscape, i was not sure how it worked either, until bulia posted his ropes and tubes tutorial.
So i decided to post this little mini-tutorial thingo to help anyone out there who wants to know.
Basically, what clipping in inkscape does, is takes the top path in a selection and clips all the paths below it (in the selection) to the shape of the top path. Confused? Let me walk you through a simple example:
- Draw some simple shapes.
- Now draw your clipping path. (mine is a pink star). And make sure this path is on top of all the other objects/paths (don’t worry about colour, after the clip this path will not be visible)
- Select all the paths now, and go to Object > Clip > Set. You can see the result below.
So how does this tie in to the orb tutorial i did before? I have done a simple example of the workflow again. (this time only the clipping part of the tutorial…)
and thats about it. Please tell me if this has helped you, and i try to answer any comments & questions as soon as possible.
May 24, 2007 at 10:45 am |
This is all for me?
Thanks a lot Ryan.
May 24, 2007 at 10:47 am |
not a problem mate! i hope it helped you, cos if it did, it hopefully will help someone in the future!
May 24, 2007 at 2:02 pm |
I finally managed to put things straight
have a look here The letters are made with your Orb / Bubble style. This realy helped 
May 24, 2007 at 2:05 pm |
those letters are very, very cool!
im glad to be of assistance
May 24, 2007 at 3:14 pm |
Lensman, I like those letter too, well done!
May 25, 2007 at 7:23 am |
Thanks to you too Nicu.
As you can see i used you Stamp tutorial for the penguin.
May 25, 2007 at 8:07 am |
One thing to note is that if you want to edit the clip path the only way to do so at the moment is to go to clip -> release, but if you have clip set on multiple items, say on the letter, the highlight and the dark shading, then you will end up with 3 clip paths to edit unless you group the objects that you want to clip first.
May 25, 2007 at 1:11 pm |
Lensman, I did not realise that you used Nicu’s tutorial as well!
nice!
that is a cool tutorial aswell
May 25, 2007 at 1:13 pm |
tomh,
thanks for the tip! i new something like this was happening when i was clipping my paths, now i know exactly. I need to get in the habit of grouping my objects together before i clip…
June 21, 2007 at 10:37 am |
[...] view this tutorial [...]
July 5, 2007 at 2:34 am |
I am familiar with clipping now, it is like masking on Flash.
July 5, 2007 at 10:42 am |
thanks for stopping by and leaving a message, Nephron!
July 22, 2007 at 1:37 am |
[...] Mini-tutorial que muestra algunas cosas interesantes que hacer símplemente cortando y pegando figur… [...]
March 6, 2008 at 9:02 am |
Ryan, thank you very much for this mini-tutorial.
I’m fairly new to inkscape, (and graphic art in general), and I was trying to figure out how to do this very thing last night. This will be very helpful.
April 19, 2008 at 7:25 am |
This was very helpful. I had gone through bulia’s rope/tube tutorial and couldn’t make it work. Your tutorial made me understand the concept. Thanks
November 30, 2008 at 3:52 pm |
Very useful
Thanks
March 14, 2009 at 5:13 am |
I do not have “clip” under the Object menu??? Any advice? Version .43 SUSE Linux.
April 6, 2009 at 8:20 am |
Hi, I am still totally lost. Help! I have no idea at all how to use inkscape, my dream and plan is to design women’s t-shirts. I’ve downloaded inkscape and have dibbed around to try to get familiar with it. Can u help!
June 24, 2009 at 9:32 am |
Thank you so much Mwah….Now I have made a logo for my company thanks to you
July 10, 2009 at 10:59 pm |
this site es interesting, congratulations