I’ve been playing with the Mesh Warp Tool. It’s available in Silhouette Studio V4.1
I have the Business Edition but it’s also available in Designer Edition Plus. I’m not sure if it’s available in the regular Designer Edition of Silhouette Studio.
It’s pretty fun to experiment with. I had scanned a Monstera Leaf from the garden which I intended to trace and convert to a cut file.
There’s two Warp options: the Conical Warp Tool and the Mesh Warp tool and it’s the Mesh Warp Tool which I’m talking about today.
First you have to find it! It’s well hidden, Refer to the picture and the instructions below.
- Not all the tool icons fit on the right side of the program screen. Look for any hidden ones by clicking on the little triangle shape under the last icon that is visible.
- That’s it! The little picture of a warped mesh shape.
- Choose the warp mesh icon option which is next to the conical Warp option
- Select the shape you wish to adjust and click on “Warp Selected Shape”
The picture and instructions below show how I used the mesh warp tool to make my rather flat looking scan more realistic.
- My tropical leaf scan. The scanner flattened my leaf.
- This is the shape that was the result of tracing my scanned leaf.
- I added in the central leaf vein and a small “hole” where the leaves overlapped. I used the circle and rectangle tools for this. At this point it looks a little…..well…flat!
- After opening up the Mesh Warp Tool and selecting the leaf, a grid appears over the image. There are adjustment nodes that can be moved which alter the shape.
- Click on a node and a handle will appear. Move this around and the shape will change accordingly.
- Make the design fatter, skinnier, taller or shorter. The beauty of this is that the shapes remain smooth. It’s like a very advanced (better) function of the Make curve tool that is found in point editing.
- This is result from Step 4 – shown without the grid. Compare it with Step 3. It’s already looking much more realistic.
- This is the result of a few extra adjustments to the grid as made in Step 5 but shown without the grid. The whole perspective of the leaf has changed from the original trace.
- Know when to stop! LOL! In step 6 I kept tweaking the design and moving the nodes. This is the result, shown without the distraction of the grid. I personally feel I went to far and made the leaf a little skinny. I guess it’s personal preference really.
If you look back at the top picture, you’ll notice Sliders beneath the “Release Warp” button, for Division, Column and Row. Use these sliders to adjust the density of the grid and add more or less nodes (if needed) before you edit the design.
Pick a Shape from your library, any shape will do and start warping it – just for fun! Who knows what new shape you’ll create?
I’m sharing my leaf shape this Friday. So if you can use a Tropical leaf shape Free Cutting file be sure to check back then to grab the file.
