How to Make Wavy Texture Lines
Answering a student's question on how to make perfect sin wave line in Vectric software. This lesson applies to Vectric VCarve, Aspire, and Cut2D.
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Video Transcript:
So, Mike has a great question. It says, I'm doing a project that requires a wavy line, the same as a sin wave. Can I create this wave in VCarve Pro? So, that is a good question. And in case you don't know what a sin wave is, it looks something like this. And it's basically like a smooth wavelength. And you'll see there's a wavelength measurement, and there's an amplitude measurement.
So, there is actually a perfect tool for this inside of VCarve, Cut2D, and Aspire. And if we go in here, that is called the Texture Tool, it's Vector Texture. So if we click on that, you'll see this has the same wave parameters that we just looked at. Amplitude, which is the height of the wave, and Wavelength, which is the width of the wave.
And then we also have even more options as far as degree, so the angle. You can put it at 0 degrees if you want the line horizontal. And then you can do spacing if you want multiple lines. It will give you multiple lines, but if you don't want multiple, you just want one, you can delete the multiples. So don't worry so much about the spacing, but let's say we did one inch spacing.
You can also do a variation of the spacing. So if you want them a nice, even, consistent one inch, you would leave it there and leave the variation all the way down to zero. If you want a slight variation between your spacing, then you would start raising this bar to the right. And that will give you more or less variation, depending on where you put that bar.
So next will be the wave parameters, like I said. The height of the top of one wave to the bottom of the next wave, this will be that measurement. So you can place that number, whatever you need. And then the wavelength, which would be the start of one wave to the end of another wave. You can decide how much measuring you want there.
And then lastly, we have noise option. If you want nice smooth lines, you'll keep this at zero all the way to the left. If you want like noisy, scribbly lines, then you can start moving this to the right. Generally, I'll keep the left though, unless for some reason I want the lines a little wavy or a little bit noisy.
And the very last option is if you want to place the vectors on a separate layer, which is usually a good idea. I usually place it on a layer called texture. If you don't want it on a brand new layer, then just turn that box off. But once you're done here, click preview and you'll see there is your nice smooth waves that we just created using the parameters we set up here.
And if you're not happy with it, or if you want to change something, let's say we wanted them a little taller, we can raise our amplitude or type in a number there. And then click Preview, and that will make the changes live on the screen there. And then you can keep changing all these different settings until you're happy with what you want.
Once you're happy, click OK, and there you go, now you have your texture. And like I said, if you want just one of these lines instead of all of these, they will be automatically grouped together. So you just select them, and click the shortcut, the letter U, to ungroup. Now it is in separate pieces. So now you can just select everything and just delete everything except for one.
And one thing I would also mention here is you'll notice these lines if you look at the node edit mode are usually very messy with nodes. So it usually is a good idea to go to the curve fit tool and switch these to bezier curves. And I like to use a tolerance of 0.004 inches. And we don't really need sharp corners because these are smooth lines.
And we do want to replace selected vectors. So you'll see all these nodes that are currently on there, all those little tiny dots. We zoom out and click preview. You'll see now it is much cleaner, much smoother. So that will carve quicker and will be less data your computer has to process. So it'll be a little faster on your computer as well.
So once you're done with that, click OK. And there you go. That's basically how you create these wavelengths like this. Now there is more things you could do with that. I will show you real quick if we delete that. Let's say we're to add a shape in here, it can be any shape you want. I'm just going to go to the Clipart library.
Let's say we did a heart shape, go back to the drawing tab. You would select the shape that you've drawn. And then go to the vector texture again. And this time we're going to keep everything the same, just click preview. And you'll see now the texture will stay within your shape that you created. So that's a great way to add texture like that.
And click OK. And like I said, you will have that issue with the nodes on every one. But you can fix all the nodes at the same time if you select it as a group. Go to the Curve Fit and use those same settings and click Preview. And click OK. And that will fix all those together. It will ungroup them, so you just click the letter G to group them back together if you want them grouped.
But that's basically it. And now you see the texture is on its own layer. And we can turn that on and off. And then from here you can create toolpaths with it. Uh, usually you would use either the texture toolpath or the profile toolpath to cut along the line. And that's a great way to add some custom texture to your designs.
I do have another video on YouTube how to create the toolpaths for these. That's all for this video. Make sure you like and subscribe for more. And if you want to master your Vectric software, make sure you check out my Vectric training classes linked right here, where we go much more in depth how to use the Vectric software step by step.
And included with my training courses is weekly Q&A calls where I can answer your questions one on one and get the support you need. And if you want to watch another great Vectric tip, check out this video posted right here.
So, there is actually a perfect tool for this inside of VCarve, Cut2D, and Aspire. And if we go in here, that is called the Texture Tool, it's Vector Texture. So if we click on that, you'll see this has the same wave parameters that we just looked at. Amplitude, which is the height of the wave, and Wavelength, which is the width of the wave.
And then we also have even more options as far as degree, so the angle. You can put it at 0 degrees if you want the line horizontal. And then you can do spacing if you want multiple lines. It will give you multiple lines, but if you don't want multiple, you just want one, you can delete the multiples. So don't worry so much about the spacing, but let's say we did one inch spacing.
You can also do a variation of the spacing. So if you want them a nice, even, consistent one inch, you would leave it there and leave the variation all the way down to zero. If you want a slight variation between your spacing, then you would start raising this bar to the right. And that will give you more or less variation, depending on where you put that bar.
So next will be the wave parameters, like I said. The height of the top of one wave to the bottom of the next wave, this will be that measurement. So you can place that number, whatever you need. And then the wavelength, which would be the start of one wave to the end of another wave. You can decide how much measuring you want there.
And then lastly, we have noise option. If you want nice smooth lines, you'll keep this at zero all the way to the left. If you want like noisy, scribbly lines, then you can start moving this to the right. Generally, I'll keep the left though, unless for some reason I want the lines a little wavy or a little bit noisy.
And the very last option is if you want to place the vectors on a separate layer, which is usually a good idea. I usually place it on a layer called texture. If you don't want it on a brand new layer, then just turn that box off. But once you're done here, click preview and you'll see there is your nice smooth waves that we just created using the parameters we set up here.
And if you're not happy with it, or if you want to change something, let's say we wanted them a little taller, we can raise our amplitude or type in a number there. And then click Preview, and that will make the changes live on the screen there. And then you can keep changing all these different settings until you're happy with what you want.
Once you're happy, click OK, and there you go, now you have your texture. And like I said, if you want just one of these lines instead of all of these, they will be automatically grouped together. So you just select them, and click the shortcut, the letter U, to ungroup. Now it is in separate pieces. So now you can just select everything and just delete everything except for one.
And one thing I would also mention here is you'll notice these lines if you look at the node edit mode are usually very messy with nodes. So it usually is a good idea to go to the curve fit tool and switch these to bezier curves. And I like to use a tolerance of 0.004 inches. And we don't really need sharp corners because these are smooth lines.
And we do want to replace selected vectors. So you'll see all these nodes that are currently on there, all those little tiny dots. We zoom out and click preview. You'll see now it is much cleaner, much smoother. So that will carve quicker and will be less data your computer has to process. So it'll be a little faster on your computer as well.
So once you're done with that, click OK. And there you go. That's basically how you create these wavelengths like this. Now there is more things you could do with that. I will show you real quick if we delete that. Let's say we're to add a shape in here, it can be any shape you want. I'm just going to go to the Clipart library.
Let's say we did a heart shape, go back to the drawing tab. You would select the shape that you've drawn. And then go to the vector texture again. And this time we're going to keep everything the same, just click preview. And you'll see now the texture will stay within your shape that you created. So that's a great way to add texture like that.
And click OK. And like I said, you will have that issue with the nodes on every one. But you can fix all the nodes at the same time if you select it as a group. Go to the Curve Fit and use those same settings and click Preview. And click OK. And that will fix all those together. It will ungroup them, so you just click the letter G to group them back together if you want them grouped.
But that's basically it. And now you see the texture is on its own layer. And we can turn that on and off. And then from here you can create toolpaths with it. Uh, usually you would use either the texture toolpath or the profile toolpath to cut along the line. And that's a great way to add some custom texture to your designs.
I do have another video on YouTube how to create the toolpaths for these. That's all for this video. Make sure you like and subscribe for more. And if you want to master your Vectric software, make sure you check out my Vectric training classes linked right here, where we go much more in depth how to use the Vectric software step by step.
And included with my training courses is weekly Q&A calls where I can answer your questions one on one and get the support you need. And if you want to watch another great Vectric tip, check out this video posted right here.
