Hi folks, In case y'all haven't noticed, I'm a recent convert to UF. LOVE the mind-boggling possibilities of this program. I recently worked through Rykk's masking tut and it REALLY opened mental doors. One of the best lines from the tut was "The most important factor...is the management of the slope or angle of the leading edge of the colors and transparencies of our gradients." Marvelous!!! (Thanks Rykk) Ok...here's my question, and I understand if y'all just tell my to figure this out. I will, but I was thinking that if I could pick your brains it might save hours of searching. Would anyone know of some ufm's/ucl's that make for solid generic shapes...rectangles, squares, circles, triangles...that I could build a little folder of masks with. Let me give you an idea of what I'm looking at. The linked upr is an example of what I have in mind. I think the technique opens up endless possibilities. And certainly there is an easier way (clipping?) to do what I'm doing in the image. Does this make sense? I would be very grateful if ya'll could share your experience with this. Thanks, Gary

Hi Gary, It's late where I live, so I gave this just a very quick and dirty tweak using the "shapes_jbo" transform. It may not be as elegant as you would like, but I hope it gives you an idea of what shapes can do.

Eeeeeeeeexcellent!!!!!! Thank you so much. This is a big help. A quick search yielded the original transform plus one other mod. Now...if I could just blend the edges so the sharp lines wouldn't be so distinct. Thoughts, anyone?

Here are some simple shapes; created with pixel(2 iterations) in the formula tab and 3 different ucl's in the outside tab. 2 layers are masked in the gradient window. Hoping it's helpful. All the best, Jos Boogen.

I also found this UPR, created by Rupert Ward on january 2004. Containing some shapes; public domain. All the best, Jos Boogen.

Hi Gary - try the checkers transform in akl.uxf which has lots of interesting shapes, including smilies and frownies.

Tina

aartika! fractal art by Tina Oloyede :  http://www.aartika.co.uk

Excellent...Jos, Tina. Thank you both for taking the time to help. G