Inkscape

Rotate in 3D

Asked by Mark William Syred

Is there a way of rotating an object in 3D, so that you tilt it away from the viewer, in Inkscape?

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Best su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#1

> Is there a way of rotating an object in 3D, (…)

Inkscape is an SVG 1.1- based 2D vector editor and has no intrinsic notion of 3dimensional objects (except for the inkscape-specific "3D Box" shapes [1]).

> (…) so that you tilt it away from the viewer

You can achieve such an effect by apply a perspective transformation using the extension 'Modify Path > Perspective'. See the manual page <http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL_v16/html/Extensions-ModifyPath.html#Extensions-Perspective> for details.

Maybe you are also interested in the 'Render > 3D Polyhedron' extension [2] which imports *.obj files allowing a concatenation of 6 customizable rotations. Note that this extension creates static objects which no longer have any knowledge about the applied transformations.

3D boxes or objects created with the 3D polyhedron extension could be used as construction tools to draw the quadrilateral perspective path needed for the extension 'Modify Path > Perspective'.

[1] <http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL_v16/html/Shapes-Boxes.html>
[2] <http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL_v16/html/Extensions-Render.html#Extensions-3D_Polyhedrons>

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Mark William Syred (marksyred) said : 		#2

Many thanks for the answer. It was a photographic image I wanted to rotate in 3D in Inkscape and I managed to achieve the desired effect with Object>Transform>Skew. But thanks again for the answer, it will help with objects actually drawn in Inkscape.

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Mark William Syred (marksyred) said : 		#3

Thanks ~suv, that solved my question.

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su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#4

Scaling, rotating and skewing are the only geometric transforms Inkscape can apply to embedded or linked bitmap images. If you need to apply a perspective transformation to a bitmap (aka raster) graphic, you could use e.g. GIMP (which has such a tool), and import the transformed image.

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Mark William Syred (marksyred) said : 		#5

Marvellous! Even more help! Does GIMP work on Windows 7? I tried installing it on a Vista machine and I was told I also needed to install python.exe (or something) and wasn't sure what it was.

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su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#6

AFAIK GIMP should work out-of-the-box on Windows (but I don't know for sure - not using Windows myself). Maybe a GIMP-oriented user forum can offer more support for installation-specific questions?

I had a certain topic in the Inkscape Forum in mind when mentioning GIMP - maybe you can find some useful information in these forum topics about a more complex raster image transformation(s):
<http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3719>, which links back to this GIMP-specific thread:
<http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/how-to-fix-page-curl-bend-distortion-warping--t44714.html>