maddingcrowd August 20, 2018 No Comments

WordPress – Optimizing Images

Images can slow down your WordPress website !!

It is said that Images capture time. But the irony is that the users are too impatient to wait for the entire page to load which leads to increase in the bounce rate.

Worry not. Optimizing images helps you by keeping the file size to minimum whilst maintaining the quality.Lighter the file size faster is the page load.

Let me guide you to set up a basic plugin to improve your website pageload instantly.

Requirements :

Plugin : reSmush.it

After installing and activating this plugin, we are ready to optimize.

1. Where is the Plugin ?

On the WordPress dashboard go to ‘Media‘.
Under its sub menu you will find reSmush.it

2. Plugin dashboard

The dashboard informs the user about the status of the pictures present on the website.

3. Changing the Settings

Change the settings accordingly to your needs.

Note: The quality factor value that website owner wants will differ because it depends on how important the pictures .

Usually the default value set by the plugin is set to ‘92′ because it shows some reduction in size without any problem.
Keep the quality factor between ‘65 to 75′ range because human eyes cannot make out the difference.
Check the box for ‘Optimize on upload‘ because enabling this optimizes the pictures at upload automatically.
Also check the box for ‘Enable statistics‘ because this informs the administrator about his uploads.
Check the box for ‘Enable logs‘ because this is for all the developers who prefer getting detailed information about optimization.
Then click on ‘Save Changes‘ after the changes are made.

4. Optimizing Images

Click on the button ‘Optimise all pictures‘.
After submitting it will start analyzing because it scans all the media files.

After analyzing it will displays progress bar as shown below

It will display the following message once it is successfully completely.

5. Statistics

Before optimizing you will be getting this information :

After optimizing, the report will say something like the image below :

Note : The statistics will vary according to the amount of pictures present on the website.

Want to obtain your Google Tracking Id for your website ? Read our article on WordPress – Obtaining Google Analytics Tracking ID.

Having problems migrating on WordPress? read our article to know more WordPress Guide: Migrating website content.

maddingcrowd August 10, 2018 No Comments

Tutorial – Illustration using Mouse in Krita

Illustration without using a pen tablet ?

Illustrations in Krita using the mouse is pretty much every beginners dilemma, as most don’t have access to pen tablets. To overcome this problem, we will now learn how to ink and color our sketches using just the mouse.

Note : You can use your own scanned drawing or follow along the with sketch I have already created.

Requirements :

Time : 3 hours including sketching time.

Art : Scanned illustration to be inked.

Skill level: Beginner.

Line weight is key to creating illustrations having a depth to them. Therefore, when using a mouse we will have to manually create this effect of a tapering stroke.We will learn this first before working on our scanned drawing.

Open a New file in Krita .
Select the ‘Brush‘ tool (choose the inking brushes).
Set the Brush size to 12 px.
Set the color to black.
Select the ‘Bezier‘ Curve tool form the toolbar.
With the tool selected draw a simple line and hit ‘Enter’.

Note : This will create a stroke using settings defined for brush tool previously(12px, black).

Now select the ‘Bezier‘ Curve Selection Tool.
Select the ends of the stroke and delete the portions the stroke in the way shown in the video below.

The curve will look like image below :

This is the exact way we will be creating lines over our scanned sketch.

Now open a new document in Krita.
Import the scanned sketch.
Set its opacity to 33%.
Create a new layer above the sketch layer and name it ‘Ink‘.

Now follow the curves along the lines of the sketch and hit ‘Enter‘.
The line stroke will be created as per the width of the brush you have set. So don’t forget to check your brush too color and size before using the Bezier Curve.

Now taper the ends of the stroke by selecting the ends with Bezier curve selection too.
Delete them just like previously discussed.

Continue the same way for the rest of the illustration.

Note : There may areas where you can allow the lines to overlap, you can delete unwanted portions later.

No other actions are necessary right now, just follow along the process until you complete the illustration.

Once you have completed the base outline, you can move in on completing the spikes on the back and the eyes.

I reduced the brush size here from 12px to 8px, this helps create more variation.

Having lines of uniform width all over will make the illustration look flat.

I used the circle tool to create the eyes, and the Bezier curve again to create the spikes.

The spike lines are quite short, to save time you can try and manually create them the using mouse freehand.

Coloring

Compared to the whole line art, this segment will be much easier and shorter. So let’s begin.

Lock the illustration layer by clicking on the lock icon in the layers panel.

Note : Its frustrating when you inadvertently go about coloring the drawing before you realize you’re painting on the same layer. So to avoid it its best to lock this layer down.

Under the inked layer create a new one and call it ‘Base color’.
Then select the brush tool and with the mouse just fill in the colors.

The light in this composition will enter from the top right corner.

So we will add highlights to the character based on that.

Create a layer and name it ‘Highlights’.

Then create a layer called ‘Dark’ above the base color layer.

Note : The shadows of the composition will be created on this layer.

As shown in the above visual,

I have used the Bezier curve selection tool to select dark areas,
Then used the fill tool to fill in the color.
Lastly, I added a background layer below the base color.
Then colored a portion of the sky to make the drawing stand out better.

I decided to add few more details such as the tongue and the speed lines to suggest movement. The image below is our final result.

Want to analyze your website? For more information read

Sharing your wordpress activities has never been so easy, check out our article WordPress – Sharing your activities on Social Media.

maddingcrowd August 2, 2018 No Comments

WordPress – Sharing your activities on Social Media

Having problems sharing WordPress activities to social media automatically?

We are biologically wired in sharing information about ourselves. I am assuming that WordPress is setup live on the server(if not go here).

This tutorial will guide you to share the posts or recent activity of WordPress which will be directly linked to Social Profile.So that you can save time and get things shared as soon as possible. So lets get on with it.

Requirements:

Jetpack plugin already setup in WordPress.
Active Social Media accounts details.

This tutorial will only show steps to connect with your Facebook profile. You can repeat the same with others also.

Step 1 : Settings

You need to enable all these options in the Jetpack settings.

Step 2 : Where to go.

Go to wordpress ‘Settings‘, and select ‘Sharing‘.

Step 3 : Choosing a Connect option.

You will get the following choices to choose from.

So we go ahead and click “Connect” next to Facebook.
Make sure you have already signed in on Facebook.
Allow Jetpack to access Facebook basic details for sharing.

Step 4 : Where to share exactly ?

If the Facebook profile is connected successfully, you will get the following message.
You can select the publicize on ‘Facebook Wall‘ option or the ‘Facebook Page‘ option depending on your social activity preference.
Check the box ‘Make this connection available to all users of this blog?‘.
Click ‘OK‘ and then you will get this.

Now we are connected.

Stuck with the old WordPress website domain and want to move to a new one ? Follow this guide WordPress Guide: Migrating website content.

Get to know more on what new we can offer in Ebooks here 8 New Interactive Features Ebook can now do.

maddingcrowd August 2, 2018 No Comments

Tutorial – Cutting holes in meshes using Boolean Modifier

Can’t cut the holes in the meshes ? Use Boolean Modifier.

Boolean Modifier is at your rescue. Modelling in blender can be a long and tedious work, but there are places where the process can be simplified. If you have ever attempted to model a gun, furniture or any other object you must have spent some time figuring, how to cut holes through your mesh.

There are of course many ways to deal with this, but I find the Boolean modifier an easy and effective way of achieving results. However, the Boolean modifier is by no means the one click solution, and there are some niggles left to be sorted out.

In this brief tutorial we will explain how to use the Boolean modifier to cut holes in our mesh. We will also deal with the correction of the mesh flow in the second part.

To keep the tutorial simple we will attempt to cut a hole through a simple cube.

So lets get started.

Requirements:

Time : 10-15 minutes

Software : Blender 2.79 or higher.

Part 1: The Cutout

Select the default ‘Cube’ and move it to the left(hit ‘G’ after selection, then ‘Y’ and then ‘-4’).

Note : This will move the cube to the left.

Now press ‘Shift+A’ and then select ‘Cylinder’ from the mesh menu.

Note : You can experiment with other shapes, but in this tutorial we will be using the cylinder to cut a hole in the object.

In the mesh settings of the cylinder, change the vertices count from 32 to 8.

Note : It is advisable to keep the vertices count to a minimum while using Boolean operations because smaller the count of vertices lesser time it takes once the modifier is applied.

Change the display type of the Cylinder to wire frame because it is easier to see how the cylinder effects our cube.

So go to the Object settings in the Properties panel
Under Display change the ‘Maximum draw type’ from ‘Textured’ to ‘Wire’.

This is what the Cylinder should look like.

Scale the cylinder on the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ axis by pressing ‘S’ and then ‘Shift+Z’.
Then scale it only on the ‘Z’ axis so that the cylinder is longer than the cube( Note : it has to go right through the cube to cut out the hole).

Grab the cylinder using ‘G’ and then move it to the center of the cube.
Now the select the cube(always select the object you want the cut through).
Go to the Modifier menu and select ‘Boolean‘.
Use the Picker icon and select the cylinder.
And finally set the type to ‘Difference’.

Now we can see the active cut out of the cylinder through the cube.

Once you have the position of the cut out you need, go ahead and apply the ‘Boolean’ modifier.

Part 2 : Observing the mesh structure

In edit mode we now have the cube with the cut out, but as the result of the modifier our mesh surface is divided into N-gons(n-gons are faces joined with five or more vertices).

Note : Ideally a meshes should be made of Quads (faces made of 4 vertices).

Below is an image of the cube right now with the SubSurf modifier.

It is easy to see that there something is definitely wrong with our mesh, check image below to see understand the correct form of the object.

Part 3 : Correcting the mesh

Objective : Make both surfaces of the cube with the cut out, to be divided into quads.

We will be using the knife tool to cut through the surface and join the vertices.

Select the knife tool, then select the vertices which are on the center of the inner circle.

Note : When you drag the cursor away from the selected vertices a red line will appear from that point.

Drag this point to the edge of the cubes surface and press ‘Enter’ at your desired point(You will immediately see a new edge being created).
Repeat this until you have an edge joining every vertices on the circle to the edge of the cube.

Knife tool tip: When dragging the edge, press ‘C’ to constraint the knife tool to the corresponding axis.

This should be our final result : A mesh with cutout and proper mesh flow.

After rendering my model looks like this.

maddingcrowd July 26, 2018 No Comments

8 New Interactive Features Ebook can now do

Heard about Interactive Ebooks ??

Ebooks are Not meant only for texts and images. With the advancement in the technology of Ebook devices and the advent of interactive Ebooks, every device is switching to a touch input.

We have managed to summarize a couple of new interactives features that our Ebook is now capable of performing :

1. 3D Model

Yes ! Ebooks can handle 3D content also. The object can be touched, rotated and zoomed in the 3D space.

The interactivity depends on how good the device hardware is installed.

The files that it can currently take are just .obj format.

This feature can become a helpful tool not only for education purposes but also helps readers relate the element to the text content.

Textures and lighting of the model can also be altered, based on the requirement and compatibility.

2. Image Carousel

Image carousels are a very effective way in which a number of images can be displayed in a restricted place.

Arrows at the sides can be used to slide from the given image list.

There is an autoplay option available for the image slider.

The images scale accordingly to the device.

3. Video

Including a video in an Ebook is a very good idea of representing media to the audience.

The video can either be from youtube or online stored repository.

Having the video stored in the Ebook comes at the cost of increasing the file size of the Ebook.

The videos can be played fullscreen, paused or even muted.

The autoplay feature can also be enabled on the page load.

4. GIF

Graphics Interchange Format also know as GIF is getting very popular lately.

It is like a short video with file size properties to that of an image.

These are really eye-catching elements with no requirement to flash player nor does the reader have to interact with this element.

For example : This feature can be used to show different stages of a particular process.

This element can be added just like an image is added because it is a sequence of images packed in a small package.

5. Audio

Audio can also be used in the interactive Ebooks.

The audio file can either be stored on the Ebook or can be linked to the source on the internet.

Audio file formats vary from ogg,mp3 and so on .

The audio can be set to autoplay as the page is turned to give the content a background music to sset the mood.

This experience increases the readers interest in the story of the book.

6. Popup Message Box

Popup can be used for various purposes throughout the Ebook.

A text can be made to pop out a message box when touched or selected.

The text inside the message box comes with various options of formatting.

This feature could be used as information messages to certain words in the Ebook.

Inclusion of the popup does indeed improve the readability aspect of the Ebook.

7. Questionaire

Wouldn’t it be a good way to communicate with your users, if they could respond to your writing immediately after reading your Ebook.

This feature can also be used for educational purposes to evaluate the what the reader has retained.

The questions can be in True/False, MCQ Single Choice, MCQ Multiple Answer and Short Answer type also.

The response to the form can be a self-answer,self-answer with report or even do nothing.

The provision to get the feedback via Email is still in development phase.

8. Widgets

Widgets can also be used in an Ebook.

A popup widget or html5 page widget can be used in the Ebook.

The widgets however have to be custom coded and checked for compatibilty over a range of devices.

The widget library is still in a development phase and iterations are been done globally to improve compatibilty.

However, this feature just adds to the things Ebooks can do.

We have an awesome team for Ebook Development. For more details CinnamonTeal Ebook Development Services.

Interested in designing ? Read our article on Smooth strokes using Krita.

maddingcrowd July 26, 2018 No Comments

Tutorial – Multiple Colour Gradients Inkscape

Multiple colour gradients can be used in a very easy way using Inkscape.

Let us learn to use the multiple colour gradients in Inkscape.

Requirements :

Software – Inkscape version 0.92 or higher.

Time – 5 – 10 minutes.

Now you can follow the steps given below :

Step 1

Draw an object or create your own drawing.
Then select the gradient tool.
You can now hit ‘G’ to activate it.

Step 2

Double click on the gradient line.
After that insert nodes.

You can individually select and space out the nodes.

Note : These nodes can be selected separately and gradients applied to them.

It wont change the gradient for the entire object, but creates a new gradient within each node area.

Step 3

Prepare colour swatches(also called palette) of colours of your choice.

Note : This will make selecting colours with easy with the colour picker tool.

Step 4

Select the first the node.
Using the colour picker tool from the Fill container, select the first colour of the swatch.
You will notice that only the portion represented by that particular gradient node will be coloured.

In the same manner select the remaining nodes and pick out the remaining colours of the swatches.

You can apply this method to any object or shape in Inkscape. Here is a good usage of the gradient.

Check out our recent tutorial on Smooth strokes using Krita.

Do you want to know what is new in our Ebook Development? Read more here 8 New Interactive Features of Ebook.

maddingcrowd July 21, 2018 No Comments

Quick Tips : Smooth strokes using Krita

Let us learn to achieve smooth strokes in Krita.

Here are the requirements in order to get started with smooth strokes :

Device : Pressure pen tablet ( I am using Wacom Intous Medium).

Brush Pack : Krita Brushkit v8.2(Free). Download it from here.

I prefer using this brush pack by David Revoy (Its free !) and it suits my needs for illustrative work. Its not necessary you use these, you can use the default brushes also.

I will be demonstrating the smooth strokes on the viking sketch drawn below :

Get the pen sketch as a layer in Krita.
Then reduce the opacity by 30%

Note : Make corrections to the sketch by going over it on another layer.

As you can see the result down below.We will be using the sketch over for the actual inking.

Add another layer and call it ‘Ink’.
Choose your inking brush ( I am using the ‘deevad 1e inking gpen’ from the brush kit.)

In Brush tool options choose the weighted smoothing option with default settings.

Note : Weighted smoothing gives you an easier control, compared to the Basic smoothing and is quicker than the Stabilizer option.

3 Quick tips for smooth strokes

1.Overshooting lines

Now to begin with the inking.

I start wider and overshoot my lines following the sketch (Do not mind the lines at this point).
Erase the overshot lines using the same brush by hitting ‘E’(transforms the brush into an erasing brush with the same flow and control).

Keep the number of strokes as minimal as possible, for example the outline of the helmet top was done with one single stroke, your work will look neater.

Overshot lines look far more expressive and increase your inking speed because the lines are far smoother too.

Given below is a comparison of sketch done with overshooting strokes compared to lines done by carefully tracing the sketch.

2. Using Basing shapes for line work

There will always be areas of sketch where basic shapes can be used to fill out the line art.

In our sketch we can use the Ellipse tool to draw out the vikings shield.
Then remove certain areas and fill them out to indicate dents or cracks giving it a more organic feel.

3. Rotating Canvas for easier line work.

Rotate the canvas by holding ‘Shift+Space’ .
Then adjust the angle using the mouse.

This can help adjust any particular areas of the drawing which are a bit awkward to draw, specially when using a pen tablet where you don’t have enough room.

Use this approach and complete the rest of the inking. My finished result is shown below.

Wanting to create a 3D book in Blender ? Check out this tutorial Blender : 3D Book.

Having problems migrating from old WordPress to new one.Read more here.

maddingcrowd July 17, 2018 No Comments

WordPress Guide: Migrating website content

Migrating from an old WordPress website to a new one? And still want the old posts and comments?

Worry not. Here is a complete guide on how to migrate the old WordPress content to the newly installed setup.

Exporting

We will be exporting the old post comments,pages,etc. using the in-built WordPress feature.

Open the old WordPress website you will be migrating from using wp-admin.
In the Dashboard, go to Tools and select ‘Export‘.

Depending on your requirement, you can choose from the above options given.

For example: If you are only interested in migrating the posts, then select the Posts option.

Select any 1 option.
Then click on ‘Download Export File‘.

A file will be downloaded on the browser. It will be in XML(.xml) format.

Importing

After exporting the old WordPress content to a downloaded file, move on to the new website where you will be importing.

Open the old WordPress website you will be migrating from using wp-admin.
In the Dashboard, go to Tools and then select ‘Import‘.
There is WordPress option, click on ‘Install Now‘.
It will begin installing immediately.
After it is successfully installed, you will get the following message :

After getting the above message, select ‘Run Importer‘.
Press ‘Choose File‘ and then browse through your directory to the downloaded file(.xml format).
Click ‘Open‘.
Now click on the ‘Upload file and Import‘ and wait for the file to be uploaded.
After this step it will ask for ‘Assign Author‘.
You can assign the new Author to the posts by selecting it from dropdown.

Check the ‘Download and import file attachments‘ because selecting will also download the attachments automatically.
Then select on ‘Submit‘.
After import is successful, you will get the following message

That’s it !! The migrating process was successful because if it had some issues if it would never display a success message.

Note: WordPress will throw an error while importing if the file(.xml) exceeds 2Mb , increase the Max Upload Limit size.(Default is 2Mb)

Want to improve your site perfomance more? Here is WordPress Guide : 7 Best Practices .

maddingcrowd July 16, 2018 No Comments

Tutorial-Create a 3D book image using Blender v2.79+

For all the Blender beginners out there, here is a complete step-by-step guide to create a 3D book.

Requirements: Cover image of any book(Front, back and spine as one complete image).

Software: Blender.

Skill level: Easy (basic knowledge of Blender’s interface and navigation controls required)

Note : Before beginning with the tutorial, make a note of the cover dimensions (Front cover and spine).

Part 1: Modelling the book.

Open Blender and select the cube (it will be our model for the book) and press ‘N’ to open the Cube’s properties panel.
Change the value of X as the width of the front cover, and Y to the height. The value of Z will be the spine.

Note : The cover size I have chosen is 5.5 X 8.5 with 0.5 as the spine.

After entering values, select the cube and press ‘S’ and type 0.5. This is to reduce the book size by half so it fits better in our scene.

Part 2: Wrapping the cover image on the created model

We now have to separate the front, spine and back from cube so we can place our cover image.

- Press ‘TAB’ to enter into Edit mode.
- Then hit ‘Z’ to view the model in Wireframe Mode.

This is what you should be able to see.

Now hit ‘CTRL + TAB’ to open mesh selection type.
Select ‘Face’ option.

- Hit ‘5’ to change to orthographic view. Then hit ‘7’ for top view. Select the Top facing side (this will be the front cover).
- Hit ‘CTRL + 3’ to view the left side, hold shift+right click to select the side which is to be the spine.
- Then hit ‘CTRL + 7’ for bottom view and Select the face holding shift again.

You should have the following selection of the mesh.

Now hit ‘P’ and select ‘Selection’.

We have now separated our original mesh into two(cube and cube 001).
Go to the Outliner panel on the top right corner of the window, and rename the cube as Pages and cube 001 as Cover.
Leave the book cover mesh selected.

UV Unwrap mesh to image

Now we will Unwrap the mesh called Cover so we can place our cover image.

Hit ‘TAB’ to go Edit mode again.
Hit ‘A’ to select the whole mesh.
Then hit ‘U’ and select ‘Unwrap’.

Applying Material to the cover

To do that, select ‘Cover’ mesh.
Then change the render engine from ‘Blender Render‘ to ‘Cycles Render‘.

Select the mesh ‘Cover’ and click on the Materials symbol in the properties panel on the right.
Rename the material as ‘Cover’ and select ‘Diffuse BSDF’ texture.

Click the Grey dot next to the Color box and choose ‘Image Texture‘ from the menu.

Click on Folder icon and import your cover image file.

Once the material is set for the cover, next select the mesh ‘Pages’ from the outliner window.
Rename the material to ‘Pages‘.
For Surface choose ‘Diffuse BSDF‘ shader option
For Color, select an off-white color for the pages.

Lets look at what we have now:

Click on the mesh preview type and select ‘Texture’.

Now we can see that the cover is wrapped around our mesh, but the position is a bit off. Lets rectify this.

Divide the window and open the UV image editor in the second window.
Hit ‘TAB’ to go into Edit mode.
In the UV editor click on open and select our book cover image as selected below.

The Editor shows us the the current position of the wrapping.

To wrap it properly, we can select individual vertices or edges and move them by hitting ‘G’.

The image below shows us the correct position of our unwrapping.

We now have our book ready and wrapped.

Part 3: Lighting

Before adding the light source, let us position the book at the center.

Hit ‘G’ and align the book with the grid floor.
Hit ‘CTRL + S’ and reposition the 3D cursor to the centre.

First we will add a floor, hold ‘Shift+A’ and from the mesh menu select ‘Plane‘.
Hit ‘S’ and type in ‘10‘.
Name the plane as ‘floor’.
Add another plane the same way, but increase its size by 3. This will be our single light source.

The scene we are attempting is fairly basic so we will use just a single light setup.

Hit ‘1‘ to go to front view.
To position the camera hold ‘Ctrl + Alt + 0’.
Select the light source and position it above the floor and book mesh.
Select the materials from the properties menu.
Hit ‘Use Nodes’ and select ‘Emission’ as the shader and set the strength to ’20’.

You can experiment with these values.

Note: Delete the default lamp in the scene by selecting it and then pressing ‘X’.

The image below shows us the result.

Part 4: Rendering

Next we will have to set the render settings.

Click on the camera icon and and enter the settings as shown in the images below.
Also enter the values for the sampling.

I have set the floor material to ‘Glossy’ with a roughness of 0.1. and the world color to an off-white shade.
Now hit the ‘Render’ button.
You will have the result as shown below.
Press ‘F3’ to save the image.

Thats it !! Now you can play around with different camera angles to get your perfect shot.

Are you a newbie to WordPress ? Get started by reading this WordPress Guide : 7 Best Practices.

maddingcrowd February 9, 2018 No Comments

Tutorial-Create a bootable USB stick on Ubuntu

This is a tutorial for creating a bootable USB stick on Ubuntu installed systems. The bootable USB stick a will serve for the following purposes :

If you do not have a CD/DVD drive installed on your system.
Easy to install and portable .

Let’s get started !! Read more