Does anyone know of any tool/script to get a skeleton from the outline of a given letter? The skeleton must be made of just open contours (except for letters like ‘O’ where it will be necessary a circle). Basically something that does the opposite of Expand Path or Offset Paths.
X-ray?
I’ve never heard of such a thing. You can use Offset Paths with a negative value to get a skinny version, then move that to the Background and use it as a guide for drawing the new open contour.
Is X-ray a script ermin? I didn’t find any reference to it.
eliason, that’s an idea, thanks, I will give it a try. It sounds a bit time consuming though, especially for complex glyphs.
I can achieve a middle outline interpolated from two in Illustrator, with the Blend tool; that was my first option, but you need to prepare the shapes first: open contours are necessary; two parallel lines for an ‘I’ instead of a rectangle, for example.
The good thing is that it returns a line that is mathematically centered between the first two, something that manually, in case of complex shapes, becomes a bit of an hassle.
I believe the x-ray reference was a joke. There is no reliable way to get to a skeleton line from an outline.
With the O, you could put the the counter in the background, and use Filter > Transformations > Background with 50% to interpolate between the remaining outer path and the counter path in the background. This assumes that both paths are compatible, of course. Perhaps you can do similar things with some other letters, but certainly not all.
Eh eh eh … I’m too serious ermin and a bit slow ; )
Thanks Rainer for the reply. I will try also in this way.