New Project 1

    The project I had in mind is a group of 8 x 10 shots for a portfolio for a friend who is an entertainer.  This friend does many characterizations and is also a classically trained mime.  Unfortunately pinning him down for a photo session has proved to be difficult so what I am going to do now is to familiarize myself and anyone else who wishes to follow along with the draw program in Open Office.

    When you first open Draw it should look like this.

It has an 8.5" x 11" page roughly in the middle and a set of tool bars on the top and bottom.
    Since I am going to be working with 3D objects make sure there is a tool bar on the top with some 3D objects.  If you don't have them right off the bat right click on one of the other tool bars and select customize toolbar to add it in.

    Now click on an object in the toolbar to choose which object you wish to draw.  I'm selecting the sphere because it is the one I'll eventually use in the portfolio pictures.  Hold the right mouse button down while you drag the cursor along and you will have drawn a sphere like this one.

    To change the characteristics right click on the selected object to get a dialog box like this.

    To change the color and transparency quality of the object select area to get a dialog box like this.

    If you right click on the object and select 3d effects a dialog box opens up where you can control many of the 3D characteristics of the object

There are 5 tabs at the top of the dialog box. the first one controls the geometry of the object. The second one controls the shading and the focal length of it. The third one controls the external and ambient lighting.  The fourth one is for textures and the fifth one controls the material characteristics and the specular(reflected) lighting.
    Experiment with these a bit and in a day or so I'll show you how to create your own 3D object.