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Hello Ego Eram Reputo, these are the gems that make the difference ! Many Thanks for your tip - and your time 🙂 - , I'll definately try out your suggestion. Best regards, Sergio.

Getting there.. However, the color-palette is not yet the right one. I wanted olny share my progress 😉

Hello Ego Eram Reputo, thousend thanks for this mini tutorial, I'll study it and let's see how further I come. Very nice of you - really appreciated 😀 Have a nice weekend, Sergio

Thanks Tactilis, that's indeed a good idea !

Thanks Ego Eram Reputo for your kind comment - and thanks Rick Brewster too ! These feedbacks are for me a source of motivation. Sometime I have the feeling that I'm just scratching the surface with PdN, and such comments - from you experts - help me to go ahead and learn further. Appreciated 🙂 Yes indeed, I guess I made something wrong with the Inner Shadow plugin. Actually, I wanted to apply a shadow to all the 4 sides, in other terms I wanted to show a "computer monitor", which has usually the borders ( the frame ) "beveled", while the flat screen is "inset", if you get what I mean (sorry for the convoluted description ). That area should show a miniaturized playfield of the whole map sent from a satellite, that's why it should resemble a "display monitor". Since I don't know how to accomplish this effect, I though that by applying the shadow twice (once up left and then bottom right) should suffice, but I did perhaps some mistake. Thanks for pointing this out ! I guess there's a plugin for that ? Or a tutorial ? It's time to research.. 😉 By the way, it would be nice when a saved project ( .pdn ) could retain all the history activities made before. That way I could always follow/inspect what was done before and with which plugins, in order to replicate the artwork from the beginning. For this purpose I'm using an extra layer where I write notes about the plugins used, but that is a bit cumbersome.. Anyway.. the more I use Paint.net the more I like it. It's realy very powerful.

Work in progress:

Thanks all for the kind suggestions so far. Learn by doing is the key, I guess I have to "try" out each plugin and see what it makes. @Ego Eram Reputo: 1 image size not yet set, however it should fit right on the screen. It will be shown and hidden by using a key (I'll probably use the tabulator for this purpose). 2 no, it can be any size, fact is, I don't have a lot of assets right now, that have to be organized in such a panel, at least at this development stage. I *guess* a 3X4 grid would be fine. The original "size" ( 3x6 ) has the advantage, that I could in the future "insert" new objects in it, like buildings, tanks, and the like. 3 the image will only be viewed on the screen, like in the original game. And now it's time to be creative 😉 Have a nice day, Sergio

Thanks Pixey for your answer, but I think there is a misunderstood.. why should I learn how to code a plug-in ? This is not my target at the moment. I just need some hint on about how to draw a panel like that in the first picture, and use some plug-in to better accomplish such a task.. Sorry if my question was not clear enough. My goal is to draw a panel that resembles the one in the picture ( is a screenshot of the game "Command and Conquer" ). Actually I'm developing a similar game, and I would like to learn how to use Paint.net and its plugins, in order to draw a panel like that 😉

Dear all, I would like to draw an UI-Panel like the one in the picture (right side), from within the player can choose units. I'm quite new about Paint.net, and what I really need is someone that takes my hand and point me toward the plugins/techniques I could use in order to make such a panel, such bevel, emboss, buttonize, gradient, and the likes. Right now I can design it with the shape tool, but the result is waaay far from what I would like - it should not be exactly the same, but at least be appealing. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your attention, Sergio My (miserable) attempt:

Dear Pixey, you've made my day ! Thousend thanks ( mille grazie ) for your kind tutorial ! I've learned more from it than from other hundreds videos ! - Really ! Please leave it online, I'll watch it again (and again..) later and will follow your instruction ! You use a linear gradient - that makes the trick.. I thought, I need a conic gradient.. Many many thanks dear Pixey ! Really very kind of you ! I *do* appreciate your time and effort 🙂 🙂 Best regards and have a nice day, Sergio

While trying, I've discovered that instead of backcolor transparent, I can get better results with backcolor black. And Level adjustments makes wonder 🙂 Perhaps there's a better way as Pixey suggested, but right now I don't know which mouse-moves have to be done while using the conic gradient.. I had to change the layer orders though.. now the "gradient" layer is the second one from below. Perhaps using transparent instead of black would be far more better, however I don't get the same behaviour using the Level adjustment tool. Oh my. This is the result so far, which is not bad for a newby 😉

Cheers Lemonade, that is indeed a good idea ! Now I'll investigate on how to draw a circle around another one, and how to use effectively the lasso.. Thanks a lot ! Have a nice day, Sergio

Getting there.. but I don't really know how I did that ! 😉 Still have to work on the curved vertices, and the base of the cone, which does not follow the curve of the target..

First of all, many thanks for your kind and prompt answers @frio and @Pixey ! Dear Pixey, I've followed your - very helpful - step by step guide, and indeed I've succeeded quite everything ! By the way, I've done the simmetric circles using the "target" shape, it makes "regular" circles if you didn't know 🙂 What I still did not achieved are two things: 1. The cone template. I do can make it using the cone shape and rotate it using the ctrl+shift+z = zoom tool, but the "round" part (which is the shorter side of the cone ) is not so precise like your one, that follow the big circle path. My cone has "rounded" vertices, and the curve at the round side - if you get what I mean - does not follow the circular path of the big external circle (the target). I guess it's a matter of drag some point here and there, but the two vertices at the bottom still remain "round". I hope you can understand my "english" - sorry ! 2. the gradient part. I still have to understand what does frio mean - thank you again frio by the way ! - with the "Levels adjustment (control-L) to compress the range". You see, I'm a beginner with Paint.net.😉 And also I have to get your last step, "primary color at 255 & secundary transparent". I understand this sentence (horray ! 😉 ) but I don't know how do you use the gradient tool here. Same for "Once you make the gradient, as per the template, you can then go back and select a bigger circle and add some more gradient." Which makes sense for all of you, but me 😉 - I have to work on it ! Anyway your hints have helped me a lot ! Now with a fresh mind I'll try again to get that "Gradient with compressed range". I'll keep you informed 😉 By the way, who makes all these cool plugins ? And which are the steps and the programming-language to use in order to program such a plugin ? I'm just curious 🙂 Have a nice day and thanks again for your help, Sergio P.S.: My achievement so far:

Hi all, I'm new to Paint.Net, and I would like to paint the beam of a radar with a circular gradient. To better understand what I mean, here is what I would like to achieve: radar I would like to build two images. The first ist the grid (I didn't try yet but I think it is not soooo complicated). The second image is the beam, which seems a conic gradient (from green to black) which spreads on an angle, say, of 30 degrees. In my application, the beam image should rotate above the grid image, in order to achieve the radar-beam effect (both images will be "blended" togheter, so that the beam image does not mask the grid image below). I can indeed obtain a similar beam, but the conic gradient makes the gradient from, say, green to black from 0 to 180 degrees. What I need, however, is to limit the gradient only to, say, 0 to 30 degrees. I've tried also the circular gradient, and also played with the filling-type, but I can't achieve what I want. So the question, is there any setting in order to apply a conic gradient only to a certain degrees range ? Thanks in advance and have a nice day, Sergio