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There is already a predefined shading for spherical objects, which is invoked via the "ball" option, but I haven't found a way to switch its color from the default blue to red when using it outside of the "tikzpicture" environment:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations,decorations.pathreplacing}
\begin{document}
\pgfdeclaredecoration{balls}{initial}
{
  \state{initial}[width=\pgfdecoratedpathlength/floor(\pgfdecoratedpathlength/5pt)]
  {
    \pgfpathmoveto{\pgfpoint{1pt}{0pt}}
    \pgfusepath{}
    \pgfpathcircle{\pgfpoint{0pt}{2pt}}{2.5pt}
    \pgfshadepath{ball}{0}{color=red}
    \pgfusepath{}
  }
  \state{final}
  {
    \pgfpathmoveto{\pgfpointdecoratedpathlast}
  }
}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw[decorate, decoration={balls}, color=red](0, 0) -- (2, 0);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

What is the correct way to achieve this?

share|improve this question
2  
Hi Penguin, welcome to the site. Are you perhaps looking for ball color=red? – Jake Sep 27 '12 at 15:33
Welcome to TeX.sx! Usually, we don't put a greeting or a "thank you" in our posts. While this might seem strange at first, it is not a sign of lack of politeness, but rather part of our trying to keep everything very concise. Upvoting is the preferred way here to say "thank you" to users who helped you. – lockstep Sep 27 '12 at 15:35
Well, I've tried to use the "ball color=red" flag, it didn't result in changing the color to red no matter where I've put it. Could you maybe give me a hint where to put this question in order to see an effect? – Penguin Nurse Sep 27 '12 at 16:21
2  
@PenguinNurse: Ah, I might be misunderstanding the quesiton. I used \draw[decorate, decoration={balls}, ball color=red](0, 0) -- (2, 0);, which worked, but you want to define the color within your \pgfdeclaredecoration, correct? – Jake Sep 27 '12 at 16:23
That's actually perfect. Your solution works fine for me, although it might create redundancy for people using the decoration many times. – Penguin Nurse Sep 28 '12 at 7:45

closed as too localized by percusse, Kurt, Qrrbrbirlbel, Tom Bombadil, Thorsten Oct 12 '12 at 6:09

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