flyinglentris

The issues I was experiencing have been resolved. 😀 There were in fact, several things going on that I was not initially aware of. And I hope by exposing my evaluation and discoveries, others will be able to avoid the enigmas I was presented with and perhaps some documentation upgrades may result. First, it is important to understand that not all of the jitters will work with brushes defined using custom Nozzles and Textures. For certain, Shape Jitter and Hardness Jitter will only work, it seems, with brushes that are not defined using Nozzles or Textures. Flow Jitter barely works with brushes using Nozzles or Textures and then, only if the Flow control on the context tool bar is turned down. Second, all Jitters using Rotation as the Pen Action will only work with a Pen that supports Rotation. For the Wacom Cintiq 22, the Art Pen is the only Wacom Pen compatible with the Cintiq 22 that supports Rotation, by rotating the Pen Barrel. Third, the only Jitters that support Wheel as the Pen Action are Scatter X and Scatter Y. For the Wacom Cintiq 22, the Air Brush Pen is the only Wacom Pen compatible with the Cintiq 22 that supports a wheel and for an Air Brush Pen, it makes perfect sense that Scatter X and Scatter Y Jitters are the only Jitters supported for Spraying Brush Strokes. Those three things are limitations that must be considered. To get the Pen Actions top coincide otherwise, it is important to increase the Jitter Sliders to some degree to the right and specify a usable Pen Action for the type of Brush and the type of Pen being used. The Pen Profile setting is something all users need to evaluate on a case by case basis, but for initial evaluation, it appears best to set the Profile to Linear. Pen Actions are stronger, the further the Sliders are moved toward 100%. Tilt and Angle Pen Actions behave rather oddly, being stronger in the vertical, rather than horizontal, although, a diagonal stroke will produce acceptable results. The two actions are somewhat similar, but Tilt is much more defined than Angle. Rotation actions using a pen that supports Rotation, the Wacom Art Pen, are very pronounced in all Jitters. Keep in mind that Shape, Hardness and Flow Jitters are not available to Brushes defined using custom Nozzles or Textures and therefore, Rotation Action Actions will not work in those cases.

It's early morning here and I don't have the Cintiq 22 hooked up, but have played around and noticed something using Mouse only. Affinity displays the nozzle when not stroking and with Rotation Jitter set to Direction, moving the mouse without stroking rotates the nozzle image. This gives me an idea how to more clearly test the Pens and I will do so and report back.

Dan, Thanks for responding. I recently purchased and just received all of the compatible Pens (except one) for the Cintiq 22 and not having the Cintiq 22 for long yet, decided to go ahead and ensure each pen was working while at the same time, testing the Affinity Brush customizations and their affect on the Cintiq 22 Pens. I tested both with the Pen Pressure On and Off. I created a set of Custom Brushes which I created from Nozzle patterns I created or borrowed from Gimp. By doing this, I hoped to test without corrupting the default brush sets. I found that I could reshape the brush strokes OK and these static changes were properly reflected on the Wacom Cintiq 22. It is the dynamic Jitter settings I am having problems with. The Wacom Pens all, by default, seem to increase width with pressure, whether it is turned on or off on the Context Menu. But only the Jitter Settings that directly affect the displayed Stroke affect the actual Pen behaviors. I tested using Affinity Designer on Windows 10 on an MacBook Pro, Pixel Mode, the 3R Photo Canvas and the Paint Brush Tool. I specifically tested Rotation Jitter, Hardness Jitter and Saturation Jitter using Colors set to Red, Blue or Black. Jitters were set to use Rotation, Tilt, Angle, Velocity, Random and Pressure. Wheel was used with the Air Brush Pen which has a Wheel on the Barrel. In no case did the Pen Actions reflect any of these settings, only the default actions - increasing width and opacity with pressure and perhaps, visible shape changes with changes in pen direction, such that the true shape of the nozzle wasn't covered by the stroke. What I expected was that the changes for Jitter settings would be reflected by the actions set when those actions were taken with the Pens. BTW: Since I have all but one of the Cintiq 22 compatible Pens, I am able to compare their strokes. All are nearly identical, though the Pro Pen 2 and Pro Pen 3D are thinner than the legacy Pens. The Cintiq 22 comes with the Pro Pen 2. Pro Pen 3D is not a legacy Pen. Attached, find the Gimp Pattern I am using for the brush nozzle.

I take note of the Brush Customization features in Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher and do appreciate it much, but I am baffled when it comes to making dynamic settings obvious on a canvas when using Wacom's Ciintiq 22. Some dynamic jitters clearly change the display brush stroke, but some do not. And none of them seem to effect the Wacom Pens. What am I missing? Is it that Serif's Affinity products do not interface with Wacom Products? If the two products do interface, how do I set things up so that the Wacom Pen actions reflect the Affinity Dynamic Jitter settings?

Thank You! That worked. So the definition of Physical is any Document Unit that is NOT Pixels. And of course, the definition of Pixels is Pixels. So it's not a bug and my confusion is resolved. This little ditty ought to be documented somewhere.

I have discovered something unusual across all three Affinity Applications which may be a Bug. Refer to this Thread Link ... https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/119040-isometric-grid-and-axis-physical-vs-pixel/&tab=comments#comment-647332

I have discovered something unusual across all three Affinity Applications which may be a Bug. Refer to this Thread Link ... https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/119040-isometric-grid-and-axis-physical-vs-pixel/&tab=comments#comment-647332

Here's an update to this Thread which reflects something I found in digging across all three Affinity Applications. I have found that the Pixel Type Grids are not accessible to Affinity Designer, but show up in the Grid and Axis Preset Manager Dialog, all the same. Further, the Physical type Grids are not accessible to Affinity Photo or Affinity Publisher, but show up in the Grid Axis Preset Manager Dialog, all the same. It does not seem to matter whether the Isometric Panel is Active r not. If the Physical Grids were meant to be used by Affinity Designer, it is odd indeed, that they are not available to the Designer Persona in Affinity Publisher. Have I uncovered a Bug?

I'm still on that Learning Curve and voila! I've come across another feature that is not well explained in Documentation, Help or out there on the Wild and Wooley Web. When Presets for Isocmetric Grid and Axis Settings are Listed in the Drop-down, certain Categories which show up in the Manage Presets Dialog do not show. Further Investigation reveals that the Presets that do no show have exclusively, Presets that are Pixel, as opposed to Physical. I have tried like crazy to create a Pixel Preset, but they all turn out Physical. And I cannot find out how to load a Pixel Preset into the Grid and Axis Manager Dialog. In truth, at the present time, I haven't the foggiest what the difference is between Pixel and Physical Isometric Grids might be. Please advise.

For now, I've had a good Intro to the topic of Typography in Affinity Photo and with Usage in Affinity Photo, Design and Publisher, the diversity of Font Variations will become more fluent in my Knowledge Base. Thanks.

Well, I'm as good with this as I can get. I roughly figured out the remainder of the unknowns without being able to see their effects on a Font. Key to understand Variants is the following Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_form_(Unicode)

Thanks, but this is the easy stuff that I had no problems with. The difficult stuff concerns the Text Styles Panel, not the Character Panel or the Paragraph Panel. When you edit or create a new Text Style, you get a Dialog that has many options for creating Text Style Presets. One of the big confusion issues is that not everything in that Dialog may apply to a selected Font. But its there. I've progressed a bit further in my attempts to rationalize the "New/Edit Text Style (my term as the dialog has no name)" Dialog. I've found by opening the Typography Dialog from menus, by clicking Text > Show Typography, alongside the "New/Edit Text Style" Dialog that the true nature of some of the controls becomes evident by what shows up in the Typography Dialog as things are changed for a selected Font. But again, not everything may apply to a selected Font, so to get anywhere understanding the Dialog, one must shuffle through selected some different OpenType Fonts and Standard Fonts to see what gives. That helped me to knock off several of the unknowns from my list. My understanding has best improved by actually playing with the Dialogs and Fonts. The problem that remains is that of the available Fonts I have, none of them seem to reflect the remaining unknowns. The Font Designer of a Font must either include features and attributes or not include them ... to see them in the Typography Dialog and effect them from the "New/Edit Text Style" Dialog. The unknowns that remain for me are all of the Variants Controls in the Typography Section and in the Paragraph Section, Bullets & Numbering, the Style Drop-down List, which only has two options, [No Change] and [No Style] with no clue as to how to set a specific Style and add it to that Drop-down List. One other clue is what shows up in the Style Settings Box at the bottom of the Dialog. This will state that things are turned On or Off, have been set, etc.

I had already looked into the Adobe Open Type Articles and downloaded a couple of their PDFs.. But no, I was not satisfied that those provided any clarity regarding the Affinity Text Type Panel Typography Edit Dialog content.

While still somewhat new to Afinity's product line, I have been doing the Learning Curve Thing. While I am generally able to find out most things, I have been stumbling over the details in the Text Styles Panel (Edit Styles Dialog). I have dug and dug and can't find any documentation and cannot find any hints on the web for some of the Options in that Dialog. For example, Typography > Alternates has a series of Combo Boxes that set numbers for Stylistic Alternates, Swash, Ornaments, Annotation Forms and All Alternates. I haven't a clue what those numbers imply. And it doesn't stop there. Features in Typography > Variants and the checkboxes in Typography > Figures for Ordinal, Fraction, Alternate Fraction and Mathematical Greek are equally mystifying. I might know what an Ordinal is, but what does it mean to check that checkbox? Can anyone point to some documentation on this stuff? A Video? Thanks.

Nope.

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