Garytagreg

“Coffee Time”
 
I’m really not very good with hand drawing (stick figures only!) so I really like the concept of vector drawing in which I can make changes after the fact and tweak to my hearts content. 
 
To learn how to use Affinity Designer (I have played with some vector stuff before in Inkscape but nothing much at all), I decided to make something look as real as I could that wouldn’t need too much raw drawing skill and I came up with “Coffee Time” : 100% created from scratch vector drawing (no brushes or pixel layers except for the use of the fx “Layer effects"). I did use a photo for reference but I didn’t do any tracing or anything. I’m really, really happy how it turned out. I tried out all sorts of things and learned a lot but it was a lot of fun :)
 
As this is a "Learn and Share” forum, I thought I’d share exactly what I did (see the other other attached pictures). It’s not perfect and I’m a beginner, but hopefully others might be able to learn something, too
 
Enjoy! :)
 
My Process:
 
01 Create 2 sets of circle shapes to represent the top and bottom of the cup. Squish the top and the bottom with the move tool. The top circle has a smaller one on top to remove later to make a lip for the cup. I deliberately used bright colours to make the shapes easy to distinguish from each other.


 

02 Join the circles with the corners of a rectangle shape to form the side of the cup.

 
03 Shape the rectangle with the node tool. Add  a handle. Clone the top circle and move it down to make the surface of the coffee.
 
04 Create a set of “shading shapes” to put on top of the side of the cup. These will then be given a gradient colour and transparency to give the illusion of a bumpy surface.
 
05 Create some circles and overlay some shading shapes . I used the the smart duplicate function to repeatedly rotate duplicates of the shading shape easily. 
 
06 Squish the saucer with the move tool and move into place under the saucer
 
07 Change the colours to something closer to the final version and play with gradients and transparencies. I also blurred it to make it blend more naturally. Once I got something that looked good, I made a style of it and then applied it to the others and then hand tweaked each one.
 
08 Do the same to the saucer. Also added some detail (reflection of the inside of the cup and blurred it) to the coffee.
 
09 Add a background with a gradient. I used the noise slider to give it some texture. I also added some steam with just a hand drawn shape.
 
10 Add a shadow. I just duplicated the cup and saucer, blacked them out and then put them in place underneath everything and used the shear tool to project it out. I also added some fine detail on the edge of the side of the cup to add to the bumpiness illusion. Made the lip a nice shiny gold with a slightly tweaked version of the built in “metal” style. Added some self shadowing to the saucer and further deformed the circle shape it to give a more 3D look to it.
 
11 Added reflections and spectral highlights to the cup and saucer. Now it looks nice and shiny.
 
For the final version, I also added some bubbles to the coffee (lots of circle shapes) and the text, converted to curves and then given a steam like style (actually the same one I used for the shading shapes!) and then each character rotated and scaled to make it look like steam from the coffee.

“Coffee Time”
 
I’m really not very good with hand drawing (stick figures only!) so I really like the concept of vector drawing in which I can make changes after the fact and tweak to my hearts content. 
 
To learn how to use Affinity Designer (I have played with some vector stuff before in Inkscape but nothing much at all), I decided to make something look as real as I could that wouldn’t need too much raw drawing skill and I came up with “Coffee Time” : 100% created from scratch vector drawing (no brushes or pixel layers except for the use of the fx “Layer effects"). I did use a photo for reference but I didn’t do any tracing or anything. I’m really, really happy how it turned out. I tried out all sorts of things and learned a lot but it was a lot of fun :)
 
As this is a "Learn and Share” forum, I thought I’d share exactly what I did (see the other other attached pictures). It’s not perfect and I’m a beginner, but hopefully others might be able to learn something, too
 
Enjoy! :)
 
My Process:
 
01 Create 2 sets of circle shapes to represent the top and bottom of the cup. Squish the top and the bottom with the move tool. The top circle has a smaller one on top to remove later to make a lip for the cup. I deliberately used bright colours to make the shapes easy to distinguish from each other.


 

02 Join the circles with the corners of a rectangle shape to form the side of the cup.

 
03 Shape the rectangle with the node tool. Add  a handle. Clone the top circle and move it down to make the surface of the coffee.
 
04 Create a set of “shading shapes” to put on top of the side of the cup. These will then be given a gradient colour and transparency to give the illusion of a bumpy surface.
 
05 Create some circles and overlay some shading shapes . I used the the smart duplicate function to repeatedly rotate duplicates of the shading shape easily. 
 
06 Squish the saucer with the move tool and move into place under the saucer
 
07 Change the colours to something closer to the final version and play with gradients and transparencies. I also blurred it to make it blend more naturally. Once I got something that looked good, I made a style of it and then applied it to the others and then hand tweaked each one.
 
08 Do the same to the saucer. Also added some detail (reflection of the inside of the cup and blurred it) to the coffee.
 
09 Add a background with a gradient. I used the noise slider to give it some texture. I also added some steam with just a hand drawn shape.
 
10 Add a shadow. I just duplicated the cup and saucer, blacked them out and then put them in place underneath everything and used the shear tool to project it out. I also added some fine detail on the edge of the side of the cup to add to the bumpiness illusion. Made the lip a nice shiny gold with a slightly tweaked version of the built in “metal” style. Added some self shadowing to the saucer and further deformed the circle shape it to give a more 3D look to it.
 
11 Added reflections and spectral highlights to the cup and saucer. Now it looks nice and shiny.
 
For the final version, I also added some bubbles to the coffee (lots of circle shapes) and the text, converted to curves and then given a steam like style (actually the same one I used for the shading shapes!) and then each character rotated and scaled to make it look like steam from the coffee.

“Coffee Time”
 
I’m really not very good with hand drawing (stick figures only!) so I really like the concept of vector drawing in which I can make changes after the fact and tweak to my hearts content. 
 
To learn how to use Affinity Designer (I have played with some vector stuff before in Inkscape but nothing much at all), I decided to make something look as real as I could that wouldn’t need too much raw drawing skill and I came up with “Coffee Time” : 100% created from scratch vector drawing (no brushes or pixel layers except for the use of the fx “Layer effects"). I did use a photo for reference but I didn’t do any tracing or anything. I’m really, really happy how it turned out. I tried out all sorts of things and learned a lot but it was a lot of fun :)
 
As this is a "Learn and Share” forum, I thought I’d share exactly what I did (see the other other attached pictures). It’s not perfect and I’m a beginner, but hopefully others might be able to learn something, too
 
Enjoy! :)
 
My Process:
 
01 Create 2 sets of circle shapes to represent the top and bottom of the cup. Squish the top and the bottom with the move tool. The top circle has a smaller one on top to remove later to make a lip for the cup. I deliberately used bright colours to make the shapes easy to distinguish from each other.


 

02 Join the circles with the corners of a rectangle shape to form the side of the cup.

 
03 Shape the rectangle with the node tool. Add  a handle. Clone the top circle and move it down to make the surface of the coffee.
 
04 Create a set of “shading shapes” to put on top of the side of the cup. These will then be given a gradient colour and transparency to give the illusion of a bumpy surface.
 
05 Create some circles and overlay some shading shapes . I used the the smart duplicate function to repeatedly rotate duplicates of the shading shape easily. 
 
06 Squish the saucer with the move tool and move into place under the saucer
 
07 Change the colours to something closer to the final version and play with gradients and transparencies. I also blurred it to make it blend more naturally. Once I got something that looked good, I made a style of it and then applied it to the others and then hand tweaked each one.
 
08 Do the same to the saucer. Also added some detail (reflection of the inside of the cup and blurred it) to the coffee.
 
09 Add a background with a gradient. I used the noise slider to give it some texture. I also added some steam with just a hand drawn shape.
 
10 Add a shadow. I just duplicated the cup and saucer, blacked them out and then put them in place underneath everything and used the shear tool to project it out. I also added some fine detail on the edge of the side of the cup to add to the bumpiness illusion. Made the lip a nice shiny gold with a slightly tweaked version of the built in “metal” style. Added some self shadowing to the saucer and further deformed the circle shape it to give a more 3D look to it.
 
11 Added reflections and spectral highlights to the cup and saucer. Now it looks nice and shiny.
 
For the final version, I also added some bubbles to the coffee (lots of circle shapes) and the text, converted to curves and then given a steam like style (actually the same one I used for the shading shapes!) and then each character rotated and scaled to make it look like steam from the coffee.

“Coffee Time”
 
I’m really not very good with hand drawing (stick figures only!) so I really like the concept of vector drawing in which I can make changes after the fact and tweak to my hearts content. 
 
To learn how to use Affinity Designer (I have played with some vector stuff before in Inkscape but nothing much at all), I decided to make something look as real as I could that wouldn’t need too much raw drawing skill and I came up with “Coffee Time” : 100% created from scratch vector drawing (no brushes or pixel layers except for the use of the fx “Layer effects"). I did use a photo for reference but I didn’t do any tracing or anything. I’m really, really happy how it turned out. I tried out all sorts of things and learned a lot but it was a lot of fun :)
 
As this is a "Learn and Share” forum, I thought I’d share exactly what I did (see the other other attached pictures). It’s not perfect and I’m a beginner, but hopefully others might be able to learn something, too
 
Enjoy! :)
 
My Process:
 
01 Create 2 sets of circle shapes to represent the top and bottom of the cup. Squish the top and the bottom with the move tool. The top circle has a smaller one on top to remove later to make a lip for the cup. I deliberately used bright colours to make the shapes easy to distinguish from each other.


 

02 Join the circles with the corners of a rectangle shape to form the side of the cup.

 
03 Shape the rectangle with the node tool. Add  a handle. Clone the top circle and move it down to make the surface of the coffee.
 
04 Create a set of “shading shapes” to put on top of the side of the cup. These will then be given a gradient colour and transparency to give the illusion of a bumpy surface.
 
05 Create some circles and overlay some shading shapes . I used the the smart duplicate function to repeatedly rotate duplicates of the shading shape easily. 
 
06 Squish the saucer with the move tool and move into place under the saucer
 
07 Change the colours to something closer to the final version and play with gradients and transparencies. I also blurred it to make it blend more naturally. Once I got something that looked good, I made a style of it and then applied it to the others and then hand tweaked each one.
 
08 Do the same to the saucer. Also added some detail (reflection of the inside of the cup and blurred it) to the coffee.
 
09 Add a background with a gradient. I used the noise slider to give it some texture. I also added some steam with just a hand drawn shape.
 
10 Add a shadow. I just duplicated the cup and saucer, blacked them out and then put them in place underneath everything and used the shear tool to project it out. I also added some fine detail on the edge of the side of the cup to add to the bumpiness illusion. Made the lip a nice shiny gold with a slightly tweaked version of the built in “metal” style. Added some self shadowing to the saucer and further deformed the circle shape it to give a more 3D look to it.
 
11 Added reflections and spectral highlights to the cup and saucer. Now it looks nice and shiny.
 
For the final version, I also added some bubbles to the coffee (lots of circle shapes) and the text, converted to curves and then given a steam like style (actually the same one I used for the shading shapes!) and then each character rotated and scaled to make it look like steam from the coffee.

“Coffee Time”
 
I’m really not very good with hand drawing (stick figures only!) so I really like the concept of vector drawing in which I can make changes after the fact and tweak to my hearts content. 
 
To learn how to use Affinity Designer (I have played with some vector stuff before in Inkscape but nothing much at all), I decided to make something look as real as I could that wouldn’t need too much raw drawing skill and I came up with “Coffee Time” : 100% created from scratch vector drawing (no brushes or pixel layers except for the use of the fx “Layer effects"). I did use a photo for reference but I didn’t do any tracing or anything. I’m really, really happy how it turned out. I tried out all sorts of things and learned a lot but it was a lot of fun :)
 
As this is a "Learn and Share” forum, I thought I’d share exactly what I did (see the other other attached pictures). It’s not perfect and I’m a beginner, but hopefully others might be able to learn something, too
 
Enjoy! :)
 
My Process:
 
01 Create 2 sets of circle shapes to represent the top and bottom of the cup. Squish the top and the bottom with the move tool. The top circle has a smaller one on top to remove later to make a lip for the cup. I deliberately used bright colours to make the shapes easy to distinguish from each other.


 

02 Join the circles with the corners of a rectangle shape to form the side of the cup.

 
03 Shape the rectangle with the node tool. Add  a handle. Clone the top circle and move it down to make the surface of the coffee.
 
04 Create a set of “shading shapes” to put on top of the side of the cup. These will then be given a gradient colour and transparency to give the illusion of a bumpy surface.
 
05 Create some circles and overlay some shading shapes . I used the the smart duplicate function to repeatedly rotate duplicates of the shading shape easily. 
 
06 Squish the saucer with the move tool and move into place under the saucer
 
07 Change the colours to something closer to the final version and play with gradients and transparencies. I also blurred it to make it blend more naturally. Once I got something that looked good, I made a style of it and then applied it to the others and then hand tweaked each one.
 
08 Do the same to the saucer. Also added some detail (reflection of the inside of the cup and blurred it) to the coffee.
 
09 Add a background with a gradient. I used the noise slider to give it some texture. I also added some steam with just a hand drawn shape.
 
10 Add a shadow. I just duplicated the cup and saucer, blacked them out and then put them in place underneath everything and used the shear tool to project it out. I also added some fine detail on the edge of the side of the cup to add to the bumpiness illusion. Made the lip a nice shiny gold with a slightly tweaked version of the built in “metal” style. Added some self shadowing to the saucer and further deformed the circle shape it to give a more 3D look to it.
 
11 Added reflections and spectral highlights to the cup and saucer. Now it looks nice and shiny.
 
For the final version, I also added some bubbles to the coffee (lots of circle shapes) and the text, converted to curves and then given a steam like style (actually the same one I used for the shading shapes!) and then each character rotated and scaled to make it look like steam from the coffee.

Hi @Garytagreg I have been able to reproduce the crash both in 1.8.4 and in the Beta build 1.9.0.742. I noticed that it also happened when adding a text frame and typing in it.
If you do the following it should stop the crashing:
Open the template > Go to Edit > Defaults > Factory Reset The Edit > Defaults > Revert It should now work ok. I will get this issue logged and pass this information on to the development team.

Glad to hear that its getting tracked down
Here is what "locale" gives me
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL=
 
My workaround is just to make really big frames before pasting the text, just to ensure it fits.
 

Thanks for the replies, I've answered the questions above and I've attached the crash report.
I had some really wierd crashes with early versions of designer that eventually were found to be due to having Japanese installed as a secondary language on my computer (I live in Japan but I'm not Japanese). I seem to remember that it was crashing a menu somehow, even though I was doing something apparently unrelated. I'm just mentioning this again as it is the main difference in my setup to most folks.
Hope it helps.
Crash Report.txt

I'm getting a reproducible crash on publisher with the following steps:
create a new document create an empty frame text frame copy a block of text several lines long from another app (I've been using the Notes app) that has enough text to not "fit" in the frame crashes every time I've attached a sample file with the empty text frame and a file with some random text. if you paste the text from the text file into the frame in the publisher file it crashes immediately.
It also crashes the latest beta at this time (1.7.3 475).
I'm running Mojave 10.14.6 on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013). As I've had weird crashes connected with text in designer and photo before, I should also mention that macOS has Japanese as a secondary language installed but that the text being pasted does not have any Japanese text in it.
Hope this helps
 
Text to paste.txt
Empty frame.afpub

Just tried it on a iMac (2010) with latest Sierra 6 Beta, no beachball. Do you have more programs running? Virusscanner perhaps?

I've just tried this on my Mac and the Windows version and everything seems OK  :unsure: I think the issue is definitely isolated your end. I get a minor redraw lag but only very occasionally. Nothing untoward in my Activity Monitor either... 

Garytagreg,
 
Thanks for the heads up and the files - I have recreated the crash here and put a fix in for the next build :)
 
Andy.

Just to confirm that the issue I was having with renaming the currently selected layer is fixed :)
 
Thanks!

Hi Andy,
 
Now that the studio elements can be positioned in both left and right sides of the UI (please see the attached image), it will be great to hide either the left or right studio independently.  At the moment, the View->Studio->Hide Studio hides all studio panels on the screen.   Independently hiding the left or right studio will help some of us on small screen.
 
 
As an example, after taking an image into the Tonal Mapping Persona, and selecting a preset of choice, I would like to hide the Preset panel on the right to gain more screen real estate and while showing the left studio panel to continue to apply adjustment to an image.   
 
I posted a similar request for panels in the Designer forum https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21294-affinity-designer-customer-beta-15-beta-2/?p=100185 sometime ago.
 
Could you please kindly add this time saving feature for us??  It will really make me happy.
 
Nana
 
 

Not a major bug, but probably an easy fix:
 
If you show the grid, rotate the canvas a bit and then use the menu to reset the rotation, the grid remains in its rotated state. When you move the canvas or zoom it resets and trying to draw shapes will snap to the correct grid (although it doesn't match with the grid you see) but it looks out of place on an otherwise very professional app.
 
See Attached pic.
 
Also, I can confirm that the cropping bug I was having with gaussian blurred group children is fixed. Thanks! :)

Matt, FYI, I also use the 3 finger drag, but I don't get any errors like @Garytagreg does... 
 

Thanks Garytagreg and ronnyb for the 3-finger gesture tips. For me, still on Maverick, It works like a charm, even on those sliders in AD and AP. 
 
Garytagreg: the behavior shown in your video is like a nightmare. What is this circle around your pointer: is it from the screen recording app?

Matt, I use the three finger tap-and-drag as well on my MBP's trackpad. It is SUPER easy and allows one to select+drag AND be able to pick up the three fingers, move them on the trackpad (when you run out of room), and continue with the same select+drag gesture as if you never released. It's like clicking or tapping on the trackpad, but instead, a simple 3 finger drag begins the operation...
 
I think they hid this gesture in El Capitan, I can't find it in the Trackpad's System preferences, but I could swear it was there in previous OS. It's a 3 finger gesture, but I forget what it's called... I have ALL the gestures turned on for my trackpad, if that is of any help.
 

You can enable the three fingers gesture in the Accessibility pane (I don't know why Apple have moved this gesture here...)

This is now fixed for the next beta. Yay, this should never have happened.
 
 
 
British pixels are now gone in favour of just normal pixels for the next beta.
 
 
 
This is actually a really good idea so I've implemented it into the next beta. :)

Just a quick comment about the Japanese localisation:
 
A common thing to do with languages that don't use roman characters (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai etc.) is to write the language name in that language in the drop-down of available languages in the settings. That way, a completely non-English speaker can go to the settings and click on stuff until he sees something written in his language which makes it easy for him to change the settings to what he can actually read. Try to imagine finding the English language setting if you were running in Japanese/Chinese/Korean and everything was written in that language (which you can actually experience right now by changing AD to Japanese, restarting and going back to the settings where now "English" has changed to "英語"... not too easy)
 
Google does a good job of this as shown in the attachment.
 
At the moment, the list box in the settings menu is all in the currently set language. Doing the above would help make things easier to use. 

Just a quick comment about the Japanese localisation:
 
A common thing to do with languages that don't use roman characters (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai etc.) is to write the language name in that language in the drop-down of available languages in the settings. That way, a completely non-English speaker can go to the settings and click on stuff until he sees something written in his language which makes it easy for him to change the settings to what he can actually read. Try to imagine finding the English language setting if you were running in Japanese/Chinese/Korean and everything was written in that language (which you can actually experience right now by changing AD to Japanese, restarting and going back to the settings where now "English" has changed to "英語"... not too easy)
 
Google does a good job of this as shown in the attachment.
 
At the moment, the list box in the settings menu is all in the currently set language. Doing the above would help make things easier to use. 

Hi Garytagreg,
 
This strange message has been explained in the Affinity Designer Beta forum and is due to how Affinity apps keep track of opened files. For saving efficiency, only changed part of files are updated on save. If the file has been changed by other programs this will fail with the actual message. This situation happens very easily if you are in Finder renaming/moving files and folders in the path of the opened files in an Affinity app.
 
I think this behavior is quite unlucky because work can easily be lost when files are just closed down like this. It is common behavior in OSX that you should be able to do file handling in Finder without apps freaking out. At least, if the app has lost the control over the file, it should ask to "Save as..." rather than just closing the offending file.

Hahaha! This will be for me  :D 
 
You'll be very glad to hear that the "attempt" is doing a very good job at fixing my export crash - I have tried overwriting files in many different ways and different complexities etc. and haven't had it crash once yet - thanks so much!  :D No wonder you were having difficulty in reproducing it. As a programmer myself, I'm fascinated: does it only occur with Japanese? What about German, French etc.? Other Asian languages like Chinese or Korean? Can you give any more details about what was actually crashing?
 
In any case, I'm really glad that I was able to play some small part in making AD that much more stable - it's a really great piece of software and the development team's enthusiasm and relationship with the community really stands out. Keep it up!
 
Now to find another obscure and nigh-impossible-to-reproduce crash...  :P  

I installed gfxCardStatus and forced using only the integrated card but it still crashed the same as before (see attached file) :(
 
So far, with this beta I haven't had the Aperture/Lightroom caused crash yet. It isn't something that I can create on purpose, unfortunately. It happens sometimes only. I'll let you know if it crops up again.
gfxCardStatus forced integrated crash.txt