gdenby
-
Posts
1,887 -
Joined
Posts posted by gdenby
-
-
Hi, jamesholden,
Shift to the export persona, and export in a vector format. .svg .pdf .eps. SVG, aka, "Scalable Vector Graphic," is good for current major web browsers. Note, Designers fx will likely be rendered as bitmaps.
-
I'm d-loading the beta now, but I can't open it. My current highest version, 1.6.4 also won't.
As gear maker says, use the close curve. The widget shows up on the context bar when you are in node tool mode.
-
Hi. KTDN,
If my memory serves, fingers crossed, some months ago I made a jigsaw puzzle in AD desktop. I placed an image, about 600Kb, as a child of the joined vector shapes. Then I divided the mass, so the puzzle pieces could be moved around separately. The file ballooned to about 22 Mb. Eventually, I figured out that each piece of the puzzle had the entire bitmap locked to it. You mentioned that you have several bitmaps in the files. Perhaps something similar is happening. Every vector object has a whole bitmap child layer attached to it, and that is where the file bloat is happening.
-
Hi.Odding,
When the vector brush tool is active, there is a control bar at the bottom of the screen with a button called "more." Click on that to bring up the brush editor. Set the size, opacity, etc variables there, and whatever controller variable, pressure/velocity you like. Then select pressure/velocity as the controller in the vector brush control bar.
-
27 minutes ago, Gear maker said:
gdenby, I never thought to look there in AP. Good catch. Thanks.
Glad to help
-
-
Hello, again,
The file you posted shows it is an embedded document. Those are not directly editable. As the help file mentions, the layer needs to be double clicked. At that point, you will be presented w. layers for each curves object. You can select one of those, and pick whatever bit map fill you like.
Your base question is how to fill a bounded space. And, in the context of your question, it is filling a specific pre-existing shape, as opposed to an arbitrary area with shapes already in it.
The standard ways are to gather pixels that have the same or similar color values, OR, those areas within a vector perimeter. Methods are completely dependent on which kind of shape, bitmap or vector, are in use. If you want to select pixels, the file must be a raster/bitmap image. In your most recent example, each elements of the elongated ellipse vector ring may be chosen as described above.
In my attached image, I set the stroke to none, and just left the fill on the curves ellipses in the file.
-
Quote:
Ah, I see you are using Designer, not Photo. While I can think of ways you might be able to do this in Designer using just bitmaps, it would be very tedious.
Designer has limited ways of dealing w. bit-map/pixel objects.
Here's my suggestion. Take the pattern you want to fill, and use an invert adjustment on it. Export a top quality .jpg from that, and send it to a free online image vectorizing service. There are several. Have a .svg file made from that, and open it in Designer.
You will get a layer with about 260 separate objects. Each of those can then have a bitmap placed inside it using the fill tool. Or you can select individual ones, and do a geometric add, so the bitmap can be nested across/within the new objects.
For example:
-
Hello, again,
Or do you mean something like this?
If so, in A-Photo, use the flood select tool on a white space. Turn on the add switch if you want to choose other areas. With the area(s) selected, use the gradient tool, and choose bitmap as the type of fill. Select your moire pattern from wherever it is in the file system.
-
Hi, e.k.net,
Not quite the same font, but I'm willing to bet the following will work.
Convert to curves, yes. Ungroup. Select a letter w. a hole in it. In the layer panel, you will probably see that it is called "curves." Use the divide command. There will then be a bunch of "curve" objects. All will be black. Get them stacked from largest on the bottom to smallest (inner) on top, and assign whatever color you like to each layer.
-
Very good. I don't us fx too much, and you use them very well and fluidly. I liked the way you made the top stalk seem to twist.
-
FWIW, I came across reference from Adobe's Dov Isaacs saying that the company considered .eps to be a legacy format.
-
Hi, Steve_N,
As a preface, there have been a number of posts by people using, or trying to use vinyl cutters, laser cutter, plotters. The issues faced seem to be that those pieces of hardware have device dependent drivers, and the drivers have to be able to interpret the graphic output. You might want to check what the laser cutter requires, or if the manufacturer says they support file types Affinity creates.
I'm a little unclear about what you intend to do. Specifically, "brush tool to create broader laser etching areas." Designer has a pixel brush, which I don't think would produce anything you want. It also has a "vector brush" but that just stretches or repeats a bitmap image along a vector path.
Essentially, Designer works with areas, and assigns lines and fills to them. You would want to do all your tracing work w. the pen or pencil tool to define those areas.
What dutchshader shows is 1 method. I'm posting the results of another. I started w. a hand and forearm outline, a silhouette. I copied it just in case I messed something up. I then drew a quadrangular shape around a finger, and did a divide operation. I was left with a piece cut away from the forearm/hand, the finger, the rest of the forearm, and the leftover of the quadrangle. That I deleted.
Repeat. Note, straight lines and smooth curves tend to produce good results. Wavery lines can produce problematic results. I don't know that they would produce unacceptable cuts w. a laser. A couple I looked at from other files and the nodes were at the same position to .009 inch, but there were quite a lot of them near where the vectors intersected.
So I worked in an opposite direct from what you are proposing. I started w. 1 big part, and started cutting it into pieces. Working to put pieces together is much harder. I did spend quite a large amount of time early on trying to match the edges off single shapes into seamless larger forms. I went back and looked at some of them a few weeks ago, and at this point was able to pick out and remedy the flaws (which I did not know existed) fairly quickly.
-
I've mentioned elsewhere that I have fairly severe arthritis in my hand, and will add that I wear 400+ magnifying glasses. I really am not having this problem. See attached.
The grid, snapping ff, is for a size reference, and is 16 pt. One shot shows a group of lines drawn both by finger touch and Apple pencil point. I only once ended up getting a selection dialogue pop onto the screen, and that was because I held the pencil point down too long.
After zooming way in, shown in the next image, I was able to place .5 pt lines almost right on top of each other, and didn't cause a selection once.
So I'm not seeing a bug.
-
Hi, Uvinnie.
One may make a repeated pattern by inserting a bitmap type fill. That allows whatever pixel image to be placed into a rectangular array of whatever size one likes. Vector object groups can be power duplicated, and nested within parent objects. If using Designer, the grouped objects can be made a symbol, and those nested within shapes. Symbols are nice because as long as they are in sync, every instance will change when any single element is altered, i.e. a symbol w. a red triangle and a blue rectangle can be altered toa pink triangle and an aqua rectangle, and the forms of those changed.
-
Umm, download the powder explosion brush set, it available for personal use for free.
-
Hello, again, Pukeko,
Yes, there is a bit of lag. I have similar, but don't really notice it.
I started doing CG when a 100% gaussian blur on a 640 x 480 px area took 45 minutes. "Real time" rotation of a 3-D wire frame was in one second "burps" for maybe 1.5 degree rotations. I could offer many similar examples.
I expect hardware delays. That is what it think this is. Not a bug.
I made a new file w. the grid set to 5 mm. If I touched a node, and started to drag, the pencil point would move perhaps 1 - 2 mm before the node caught up. Have no way to time that except counting in my head. I estimate that it is less than 1/2 sec. for the pencil touch to bond w. the screen image. The same file on my desktop shows all but instantaneous response.The iPad version works OK, I can get used to it, but prefer the desktop. Its just what the hardware can do. My last year iPad Pro often has a lag w. gestures across all apps. I've read the new one is as much as 4X faster for some operations.
I wait 1/4 breath before i start to pull a node around, and as slow as I am, thats pretty much instantaneous.
-
1 hour ago, Pukeko said:
I use the pencil but I have to move the pencil several millimeters away from the dot until the dot follows with a sudden jump. No grid and no snapping is activated. When the dot follows the pencil finally the movement is very precise, though. The problem is the beginning of the movement. I could make a short screencast movie of the issue if it is allowed to post it here.
Lots of people post screencasts. I just spent some time moving nodes, and there does seem to be a very slight lag between tapping the node and the node position changing, but it is a fraction of a second. But that made me recall a situation I ran into a few times. I was having trouble then because the pen battery was quite low.
-
Hi, James Quek,
Are you using the pen tool to add more nodes to an existing pen stroke? Or are you trying to start a new line?
If the 1st, switch to the node tool, and tap where you want on the existing line. If you are starting a new line, the problem may be that if the pen is in "pen" mode, a tap wont work. The pen point must be dragged slightly. A sing tap goes back to the move/select tool, which would select any nearby line. If the pen is in polygon mode (my preference), one can make a series of taps. The, w. the node tool active, select those I might want to turn to curves.
-
Hi, Pukeko,
You didn't say if you were using Photo or Designer, but I'm supposing it is Designer. I have very clumsy, old arthritic hands, and I have few problems moving the nodes, tho' for adjusting the handles, I usually need to use the pencil. So, my experience is not like yours.
Do you have snapping turned on? That can force the nodes to move only to snapping points, such as the grid.
Also, if you have a node selected, you can enter the precise position you want through the transform studio.
-
Hmmm... I have to wonder if synch was turned off at some point. When sync is turned off, any element or attributes of said element of the symbol instance becomes detached. After re-syncing, unaltered elements/attributes continue to change across all instances.
-
Hi, twave,
Opened your file, and saw that while there was a layer, "Drawing Area..." that contained a symbol, that symbol did not appear in the symbols studio. I suspect that it might have been made in another document, copied, and pasted into the sample file. Symbols need to be saved as assets to be tranfered into other documents.
Don't know how everything disappeared. If one happens to tap the 1 button, everything will become only 10% opaque, but that is not enough top make everything disappear. If an object(s) is hidden, the file saved and closed, it will remain hidden. If the file is saved, and the objects hidden, the file closed w/o saving, the re-opened file will be in the "show (all)" state.
-
Like firstdefence, about a second. Noticeable, but not important. Actually, I was a little surprised, considering there were about a bazillion tiny curves to be subtracted.
-
On 11/5/2018 at 2:28 PM, Old Bruce said:
Slap a mask on it or crop it.
Yes. But there have been several threads recently from people needing open curves, and out-put devices which apparently do not have drivers that recognize clipping paths. So, I thought it was worth mentioning. Should have been more explicit about why one might do it.
Vector Styles?
in Pre-V2 Archive of Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
Posted
I've got to run just now, no time for an example. But vector formats such as .svg support opacity variation and gradient. Not quite sure about the noise setting that AD attaches to the color fill. So by carefully varying the transparency and hue of the shadow object(s) one gets a fill that looks like a fading shadow.