gdenby
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Posts posted by gdenby
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adeline,
No, you can produce pressure effects while drawing. The pencil and the vector brush both allow a controller setting to influence both the size and opacity of strokes depending on pressure or velocity. But the nib has to have been made to accommodate that.
My tablet and stylus for the desktop does not have the best pressure response. Or at least my fingers are too clumsy now. I get better results from drawing the strokes, and modifying them from saved styles. Its not as subtle, but overall, the output is more consistent.
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Hello again, Doc Ricky,
I understand, you need data for a plotter. I've been working on a tutorial for separating out open vectors, but have becomes somewhat bogged down trying to work thru how the "join curves" operation works. But here is a brief description of what you might try it if you want dashed lines from a letter shape. It requires manual work, and in many cases is time consuming.
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Here is a method for producing open curves as dashed lines indicating a shape. It can be pretty easy if the shape is simple, and mostly vertical and/or horizontal lines. Complex shapes like alpha-numerics become harder as they become more elaborate.
Make the shape, no fill, dashed stroke made of either butt or square cap type. Set the stroke to either inside or outside. Play with the dash setting to get as close as possible to desired. (With very tight curved letters, this may produce oddly shaped dashes as they round the curves or angles.)
Expand stroke. This will produce a "curves" object. With the curves selected, enter node mode, and select all. Use the "break curve" tool. This will decompose all of the mostly rectilinear shapes into individual open lines. There will be many hundreds of simple vector lines Most likely, the bottom most layer will still be labelled "curves. Hide that for now.
Go back to move/select tool, and start drawing marquees around the curve shapes that are not at the original shape periphery.
NOTE: It would be really good to have a lasso tool for this, but a marquee is all that is at hand now.
Delete those selections. Hide what is left, and then show the "curves" layer. Go into node tool mode, and pick out any fragments that are not part of the original periphery. Delete as selected.
There may be some problems w. the curves remnants. It appears they are closed shapes that are formed from just 2 nodes.
Show all. There may be some odd fragments that need to be tweaked manually. Apparently, the break curve routine can shatter the expanded strokes in unexpected ways.
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As noted above, getting all the little dashes requires more selecting than isolation lines that cross the shape boundry. But maybe this will help to do what you need.
Attached, a sample starting w. a rounded rectangle. The base took me about 8 minutes on my desktop. The subsidiary lines, a few seconds each. I did try the same using my iPad. Because I am still quite a novice using that, I had passable results, but the work was much slower. The delays don't seem to be w.the hardware, just the operator.
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Very nice. All dramatic. A little harsh, but a little romantic also.
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Him Doc Ricky,
First, a question. Why do you want a bunch of open curves? I can think if a few reasons, one of which is related to a post from a user a few weeks ago, The user needed open curves so a laser cutter would only travel along many hundreds of open curves. From what I could learn, the cutter's RIP software couldn't handle clipping shapes. What would your use be?
And I should say that I did my work on my desktop. While I really like my iPad, I'm old enough that my fingers can't handle gestures well, or even touching the right spots. So what I did was on my desktop. I've done enough work w. the iPad that I think the same results would be possible for folks w. better tactile and visual abilities.
To get to your query, yes, there are ways to get what you want, but in this case, they are anything but quick and easy.
I've been working off and on for the last few weeks to come up w. a routine that was not too tedious to produce open lines. The base problem is that Designer works w. areas, and by default Designer's boolean operations create closed shapes. Certain shapes can be made so that booleans produce line sections that can be fairly easily separated and cleaned up, and leave the interior strokes. But I was working at the opposite of what you are looking for. The skills I had developed for isolating the lines were much less effective for producing something like a regular dotted stroke.
I'm attaching a image that shows various attempts I did today.
Most show very irregular dashed lines. I couldn't find a series of ad hoc shapes that would divide the letter outline evenly. Designer at this point will only propagate a vector along a path that is a font. I did a search, and found a font that was geometric shapes. Unfortunately, the simple circle was a filled shape. So while it was easy to propagate it along a "path to text path", when I subtracted those from the base letter, it produced many hundreds of fragments. Best results, but wa-a-y too much time cleaning up bits.
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Hi,adeline,
I've never had the problem you are having, but I have never altered the pressure graphs in the brushes panel. I had assumed they were system presets.
I have always used the pressure graph associated with the stroke panel. When I am using a "brush" that has pressure or velocity variables with the pencil, or vector brush, the stroke width will vary from stroke to stroke as I make them. Because my Huion tablet and styles is hard for me to control, I often have to adjust the hand drawn line weights.
What I do more often is save the pressure profiles in the stroke panel, which remain attached to the document. Or I create a layer style. I have a number of styles that suit my uses, such as a thick stroke that tapers, or one that is heavy at both ends, or one that swells in the middle. Those are available in any document. Most often, I apply them to pen strokes, which are not made w either pressure or velocity.
A quick example:
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Hi, ChrisVB,
The 1st thing I would do is figure out what the maximum amount of text one cell needs. Format that w. the Artistic Text tool, and make a shape that will contain it. Do the same for the categories of lesser importance. All the shorter text can then fit in the shape.
Have snapping tuned on. Perhaps have a visible grid, w. snapping to that turned on. Every shape (rectangles in your example) can be manually positioned. Or easily be aligned and distributed using the tools for those.
Do select the colors carefully. The example separates some rows by color, but there isn't anything obvious to me about what the colors mean. The shapes and visual position mean more.
I'll suggest going easy on any effects. If what you are doing is similar to the graphic shown, the presentation is more about the information, and its grouping, and less about grabbing attention and/or entertainment.
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Nothing fancy. Assign an existing style to a new object. Make modifications. Right click object, create style.
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3 hours ago, DuctTape said:
Wow, that is completely bizarre.
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Hello again, Axander,
If a built in parametric shape is converted to curves, you will see only the "three other icons, a target, an eye, and two arrows circling each other". Those are for manipulating all curve objects and groups. Look at your layers panel. If the shape is listed as "curve(s)" it has been converted by some operation. It should say ellipse or cog, etc if it is still a parametric object.
You should see something like this if the cog is still a "cog":
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Hi, Rizki Akbari Utama,
Your 1st post included a layer called notch. Your last one did not, and from what I can see of the layer panel, you are getting what the lowest layer, "Main Body" has as a shape.
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I looked around for the source material. It appears that Axander showed something from WikiCommon, and the author link doesn't function. Looking around more, I found a scan of what was one of the originals. The original is deteriorated, and the lettering appears to me to have been done by hand. The contemporary translation is quite good. As mentioned above, it seems some of the circles are a little off center. But fitting more smaller rings within the space of 7 would probably make the image rather hard to view. Letters and symbols all crammed in.
It would take a fair amount of work, but doing a new build adding to the diameter would produce a better image.
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Hi, DuctTape,
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, one can hold down shift, and click to any spot, and get a straight line. One cannot hold down shift to constrain to a straight line while dragging. One must click from spot to spot.
Attached, a simple 16 pt brush used in Designer, using black. Then, worked on in Photo, using red.
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Hi, Axander,
If you are trying to insert more circles into the above bit-map drawing, you most likely will not want to use the selection brush. It won't be easy, because the circle is not quite regular, and the earth area is somewhat off center, but drawing a new set of "donut" ellipses over the existing rings will probably be the way to go.
You will need to learn the vector tools, which have the edvantage of making shapes that can be resized and re-shaped. You will also be able to draw symbols which are easier to modify that having to erase and redraw pixel images.
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Hi, achy9,
By definition, raster images will degrade as they are resampled. There is one thing to consider. At what dustance will the image be viewed. Some years ago, I worked on a project that turned a very high quality color transparency that was 4" x " inches to a banner that was 4' x 8'. I s'pose in the interim, there have been improvements, but up close the banner was quite mushy. However, it was displayed a minimum of 8' away from the viewers, so it looked pretty good.
So, on my desktop, which has significantly more memory and storage than my iPad, I just used Designer to make a 8' x 32' document at 300 dpi. I painted 1 brush stroke w. the brush at 4096 px. So the stroke was a bit larger than 1' and maybe 4' wide. Took 37 sec to draw. Not very spontaneous. The file saved w. just that 1 stroke was 258.7 Mb. Not sure how immense the final file might be if all pixel, but supposing the drawing would take hours. Assuming frequent saves.
So if you want high quality, scale that to what your hardware might handle. Cut out a section, resample it up, and print out as small piece.
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On 10/13/2018 at 4:30 PM, VectorWhiz said:
Did you use Affinity in this Very professional looking work?
Looking at the Lumion specs, doesn't seem to use any file type that Affinity supports.
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Dédé,
What GabrielM is showing in 1 object is present in many of the shapes you have made in the helicopter. The shape is unclosed, and a fill put in it will span the 2 end nodes.
For the top of the rotor, the "motorlijn", select both the R and L parts. Activate the node tool, and 1st "join curves," and then "close curves." You will see that the nodes do not quite line up w. the neighboring parts. If you have snapping turned on, you should be able to move the nodes, and they will be highlighted when they are on the adjoining lines.
It is fairly easy to draw and complete closed shapes that fit with the other shapes around them when snapping is turned on. When the shapes are closed, any fill will only be inside them.
Reviewing the parts of your file (which is quite nice), I think you will have to do a bit of work defining the figure in the door, and the door itself.
Look at it this way. The shapes are not made up by lines, as if drawn by a pen or pencil, and then filled in. They are made by areas, as if painted, and are fills from the start. Getting the edges of the fills refined is the next step.
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Hi, Dédé,
GabrielM, beat me to it. I saw that right away, but was wondering how to get the outlines a little cleaner. Attached is my alteration, which allowed the previously unfilled curve to be hidden.
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Hi, antoinette050,
I don't work w. bitmaps (photos) much, but I think the 1st thing you need to do is have the country silhoutte in either a file format such as .png, that supports transparency, or the outline in a vector format such as .svg. or .pdf. Then, the other photos can be inserted into the country shape layer as "children," and be clipped by the outline.
The children photos might themselves be rather difficult to manage. They won't so much collage as stack. Myself, I'd go w. a vector outline parent. Make a bunch of vector tiles, and nest images in those. Then place the tiles into the country parent outline, positioning and stacking as desired.
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3 hours ago, R C-R said:
More info or a representative Designer file attached to your post would help. It sounds like you just want to make the stickers wider. If so, do you want the width of every item to stretch proportionally, or only some of them to do that & others remain the same? If the latter, what do you want the horizontal positions of them to do, remain the same or move to some other place? Is every item a vector object or is there a mix of vector objects, text objects, & images?
What R C-R requested points out several things. If the width only needs changing, you should be able to only resize the document, keeping the elements centered. If you want to re-position elements, constraints may be the way to go. Myself, have only used those a few times, but the feature appears to give extensive control over how any elements are positioned within the bounding area.
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No, it doesn't require a bit map approach, but that would be quicker if you didn't need to scale the graphic. Here is a quickie. Could be lots better, but shows that a solution is probable.
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52 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:
Is it easier in Designer? If so, perhaps the answer is that the OP is using the wrong Affinity application.
I'm not seeing much of any difference when using the pixel brush. In Designer, 1 px high rectangle will appear in pixel view w. antialiasing if it is not aligned to a whole pixel.
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10 hours ago, Skyward_Twilight said:
I just received this model and the only software that seems to have a problem with it is the one I use the most: Affinity Photo.
The strokes take some time to register and don't start until I am a little far into it. Any other software works perfectly which proves the problem is not in the tablet. I never thought I would find someone using this somewhat obscure tablet in this not so famous software (compared to the huge ones) but looks like the heavens have helped me this time
What did you do for it to work properly?? Help me please as I need Affinity Photo to draw... thanks in advance
I'll try an remember what I did to tweak the settings. I really don't use it very often since I got an iPad, which w. the iPencil, is much much better. working w. it just now, I note I don't get much response at lowest pressure.
I am using it on a Mac. I notice the the driver for Windows has a pressure test that is different than the one for the Mac.
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Hi, Sackadelic,
The graphic work is fine. Very realistic, and I'm supposing a good representation of the hardware.
This is not a criticism. I know absolutely nothing about the hardware. Call me pre-newb. I can only guess at what the various parts depicted are. Some of the pieces seem to be side views, others from the top. So I am perplexed. Are the wires being connected between different components, or routed around the different layers of just 1? That is, in the DynaSonic, would it be obvious to someone familiar w. the hard ware that the wiring describes connections between the 3 levels of the top item, or to and from one to three others? So, for me, the diagrams are fairly enigmatic. Would it be appropriate to add more labels?
Converting a dash into individual strokes.
in Pre-V2 Archive of Affinity on iPad Questions
Posted
If you subject any of the bits to another boolean operation, it just repeats the creating more closed shape issue. The earlier poster who was using a laser cutter could not use clipping curves. I believe (don't trust my recollection) there was a response saying that different software RIPs did recognize clipping, and so nesting the desired lines within a parent object would work.
Just now, the most straight forward method is manually grabbing the unwanted stuff. The rounded rectangle ended up w. about 160 curve sections, so at least 640 bits to start out. The ones horizontal and vertical took less than a minute. The sections along the curves were hard to grab.
And again, having myself done several hundred curve separations, the dashed character is about as hard as it gets. Filling a letter w. something like shading strokes is much easier.