Scungio
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Posts posted by Scungio
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Yeah, I recommend Vectoraster as well. You can't go wrong adding both Vectoraster and Patternodes from Lost Minds to your toolset. They are Mac only.
While it would be great to have the Astute plugins for Designer, I find that Vectoraster, Patternodes and VectorStyler work well as companion apps to Designer. They are essentially my plugins for Designer that fill the gaps until Serif develops those tools and functions.
If I need to do halftones, I reach for Vectoraster. If I want to do complex repeating patterns, I reach for Patternodes. If I want to do a blend of two lines to get a quick flowing flag type of object, I reach for VectorStyler. VectorStyler also has an Image Trace feature and I am still grappling to learn it. While some may say, hey, that is additional cost in buying those apps, yeah, but if we had Astute Graphics plugins, they have gone subscription, so it would cost you a whole lot more money to the tune of $149 per year.
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What is also very handy is the macro functionality with the TourBox. Yeah, Photo can do macros but Designer can't at the moment, but using it with the TourBox, you can do macros. I have a macro set up to do a Blob Brush, a macro that lets me do a Reflect like in Illustrator. Just endless possibilities.
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One of the cool things you can do with the TourBox is to take advantage of the ability for it to have multiple presets for a single application.
Like I will have a main Designer Preset, and then a Designer [Paint] preset which is tailored specifically when I am using the Pixel Persona. You can set up a button that switches to the other presets.
As an example, the Dial in my Designer Preset is set up to Cycle Node Forward and Backward, this also will increase or decrease the stroke. I click the Dial and it brings up a custom menu of tools. But the Dial in my Designer [Paint] Preset has it set up to Rotate Left and Rotate Right the canvas and when you click the Dial it resets the rotation.
Another idea for scrolling through the tools is setting up a custom menu to a button. You click the button, the menu pops up and you either pick the tool with your mouse or stylus, OR you use the TourBox Scroll to move up and down the menu of tools and can press the Tall Button to choose the tool.
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Third video, Macros.
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Okay, I have the first of say 4 videos, I will try and keep them under 10 minutes each, I think this one is just under 8 minutes.
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Yeah, love my TourBox and using it with Affinity apps is great.
It really does allow an artist to customize their workflow. Thank you for posting your bindings, I will pour over them to find some new ideas.
I see one thing you discovered is how the Knob and Scroll wheels can be used as toggles. With the Knob I use the Tall, Short, Top and Side buttons to come up with 5 Toggles making up 10 commands.
Say you have 4 objects in the layers panel, an Ellipse, a Square Star, a Triangle and a Rectangle. Now imagine you want to move some objects, move some in front of others, move some inside other objects, or change your mind and move an object outside of another object, or group objects, create a compound, etc,
With my left hand on my TourBox, I can interact with the Layers panel and have these toggles set up with the Knob: Select Previous/Select Next, Move Forward/Move Backward, Move Inside/Move Outside, Select Parent/Collapse Layer, Group/Ungroup, etc, and then when I press down on the Knob I have a custom Menu. You can have Deselect, New Layer, New Pixel Layer, Rename, etc in this menu. And this custom menu can be pinned so that it stays open if you desire. And you can navigate this menu from the TourBox, use the Scroll wheel and then the Tall Button to make a selection from the menu.
I use a Xencelabs Medium Tablet and one of the things it gets dinged for is not having Touch enabled. I had that on my previous Wacom Intuo Pro tablet and always found it flakey and frustrating to use the Touch feature. So, with the TourBox I use the Dial to Rotate Left and Rotate Right the view (canvas) and press down on the Dial to Reset Rotation as I am sketching/painting with the Stylus on the Xencelabs tablet. No, it is not as smooth as say what I get on my iPad Pro but it works.
If people are interested I can do some videos showing how easy it is to setup the TourBox to use with Affinity
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You misunderstand. Tourbox is an input device that has knobs, dials, buttons that allows you to bind keyboard shortcuts to it. Stream Deck does the same thing, I have 32 buttons on the XL version and you can set up macros with both. Meaning I can have a button fire off a number of commands one after the other so that in Designer I can do what Illustrator users can do with their Actions.
Anyway, here is a short movie showing the gist of what I am talking about. I am doing the reflect manually here in less that 5 seconds, but with a macro it will be instantaneous.
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Interesting. Okay, so firstdefence, with your method I have to duplicate objects, group objects, move transform origin to centre line, rotate 180 degrees and then use the Flip Vertical.
I would add that probably a good idea to double click on the transform origin to move it back to center if one wants to keep it as a group. In your method I would want to duplicate the objects first before making a group because I don't want to have two groups that I have to center the origins.
All in all though that is still 6 steps and I figure that I can duplicate and flip in 7 steps and have it automated to boot. Make a selection and click a button. Some may say that is too complicated but that is why I love both the Tourbox and Stream Deck. Invest a little time in setting this reflect macro and then the time savings add up later on down the road.
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I really miss Illustrator's Reflect Tool. I love Von Glitschka's tutorials and how he will at times do pieces that have symmetry and will build half a face and then use the Reflect tool to complete the other half of the face.
So, I got to thinking, how do I do the same in Designer?? Here is my preliminary idea, I use the macro ability of a device like a Tourbox or Stream Deck XL to run a bunch of commands/functions to duplicate and then flip and complete the piece.
Say you have a document, and then drag out a vertical guide at the exact midway point of the document. Then you create half of a face with the vertical guide in mind. You have a Layer with all of the curves, shapes comprising your face, but you add one more shape, a rectangle. That will be resized to match the exact same dimensions as the document and we name it Reflect. Give it a fill and stroke of none and put it at the very bottom of the stack and lock it.
Now, to automate the duplication and flipping of the face, I hope to do it something like this:
First, select the items you want to copy and flip.
Then at this point I run a macro, that Duplicates the objects, Groups them, Moves to Back.
This Group is now at the bottom of the stack, below the Reflect object, so Move Forward One, moves it above the Reflect object, and Move Inside puts it inside the Reflect object. Now if we use Select Parent, the Reflect object is selected and then Flip Horizontal will create the other half of the face. We are flipping the rectangle that is the same dimensions as the document and the half of the face that we created is a child of the rectangle, and since we created it around that vertical guide, the two halves match up.
I see no way to select a child of that Reflect object, so this is where the macro ends for this button. Another button could be created to run a macro that finished the procedure.
For example you would have to select the child of the Reflect object, the Group that has the new halve of the face, and then click on a new button/macro that would Move to Outside and then Ungroup.
Of course this is me daydreaming, I will in the next day or two try this out and see if it actually works on both the Tourbox and Steam Deck.
What other workarounds do people have for a Reflect or Mirror tool???
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Well, to be fair, I posted that almost 6 years ago and I had abandoned Adobe at that point. In terms of copy and pasting an object and there being an offset in Designer? I have never seen that in my experience. Also, I rarely use copy and paste in that manner anymore, I use duplicate instead. I have a TourBox and a Stream Deck XL that I use with Designer, Duplicate is mapped to a single button with both devices. Instead of me reaching for the keyboard, contorting my fingers to reach the keys for Copy and then for Paste, I simply press one button for Duplicate.
There are many ways to tackle an issue and come away with the same result.
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When I go to the Color Picker Tool, there is no lower triangle indicator showing that there is a sub menu/flyout with the Style Picker Tool as I see on the desktop version.
With the Knife tool, I can't get the Scissor functionality where you hover over an edge, see the Scissor icon and then can click to make a split.
Anybody else having the same issues? Or am I missing something in how to get them to work or function right?
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Well, the issue I have with the current trash/delete icon being at the top right when deleting nodes, is that it isn't accessible when one is holding the iPad and working with it in portrait mode if you will. I was swiping, trying to find something to allow the right most icons, specifically the trash/delete icon to come into view and did not have any luck.
I would love if it were relocated back to the old spot or even below the question icon on the right side.
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Whether you are browsing on a phone or tablet or desktop computer the intro to Universal License is there and it clearly states that you can get the ENTIRE Affinity suite on all your devices, across macOS, Windows and iPadOS.
If the argument is that a phone is a device, sure, but does it run macOS, Windows or iPadOS? Of course not, if you have an iPhone it runs iOS. An Android phone does not run any of the platforms stated either.
Now, yes, I did check the link on my iPhone and the checkboxes don't show in that section, for whatever reason, sometimes you have websites that will present differently depending on devices viewing it, but still the Introducing the Universal License section is there, is clear and should put an end to this discussion.
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What are you talking about? I clicked the link you provided and once you scroll down you see the platform options with the check boxes.
Also, iPadOS is clearly shown to be one of the platforms, not iOS. You clearly seem to be trolling, maybe you should go use Adobe software, surely they have all of their software running on phones? Honestly for as long as we have waited for version 2 to arrive it is annoying to have people complain as much as they have these past two days. Serif could have offered an upgrade price of $10 and there still would be some people up in arms, pitchforks raised, ready to burn the place down.
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Yeah, don't understand the gripes about pricing. I own the Mac, Windows and iPad versions of Designer and Photo and with Publisher I only had the Mac version of it.
I was thinking before November 9th, wow, that is 7 installers in all for the apps that I have and did not look forward to how much that would all cost to upgrade.
Then I wake up on November 9th, check for news, and see the pricing. Universal License for $99.99 that gives me 9 installers, each app for each platform? Sold!!!
How is that not the ultimate upgrade price? I bought Designer version 1, when it was on sale, so the Mac, Windows desktops apps cost me something like $35-40 a piece and I bought the iPad app for $15. You add those 3 purchases and the price comes out to $90-95.
With this Universal License I am able to get that upgrade cost to version 2 of Designer down to $33. With Photo down to $33. With Publisher down to $33.
Version 1 of the Affinity line that I had cost me something like $230, but now with this Universal License I have version 2 for $100. And it gave me two things that I did not have, Publisher for Windows and Publisher for iPad.
I guess for some people they can't see the forest for the trees. This Universal License is one of the best deals I have ever seen, it is almost like I have to pinch myself, still in disbelief.
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No, they do not. Version 1 of Designer does not have these 3D features. I will also add that Adobe for years early on (mid-90s) had a separate 3D program called Adobe Dimensions. If I remember right it got up to version 4 but had lackluster sales and then Adobe folded these 3D features into Illustrator.
Similarly, Adobe had another program Adobe Streamline that did bitmap tracing to vectors and it got up to version 4. They also discontinued this program and folded it into Illustrator.
It is quite a luxury for Adobe to be able to develop these programs and then be able to pick the best bits and merge them into Illustrator. I think we Affinity users have to appreciate that it is not an easy ask to expect Designer to get 3D features or vector tracing/conversion with a snap of the fingers.
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Just a little update to my earlier post about the new M1 chips.
Turns out Apple doubled the memory bandwidth of the original M1 chip, going from 128-bit to 256-bit in the M1 Pro chip with 16 or 32 GB of RAM. And then they doubled that to 512-bit for the M1 Max chip with 32 or 64 GB of RAM. They also went to faster DDR5 RAM.
And remember these are really, mid level chips, laptop chips, iMac and Mac Mini chips with lower power draw around 35-45 Watt TDP. What are truly professional Apple Silicon chips going to be like when Apple gives them a 65-100 watt TDP like Ryzen or Intel?
Apple doing their own custom silicon is bringing competition and influencing the chip industry. Having chips that consume less power and that are more efficient is good for all of us and the environment. I still laugh at how long I used a 2006 Intel Xeon Mac Pro as a media server and then finally replaced it with a custom built Ryzen 5 server. The laughter on my part was the noticeable drop in my electric bill!
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I bought heavily into Ryzen and have a Ryzen PC, Ryzen Laptop and a Ryzen Server. But I am also a long time Mac User and love Apple Silicon and have M1 powered iPad Pro, Mac Mini and the MacBook Air.
The M1 MacBook Air is the best laptop I have ever owned. Just the base configuration, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, and it has one less GPU core, got it for $800. A definite steal at that price point and it is amazing how it punches above its weight. No fan, stays cool even when I stress it, battery life is insane.
I think one thing people need to reassess is specs and what is truly needed. I have 32 GB in my Ryzen PC, 3200 DDR4 RAM but the memory bandwidth and speeds are really pokey compared to my MacBook Air. This unified memory that Apple is pushing, there may be some truth that 8 GB may be equivalent to 16 GB in Windows, that 16 GB might be closer to 32 GB in Windows. The M1, is using 128 bit memory bandwidth and 4200 DDR4X RAM? It appears that they want to take the memory bandwidth and ram specs of Graphics cards and bring it to the whole system, not just the GPU. These new Apple Silicon chips may have 256 Bit memory bandwidth, or 320, 384? And may be using DDR5 RAM? DDR6 RAM? Or something similar? That Unified Memory is accessed by all components, big fat pipes for everyone, GPU, CPU, Neural Engine, etc.
I get real excited by Apple and their chips because they, to me, are really being innovative and pushing boundaries. As much as I like tinkering and building systems, I also sometimes just want something that is fast and is pain free with no maintenance.
- jmwellborn, Fixx and Alfred
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Just a hobbyist animator here but Moho Pro recently, the past year, had the original creator gain back control of the software and put out an update to it. It is now at version 13.5. They have Debut and Pro versions, that cost money, $60 and $400 respectively but those are one time purchases and the upgrades are reasonable. They often times have sales and you will not find a better forum/community in helping you to get up to speed with the software. I have had success working in Designer and exporting out via SVG and then importing those SVGs into Moho to rig and animate.
Spine 2D is what?, $299 but I am amazed at videos I have seen where artists are working in Affinity Designer to create a character and then exporting out by use of JSON, and then are able to rig and animate and with the continuous export of Designer, can make a change in Designer and it updates in Spine in realtime, very cool.
Opentoonz is a free option and more specifically, Tahoma 2D, which is a fork of Opentoonz and has a more polished UI and some additional features. It is free as well.
I really do think that both Moho and Tahoma would be geared toward more independent freelancers. I don't know, to me, even a program like Moho Pro is very affordable because it isn't like something like say a Toon Boom Harmony where you could pay what, $2,000 for a perpetual license. But then you have to have a $300 support contract if you want to still get updates to it past that first year. That adds up quickly over say 10 years and could cost you $5000. But you buy Moho Pro initially at $400 and then say pay for another two upgrades in 10 years time and maybe you only end up paying $750 over a ten year period for Moho Pro? That ends up being an average of just $75 a year to have Moho Pro for that 10 year period. That to me is a great deal, but your mileage may vary of course.
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Yeah, I jumped at the chance to buy VectorStyler for $75 on the App Store when I saw it was available.
In a very real sense I view it as an Astute Graphics type of plugin for Designer. Yes, I know it is not a plugin but a companion app but right now it is offering very worthwhile options for me that Designer lacks. The workflow is trivial in terms of getting stuff into Designer from VS.
So, what would I use VectorStyler for you ask? Well what if I wanted to do a blend between a Square Star and a square over say 30 steps? And in that same blend I wanted the stroke of the square star to morph into the stroke of the square? AND I wanted the fill of the square star to blend into the fill of the square? AND I wanted the stroke color of the square star to blend into the stroke color of the square? AND I want to twist, curve the blend to make a sort of limb, tentacle, horn type of object?
Something like this:
That is VectorStyler on the left and Designer on the right. I copy from VS and paste into Designer. In VS I can select that central line, that spine of the blend and shape it and I can shape both starting shapes to quickly get all kind of interesting objects.
What if you wanted to blend two lines together to make sort of the basis of a flag, or fabric or a landscape, etc. In VS I can whip together a blend of two lines and copy and paste it into Designer in less than 10 seconds. Like this:
VectorStyler for me, is like my go to Astute Graphics plugin for Designer that lets me do flashier stuff that Designer is not capable of right now. I also use Lost Minds Vectoraster and Patternodes for similar reasons.
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One thing to be aware of is that many of the brush packs, add ons that are on sale in the Serif store are really just the tip of the iceberg of what is available for the Affinity apps.
For example, the Neptune brush pack by Frankentoon, he has something like 24 more products over on his site https://frankentoonstudio.com. Brush packs, texture packs, macros, and free lessons and videos of him using his products.
Retro Supply Co https://www.retrosupply.co/collections/affinity for years made their brushes/textures/add ons for Adobe but now many of their releases are made to use with Affinity.
Design Cuts https://www.designcuts.com/product-category/affinity/ has many products for the Affinity apps. Trailhead Design Co brushes and packs being some of my favorites.
The above mentioned people have some free samples that you can find and install to get a feel of what they are offering. It is of course hard to recommend specifically what is good because everyone is different in their tastes/styles, etc.
Not to offend anyone but one of my pet peeves is when I hear the complaints of how come this Photoshop brush doesn't work in Affinity, etc.
I left Adobe but I don't expect Serif to magically make it possible to import with perfection Photoshop brushes. The solution is to get 3rd party artists/creators to develop brushes, textures, add ons, plugins FOR Affinity. To make the best possible brushes and packs for Affinity that takes advantage of the features of the Affinity line.
Now some might balk at some of the prices but they all have sales and offer bundles and quality products shouldn't be cheap. Just know that the 3rd party community developing brushes and add ons is getting better every day.
I would love to see Serif develop a native plugin API for the Affinity line. Yes, you can use some Photoshop plugins but it is really hit or miss, not really a first class experience, don't we deserve better? If they (Serif) build that native API I think the plugin developers would respond in kind. Or maybe I am delusional, hard to say, but speaking personally I have spent probably 2-3 times as much money for 3rd party brushes/packs than I did for the Affinity apps. I don't think that is unusual.
I would love to have a plugin for Designer that allows for a more seamless export to the animation app Moho. Right now I have to go through a tedious workaround with SVG and faux registrations, that works but maybe a native Affinity API could allow a plugin that makes it painless and fun to do so? Aw, well, sorry to get sidetracked, fun to daydream sometimes.
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Enrique (Frankentoon) has a video tutorial on his site that is well worth going over to learn about how to use creative layer effects and such with text.
/https://frankentoonstudio.com/design-school/creating-realistic-textures-using-a-single-image/
It may not be specifically what you are after in terms of getting an ink bleed, but it may give you some clues on what you could use, get you familiar with how Affinity does things that may be different.
Olivio Sarikas also has quite a few tutorials on text, using displacement, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svaIoTqIWdU
Iamrensi also has a nice text tutorial here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQf97tJkXJQ
There are so many people now producing great tutorials/videos on youtube specifically about the Affinity apps, seek them out, they are not hard to find.
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I am just beginning to explore the macros you can set up in StreamDeck too. For example, in that one button I have called Flatten, which is next to the Pencil/Vector Brush button, that was my solution to create a workaround for a Blob Brush. I use the Vector Brush to quickly fill in shapes/areas and then I select all of those curves and hit the Flatten button. That is a macro that performs an Expand Stroke, then a Boolean Add and then chooses the Node Tool. With the Node Tool I then will use Smooth command on it and then will further delete points here and there.
What is cool about getting into the StreamDeck realm is that you can choose to go with their Stream Deck Mobile. You can use your phone or if you have an extra phone, or a tablet, iOS or Android, it allows you to use that device in place of a physical StreamDeck product. It is limited to 15 buttons and you have to pay a monthly/yearly sub, $3 a month, or $25 a year. This is the route I went originally, tried the trial and then set up an 8 inch Android tablet I had lying around. Loved the experience but as I said earlier, either go big or go home, I wondered what 32 buttons would be like. So, I managed to get a good deal on the StreamDeck XL and it is one of the best purchases I ever made. That StreamDeck Mobile option though is a very good deal and ends up being one tenth the price of the XL, and how many of us have a drawer filled with old phones, tablets, etc?
Canva
in Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
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I am not really surprised by the news. If you use software for any length of time, you see this happen all the time, it is normal.
I started out with Freehand and we know how that worked out. My first animation software was Moho, which got bought by a company named Smith Micro and they really did not treat it very well, but then years later the original creator Mike Clifton bought Moho (Anime Studio) from Smith Micro and has been introducing really great features with each new release. Sometimes there is a storybook ending, sometimes companies do uphold their principles and values, although Mike Clifton took a roundabout way to finally get back to what was really important.
In terms of a partnership or merging with Canva giving Affinity users a bad name?? Sorry to break it to some people but that ship sailed long ago, it was baked in from the beginning. When you tell somebody you use Affinity Designer, Photo, Publisher, the usual response is one of disdain or disgust. Far too often you are put down if you don't use Adobe software.
I am looked down upon because I choose to use Moho over Toon Boom Harmony.
I am looked down upon because I choose to use Blender instead of something like Maya.
I got back into doing printmaking, doing wood cuts, linocuts and rather than have a fancy conventional press, I instead went the route of having a Slama press which is a handheld baren that has 150 stainless steel balls, and also a Ritualis Press. These two were not cheap and I probably could have bought a second hand etching press for the total cost but I really enjoy the more intimate/hands on nature of the presses that I chose. Yet there are those that would belittle me for the choices that I have made.
This is a constant in my life and it does not faze me one bit, does not bother me at all. Oh, you still use Micro 4/3rds cameras?? Yeah, I have a pretty sweet collection of old Olympus lens and cameras that are still fine by me. So, I don't care about some slights that people may lob my way for using Affinity products that are now associated with Canva.
One last thing that I might add, I always am on the lookout for new software because I know how things can suddenly change for the worse. That is why I have ON1 Photo Raw in addition to using Affinity Photo. That is why I have VectorStyler and Patternodes and Vectoraster in addition to Affinity Designer. That is why I have Nomad Sculpt and Plasticity in addition to Blender. I have Moho but also bought Procreate Dreams. Yeah, you can have a 401K, stocks and bonds but also Bitcoin. Redundancy is a good thing.