Mandu

Here's for example & in contrast, a fireworks simulation with some adjustable settings coded in Apple's Swift ...

screencast-swift.mp4    

Here are some last minute Affinity Designer Xmas trees for your Christmas card greetings!

The AD files:
xmas_trees.afdesign xmas_tree_a5.afdesign
 
You will find a bunch of other Xmas related things under some of my other resources contributions, see therefor:
Retrospective of resources contributions
Have a nice time!

Landscape Builder Kit Version 01
After @FraGar effort to create a landscape based on images/shapes from a compilation of toolkit builders I put together the 'real thing' to play around with like Test 2
Initially consists of 2 AD files (rather than Assets!) which include a small selection of vector objects from some of my larger build kits
1. Vector Texture Toolkit (already on forum but re-uploaded here)
2. Landscape Builder Asset Composites (Foreground Builder)

This is a new asset selection based largely on Camouflage III vector kits but also elements from Undergrowth (Poison) kit, Camouflage II kit and Shy (mostly grass)

The 'Chameleon Plants' and leaf clumps have the ability to change colour as I added a flat overlay (Called overlay oddly!) to the object. This is switched off initially. Just toggle it on for effect (changes the colour). There is some explanation of this in the Camouflage III Thread!. It basically avoids using adjustment layers/FX effects. You can apply transparency for even further variations!
Texture Toolkit for building backgrounds/Sky etc..

The Landscape Builder Kit consists of:
1. A Rock Base composite vector object with additional single elements
2. A small selection of trees and leaves (Bumble tree) from Tree builder Kit 03
3. Grass Compounds and single objects from Shy Assets
4. Chameleon Plant objects extracted from a number of build kits
Additional elements are in resources!
A. Basic version of Tree builder Kit 03 Bumble Tree
B. CF 03 Plants
C. Poison now undergrowth!
D. Rock Monster World Plants
E. CF 03 Landscape assets

 




Textured Background Tool_06.zip Landscape Builder_Asset Composites.zip

As I have written before, Serif seriously needs a serious forum for commercial use of Affinity, and also for very ambitious customers. 
As I have also written before, the forum is more like a political youth party forum than a customer forum. All the little useless emotion driven posts that do no good, just fill in with noise. And then you have obviously not understood the intentions of many of the posts here. Even though it is written in black and white.
It is completely irrelevant to anyone but you that you are happy with the functionality of the program. Have you considered the idea that your needs may be smaller and even MUCH smaller than those of others? Nope, you sure haven't. You just have opinions. And in the midst of your unbridled need to share your own OPINIONS, you scare away those customers who have needs and input that can carry the programs forward from where they are today.
You simply must learn to live with the fact that others disagree with you, and that others have substantially different needs than you. That's what we're writing here - not to you, but to Serif.
And to make it visual. Here's the car you and users are happy with. A lot of us aren't:

We think that this time you should give Serif the time to work, and the time to deliver a thorough and important update. Probably more thorough than Serif is aware of.
Remember, too, that quality takes time. And it costs. And it's good that it costs.
Our impression of the Affinity trio is that the programs are made by too few, too busy and sometimes not competent enough programmers (vector algorithms come to mind, but also Photo which we can't use at all).
In particular, the number and type of staff may become Serif's biggest problem. And probably already is. For our part, we don't have the time or the business case to wait so many years for bug fixes or features, as has been the case since 2014. But we are only starting to evaluate now, so we hope the future is not like the past is described here in the forum (and in the release notes).
But beyond that, the programs are incredibly unevenly developed, and the order in which functionality is developed doesn't make much sense to us either.
Overall:
- Designer is an exciting program for bitmap artists, while it's an immensely thin cup of tea for vector designers. There is SO much missing that the program cannot replace real vector programs for professional needs. At all. What does Serif really want with this program?
- Photo is the most messy and mediocre program - we took it out of the evaluation after few days. My staff simply could not achieve the desired quality. Besides, the program is a sinful mess. The user interface, menus and panels have to be completely rebuilt from scratch. Tell us, are there no real usability specialists employed in Serif?
- Publisher is clearly the program Serif is most interested in developing, but it also lacks features that need to come soon, and come in good implementations. And there are serious signs that the user interface is not thought through from the start - the program risks drowning in panels and complexity year after year.
We're also speechless at the lack of accessibility features for PDF and ebook support. It's as if Publisher was designed in 1995. And what type of customer is it really designed for and for what needs - exactly?
So all in all, we hope that this time Serif steps back ten steps again, and fixes the mistakes and bad choices made along the way, and safeguards the architecture of the programs for the long term. And in the process employ expertise where they are on thin ice. This can be done on a project basis.
There is plenty for Serif to do - it will take time, and it must take time. Please don't push them into delivering more hacks. You're all going to pay for that.
/Eddie and co.

Sorry, we are focussing our efforts on a major release (new features and fixes) and consequently have not done any minor patches for a long time, as you say. But no not dead.

Unfortunately, even Light Mode doesn't really help here. On the desktop versions, for example,sSome Assets are invisible in Dark Mode, but others are invisible in Light Mode.
This needs some kind of fundamental change in display such that the background for each asset is determined automatically to make it display better, I think. But yes, we also need Light Mode on the iPad  

Hello. Currently icons in the asset library are almost the same color as the UI color, which makes them unusable. Would it be possible to either add white outline to asset icons, or add ability to change the UI darkness/lightness, like the artwork background. Thank you for all the hard work!

Thank you for point out to that topic. I searched the forums but I wasn't aware of that. By skimming through it, I learned that problem mostly happens due to too many 'opened' files. I will save and close them and see what happens. Thanks for the reply.

Hello everyone. I was just wondering how much does your copy usually use up of your Ipad storage space? Mine uses 34.6 GB for 20 opened projects, and I think It's quite extensive. Some projects are only tens of Mbs when saved to a folder, some are few hundred Mbs, but anyway 34 Gb is a bit too much for only 20 different files on my 128 Gb Ipad Pro.
I'm not even sure should I even have all these projects opened at all times, or should I close them after saving to folder? I'm curious how do you manage your workspace.
I prefer AD over Procreate even for simple drawings, because AD is just so much more versatile application for designing. But Procreate doesn't use nearly as much space as AD.
Anyway, thanks for reading.

I would also like to see this or similar feature. "FIlter > Distort..." is only for pixel based layers in AP, and it doesn't offer any control over how the object will be distorted.
The OP was thinking about the tool, not the simple filter, that would give proper predictable ways of free distortion. Puppet Warp definitely comes to mind especially the tool used by the Spine software.

I would also like to see this or similar feature. "FIlter > Distort..." is only for pixel based layers in AP, and it doesn't offer any control over how the object will be distorted.
The OP was thinking about the tool, not the simple filter, that would give proper predictable ways of free distortion. Puppet Warp definitely comes to mind especially the tool used by the Spine software.

You might be looking for the vector Basic brushes that Serif removed in version 1.8 when they reworked the Affinity brushes, @Mandu.
If so, you can download them here: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/get-legacy-affinity-brushes/

I would also like to see this or similar feature. "FIlter > Distort..." is only for pixel based layers in AP, and it doesn't offer any control over how the object will be distorted.
The OP was thinking about the tool, not the simple filter, that would give proper predictable ways of free distortion. Puppet Warp definitely comes to mind especially the tool used by the Spine software.

Is there any chance of a tool like puppet warp being implemented like in photoshop and illustrator? This could be very useful to edit illustrations in preparation for animation and just general adjustments to shapes. I used this tool a lot when I had adobe software.

I use the native Files app (for both iCloud and local files), because “documents by riddle” lacks preview for Affinity saved projects by over a year, so despite being superior for file management to Files, it’s of no use to me (this is not a new issue; has been like this for years).
 
I never use the dedicated Affinity folder. I save from inside the file I work on — “documents”, “save as” — to a local folder (which I backup in iClouds later — I don’t use files directly from iCloud because if they’re large I always have to wait for the files to “download” and become available, which is time consuming.
All the best!
 

This is likely due to the large number of curves layers and pixel layers stored within the file. If you flatten your document you should find its around 100mb but this will prevent you from editing the layers further.

Hi @Mandu,
This is a known issue that's already logged to be looked at. I'm bumping the bug report to bring this up to devs attention again. Thanks for raising it up.

I can confirm this is logged with our developers to investigate.

Hi @Mandu,
"Layer", "Fill Mode", choose "Winding" instead of "Alternate".

Like many others I'm also in need of close curve feature for pencil tool. At this point, I think the simplest solution would be to enable 'actions' from Pen and Node tools to also be available to Pencil Tool since it also creates and manipulates curves.

All of the above, especially a keyboard command to close the curve would be very welcome. Thanks.

Hello. If we are going to build a library of assets for convenient use, it would be great if the icon size could be increased/decreased for better viewing, just like for example Glyph Browser window that allows such feature -- smallest size, small size, normal size, large size, largest size. This is especially helpful with detailed assets, or those that are different but look similar.
Thank you.

2 years now. Still。。😔

Hi Mandu!
How the brush fades from the edge to inside is defined by the image you use as brushhead. It has to have a sharp black edge on the top and a gradient to transparent black (a transparent background is verry important) at the bottom (like in my attached quick and dirty created sample). If you have gradients in your brush, you will always have to fiddle a bit, because for a seamlesss stroke, the Distance must be set to less than 100%, so that the single heads overlap when they get painted. And you will need gradients on the left and right too. I made them with a soft brushhead and the eraser tool. For my sample, 25% distance work halfway satisfying.