gregorym

of course the moment i decide to actually post about it i found a pseduo workaround for my very specific scenario needing only the perspective to change: open the isometric settings, choose an iso grid and play with the axes, then apply it, choose a side, and click Fit to Plane

I think this was workijng because I did successfully make a warp group on an imported image a few weeks ago but now trying it again, even important the image fresh, I cant get it to affect the image itself.

The answer is nearly always to use Inkscape. Inkscape is much better at transformations than affinity is. Tbh over time I am starting to use Inkjscape for everything except colors and typing, because it is more versatile and I think the devs keep track of forums like this and Adobes and simply add every feature that is consistently complained about but absent from either affinity or adobe. For instance blend shape/path, which Affinity still does not have even though it was a roadmap feature since launch, and arrays with transforms and edits that blend across the array at whatever angle you type in. Affinity also does Isometric grids extremely well. It's still a great program but you should have Inkscape open at the same time. And it is free.

Question on how to change the angle of the gradient that fills a stroke. Say I have a rectangle. I want to have a stroke that appears from the top left corner and then fades away diagonally toward the bottom right corner (an opacity gradient). When selecting stroke, you can choose a gradient fill but you can't affect the direction that fill occurs at. It just defaults to horizontal. When using the fill option (like when you are filling an entire shape) you can choose to have gradients occur at any angle over any distance by adjusting the slider, but this doesn't seem to be the case when you are using a gradient for a stroke. I can come up with other workarounds obviously by building two rectangles where the front only reveals the edges of the back rectangle and then using an opacity gradient on the back rectangle, but it seems like I'm just missing one button somewhere.