Hi everyone,
I have looked in the forum for a trace of this, and couldn't find it in the functionalities in the App, but it is such a sadly missing function of Illustrator that it is, for me, entirely necessary to add it to Affinity Designer to make it THE Adobe killer.
Some of you might have used Inkscape in the past, I discovered it very recently, being a mac user (and it is far from user friendly on a Mac...): The Spiro Spline, or automatic smooth curves, swirls and swooshes.
For both typography and ornaments, 2 "hot topics" nowadays, this tool is just fantastic.
There are 2 elements that are genius about it:
- First, it calculates automatically the "smallest curve value" between two points or a specific node, transforming any rough angle into smooth curves to create spirographic-style designs so easily it made my jaw drop when I discovered it (it is a nightmare in Illustrator).
- Second, and that's the most powerful, is the ability to edit "live and dynamically" the shape used as the fill of the stroke. Meaning you can easily conver a simple curve into a gorgeous "fat to slim" swirl and create highly editable ornaments on the go, using triangles and other shapes.
For those who never heard of it, check those two links, you will just be... wowed.
A simple tutorial to show your the "spiro magic"
http://verysimpledesigns.com/vectors/inkscape-tutorial-spiro-swirls.html
And this one to show you how powerful it is, especially for Typography design:
Inkscape + Spiro
(sorry it's in Spanish–which I'm not, and it goes fast, but it's quite straightforward).
This, combined to the user-friendliness of Affinity Designer, would make me put the premium for it right away.
Hope you enjoy it guys!
Boris
