Expand Stroke Issues

[Boldlinedesign]

I was testing out Designer 1.8 Beta tonight by tracing over my blue jay sketch with the built in vector brush under the "pens" section. I only adjusted the taper, not the opacity. All lines were made with the same brush. I overlap my lines and then expand them to fills and then typically hit "divide" to divide them into pieces where they intersect, allowing me to delete the extra overlaps quickly. I know the "divide" operation is still buggy and being worked on, but the issue I had was before I got to that step.

After selecting all my strokes, I hit expand several times because only a few lines were affected each time I did so. I also hit "convert to curves" Some of my former strokes became what look like empty fills with a stroke -(the horizontal stroke right above the legs for example) Upon closer inspection, it's a thin fill with an empty interior. I included some screen shots as well as the file with a before and after I completed the steps above. 
Am I missing something or is this an issue with the app?

Thanks for any help

blue jay error.afdesign

[MattP]

Thank you! I'll take a look! (it's not the 'expand stroke' function itself that's causing the issue, it's the boolean operation 'add' that I run on the results to remove overlaps that's causing the problem - I need to fix this though, so hang in there and I'll take a look!)  

 

Edited to say: I've just tried this in my latest beta build (I've not released it yet, but it will be 1.8.0.3) and it succeeds - but I still maintain there's a problem with the Boolean operations that causes some issues and I'll try to fix that  

[A_B_C]

Cool drawing, by the way! 

[Boldlinedesign]

3 hours ago, MattP said:

Thank you! I'll take a look! (it's not the 'expand stroke' function itself that's causing the issue, it's the boolean operation 'add' that I run on the results to remove overlaps that's causing the problem - I need to fix this though, so hang in there and I'll take a look!)  

 

Edited to say: I've just tried this in my latest beta build (I've not released it yet, but it will be 1.8.0.3) and it succeeds - but I still maintain there's a problem with the Boolean operations that causes some issues and I'll try to fix that  

Thank you @MattP, I appreciate you taking a look,  narrowing down the issue and not stopping even when the immediate issue is fixed in 1.83, -making sure it's truly fixed. 

[Boldlinedesign]

27 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

Cool drawing, by the way! 

Thanks - I appreciate it! I design for screen print companies by making shirt designs for their clients. Sometimes I get opportunities to make fun characters based on the school mascot or a theme. I much prefer inking in Affinity Designer than any other vector app. 

[MojoMan]

This method of inking and flooding color into the vector shapes is a genuine God Send for cartoon illustrators. The technique is demonstrated in the youtube video by Brad Clark.

https://youtu.be/R5wW_65iAiU < Technique in illustrator to expand and merge lines to remove overstrike.

The process is to vector ink and overshoot, then group and expand stroke (which Affinity does) then make "live paint (Illustrator thing that Affinity does not do at this point) Then you have to grab the object(s) "live paint" expand again.

At that point one can go in and remove all the "overshoot" line artifacts.

Finally one goes back to object/live paint and make. This allows one to drop colors within the merged vectors....

All this said if I could just get the expansion and joining that would leave areas to be fillable I can certainly live w/o live paint.

I know that there are lots of issues surrounding copyright and patent. I'm really just seeking a function to do a very logical artistic process w/o feeling so overwhelmed with pat your head rub your tummy activity.

Solve this issue and I'll become a full time convert to Affinity. A fabulous application and value for the money!

 

 

[Boldlinedesign]

@mojoman

Yes the video you linked to - from Clay Butler on youtube is where I learned the technique initially. I've not heard of Brad Clark. Does he have a youtube channel?

What I've learned since Clay's video is that you can use the pathfinder divide option in lieu of using "live paint" to break apart the pieces in illustrator

In the same way, in Affinity Designer you can already do the same process with it's boolean divide option now. I can ink my drawings; overlapping the strokes intentionally ,then expand them and then divide and delete the excess. The issue Affinity has with this process is with clean boolean operations. Too many times there are extra useless nodes leftover, sometimes the new fills don't look right.... 

Here's a link to a video of this process being done in Affinity Designer

I know Affinity is aware of the boolean operation issues and is cleaning them up to run more efficiently. Hopefully in the 1.8 upcoming release

[MojoMan]

My apologies to Clay Butler and you. Clay is indeed the person who deserves full credit for the “expand/make...” process in Illustrator that I was until now unaware of being doable in Affinity; or at least close to doable.

I’m going to watch the video link your provided and play around a bit in Affinity. Then I’ll be back. The critter below was created using the “overshoot” inking and expand/live paint in Illustrator and later composited in photoshop.

Thanks so much for your assistance in this matter.

 

[Boldlinedesign]

No problem. Finding that video from Clay a few years back rocked my world! haha. The blue jay images I posted earlier in this same thread were all done in Affinity Designer and show the good and the bad of the process as it currently works in Affinity Designer. 

Couple things I forgot to mention - you have to expand all the strokes first in Affinity, just like you do in Illustrator.

You also have to be sure you choose a 100% vector brush in Affinity Designer. You cannot use a raster based texture brush because even as you can draw and control strokes like a vector stroke, the raster component of the brush cannot be expanded.  

One of the big things I'm hoping for in the updates to Affinity Designer is better control and options for the pure vector brush abilities. 

[MojoMan]

Bold line Design;

Well after several failed attempts to replicate the Clay Butler method within Affinity here is as close as I get. Not Good.

By comparison in Adobe Fresco one draws with a vector layer, and simply uses an eraser to delete overshoot. All interiors are easily fillable with bucket or manually with brush.

No I’m not shilling for Adobe. I just wish Affinity could solve this issue so  that one can ink, overshoot, remove artifacts and allow fills closed or otherwise without losing one’s mind.

If I still don’t get something please advise.

Thanks

 

 

 

[Boldlinedesign]

I went ahead and made a quick video showing how the process works in Affinity.  I chose a pure vector brush and made a circle and then dissected it with several strokes. I selected the entire design with the black arrow and then hit expand. then I hit "divide" from the boolean operations and was able to grab any piece of overlap and hit delete on the keyboard to erase cleanly. Once I was done, I again grabbed the entire design with the black arrow tool by drawing a selection box around it all and hit "add" from the boolean operation shortcuts at the top of the screen. This merged properly, most of the divided shapes... you can see I went in and merged the stragglers by editing the nodes or overlapping some and then hitting "add" again
Affinity is supposedly fixing the boolean operations in 1.8 (I was using 1.8 beta for this video), specifically cleaning up the add function and more specifically, the divide function. My hope is that if the divide function is drastically improved, the add function won't have as many issues after the fact. Overall, it's still not where it needs to be as of this beta, which was why I had posted my initial post in this thread when I ran into issues testing my blue jay drawing I had vector outlined in this fashion. 
I don't know of a great way to flood fill in Affinity designer vector persona. I know there is the option in the raster persona but that defeats the 100% pure vector requirements I need for screen print design. Obviously, in Illustrator one can either use the live paint tool, or add a large fill shape behind the design and cookie-cutter it with pathfinder merge. 
I have a list of features I keep hoping Affinity will add that seem "essential" and "basic' to me - and this is on the list. 
 

[Move Along People]

-

 

[Boldlinedesign]

I just installed the newest 1.8 beta released today and did a quick test with the the pen and the brush tool and the expand, add and divide options worked very smoothly.

I tried my old file from the earlier 1.8 beta - the blue jay and while the expand was improved, trying to divide it failed as it got stuck partway through the operation. I'm wondering if this is due to issue from the former brushes. In the notes listing new features in this release, they mentioned the brushes had been re-worked. So I am guessing (hoping) this is the cause of the issue, since everything went so well with the new brush expand/add/divide options when I was initially testing it out today

[MojoMan]

@Boldlinedesign - By no means my ideal art quality, but it again demonstrates where I want to be able to go with the  “Clay Butler” technique. Thanks for the video. I will wait for the 1.8 update and then try out your methods since dealing with the failed boolean issues is clearly a time consuming process to overcome, or so it would seem. I’ll continue to follow this thread since I think you are clearly on top of overcoming the issues surrounding this issue.

In my ideal scenario one can overshoot lines in a vector persona, clean up the overshoots and drop color inside vector paths.

The key benefit is 

 

[SlavekDD]

Same problem with some one fonts - convert to object - expand strokes