Shape builder tool

[stephenvfx]

7 minutes ago, LunchMoney_Matt said:

I think the lack of resources thing is just a cop out. Serif claim to have millions of people using their newest products, not to mention the money they made from the old ones. Now I don't know about anyone else, but I've purchased 3 products on PC and another 2 on the iPad, so in terms of revenue these guys have done very well for just a small team.

Honestly I've lost all hope in Affinity products ever reaching the claimed "professional" software status. Development seems to have just stopped and loyal customers have been left in the lurch for quite some time now, no updates or teasers on what's to come, no highly requested features being released, nothing, not a peep. I think they've made their retirement money, and now they're simply milking as much coin from the current release until it fizzles out, which it very much is. I'm not even bothering to install Affinity on my new computer which is sad because the products had a lot of potential. 

Agree! I've also purchased 3 products.
Looks like the company is waiting to be acquired by bigger ones, and put all development in a complete stop.
I think that's why the roadmap was removed awhile back.

[When_Subscription]

21 hours ago, stephenvfx said:

Agree! I've also purchased 3 products.
Looks like the company is waiting to be acquired by bigger ones, and put all development in a complete stop.
I think that's why the roadmap was removed awhile back.

I heard some talk a while back about the possibility of them being bought out down the track, and at that time I was like no fricken way, but as things currently stand I would gladly welcome such news.

[Wuzzmooz]

Yeah, I recently bought the suite to replace my illustrator/photoshop workflow, it isn't what I thought it was

There are heaps of tools and stuff that need to be implemented before reaching alot of designers needs,

but nonetheless I can get all my photoshop needs done in this,

But for the sake of every illustrator hear, please implement the shapebuilder; it makes life thatttt much easier

[Boluwatife Elusiyan]

On 2/29/2020 at 11:30 AM, MEB said:

Hi rasoolakhter,
The approach you take depends a lot of the objects you have/specific case you are working with. Are you building the intended shape starting with open strokes, using shapes, a mix of both? If working with just open paths you may have to break them at certain nodes to then join them with other (open) paths before expanding them to convert the manipulated stroke into a shape. If a mix of open paths and shapes you will have to expand the strokes first before attempting to use geometric operations with shapes otherwise you may get unexpected results (Designer doesn't support boolean operations between shapes and strokes) etc etc. So it really depends on what you are working with. If you post a sample file with an example i'm sure you will get plenty of replies to get there. Meanwhile check this video tutorial here. It should give you some ideas on how to deal with some cases.

Hi, MEB.

Could you please resend the link to the video toturial? It's not working right now. 

Thank you.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Just to bring this up … again.

When are we finally getting this feature in Affinity Designer? Several other vectorbased apps or softwares – paid or free – have been updated these days (I'm thinking for example of Inkscape, recently Vectornator) and offer this important and useful feature.

So Affinity should watch the market, listen more to it's community and not rest in Apple's spotlight of the last few years just to be overtaken by completely free software that at the same time offers much needed/demanded and more advanced features. (My honest thoughts and impression.)

Maybe we get an official answer from the staff at Affinity: After so many years and several requests from the community: Are we actually hoping in vain for the implementation of this function?

An indication of what is currently being worked on would also be pretty cool. Like the open roadmap (reduced to the essential points, if you like) of past years. I've already asked for this a few times, so that the community doesn't repeatedly request the same features that are possibly already being worked on.

[v_kyr]

16 minutes ago, MrDoodlezz said:

When are we finally getting this feature in Affinity Designer?

 

Other than that, the future will for sure tell!

 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

I was going to mention the basic Boolean operations, and of course the compound option is cool. But at the same time, Boolean operations are the absolute minimum I would expect from a software that claims to be professional. 😅

Plus: Shape Builder simply works differently and – in my opinion – even more intuitively and efficiently (though destructively). For example, I would need only one form to perform several Boolean operations at once. For example adding in one part and subtracting in another. In Designer, I would need at least two copies of the shape I want to use to do these two different operations. (A bit hard to describe as text, but since anyone reading this thread knows how Shape Builder works, I strongly assume they understand what I'm talking about.)

[Old Bruce]

34 minutes ago, MrDoodlezz said:

(A bit hard to describe as text, but since anyone reading this thread knows how Shape Builder works, I strongly assume they understand what I'm talking about.)

Not I.

[chillywilson]

I'm starting to think a shapebuilder tool would get them sued if they made it, because why else wouldn't they do it, it's literally just a projection path trace.  Perhaps adobe owns some intellectual property on it. 

[PixelPest]

21 minutes ago, chillywilson said:

Perhaps adobe owns some intellectual property on it. 

Then why VectorStyler and Vectornator have this tool?

[chillywilson]

Not sure about Styler but I know vectornator is only an app so they can probably say it's different to a degree that wouldn't be infringement. 

But again I'm just speculating,

Heck maybe Serif is just bad. Their glassdoor review looks like it's a company owned by people that are terrible to work for, so maybe their management and engineers don't understand why a shapebuilder is better than standard Booleans.  Regardless the reason, after reading about people working for them, I would start to look elsewhere for software, they don't seem like they are in it for the long haul. Most likely they will have an exit plan and sell. 

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Serif-Europe-Reviews-E36023.htm 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

6 minutes ago, chillywilson said:

I'm starting to think a shapebuilder tool would get them sued if they made it, because why else wouldn't they do it, it's literally just a projection path trace.  Perhaps adobe owns some intellectual property on it. 

But how come open source software like Inkscape or other freely available applications like Vectornator (as mentioned above) can implement this? 🤔

I guess they don't have the capital to buy rights, APIs or whatever from Adobe.

55 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Not I.

Oh well … I see. Hm, maybe this short demonstration will help you to understand what we’re talking about? (Without searching this thread, I bet there was at least one demonstration like this among the entries).

Of course it is possible to create complex shapes in Affinity Designer without the Shape Builder tool, but it takes considerably longer and requires many more clicks.

[PixelPest]

31 minutes ago, chillywilson said:

I know vectornator is only an app

What even does that mean? It runs here as a Universal Binary built on macOS available at the AppStore. And all software titles read ".app" on macOS.

[PixelPest]

@MrDoodlezz Seems you´re not knowing what you´re doing. Check out the vid v_kyr linked 2hs ago.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

7 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

@MrDoodlezz Seems you´re not knowing what you´re doing. Check out the vid v_kyr linked 2hs ago.

Thank you, although I didn't ask for an evaluation of my workflow, I am trying to prove a point with this. Building shapes in a matter of seconds, not minutes. 😑

Trust me, I’m working with Designer since day one, so I know exactly what I'm doing. I know that the order plays a big role and that you can change the type of Boolean action afterwards. As I said, the point is not that it can also be done in Designer, but that it is easier, faster and much more intuitive in Illustrator.

[PixelPest]

9 minutes ago, MrDoodlezz said:

Trust me, I’m working with Designer since day one

... and I´m on vector drawing since Freehand first alphas back in the 1980ties. 😇

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, MrDoodlezz said:

Building shapes in a matter of seconds, not minutes.

It does not look to me that in the video @v_kyr posted anything is taking minutes to do....

[Mr. Doodlezz]

17 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

@MrDoodlezz Seems you´re not knowing what you´re doing. Check out the vid v_kyr linked 2hs ago.

This way of creating shapes generates many more unnecessary nodes/steps than any other way.

You will notice this because you suddenly have additional nodes/gaps in the middle of the form, which you then have to delete manually.

Look, the nodes here (my converted compound file that I finished outside the video) are more accurately constructed and correspond – as far as it goes – to the original shape. By this I mean that for example that the former inner circle still consist of as few nodes as necessary and can therefore manipulated easier down the line, if needed.

Also the corners where the bottom triangle meets the circle consist of only one node. With your approach, there are probably at least two nodes, if my experience does not err me.

[chillywilson]

Yeah, everyone knows how to make compound shapes in Affinity, what we are saying is that it's literally the same way you would make them in the 80's, which clearly you know.
It's old and there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to have "up to date tools" for this. I'm sorry if your designs are simple enough where this isn't an issue for you but in the real business of complex designs using Boolean merging compounds are old and way to slow to be looked at for workflow speed. 

 

Edit: also when I said app only i mean x86 vs arm only. 

[chillywilson]

See how it takes me about 5 seconds to do what took you 50 seconds to do, now grow that exponential with complex designs. 

 

 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Now to take it to the edge: Who wants to try to recreate this spontaneous creative freeform in Designer in less than 50 seconds? 😄

Jokes aside, this is not a competition or a race, let's not turn against each other. The Shape Builder can also be used as a kind of inspiration generator – you can use it to find shapes in forms that you wouldn't have come up with so easily otherwise.

Anyway, this is a call for a long-awaited feature that is already present in many other apps.

If you think you don't need it, that's fine – just move on. But don't ignore the need of others.

[PixelPest]

 

30 minutes ago, chillywilson said:

I'm sorry if your designs are simple enough where this isn't an issue for you

I don't know where you have seen a work of mine to claim that.

31 minutes ago, chillywilson said:

but in the real business of complex designs using Boolean merging compounds are old and way to slow to be looked at for workflow speed.

That on the other hand tells me everything I need to know about your vector drawing abilities.

[chillywilson]

15 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

That on the other hand tells me everything I need to know about your vector drawing abilities.

It's sad to think you can asses things like this by using your own example to prove a point. Yes speed of doing complex designs is key for real agency work, I would fire any lancer that take hours to do what most can in minutes, that's how the real world works. Companies don't like to pay for additive costs, and would gladly pay for illustrator if that meant keeping payroll low since an hour of most illustrators work is worth a month of adobe's suite.  While I would love to pass out floating license of Affinity to my team, that's not gonna happen till they can use it and design on it as fast as they can with workable shapebuilding software.  

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Just as a side note: workflow speed with the Shape Building Tool is increased by efficiency and nothing else that may be implied.

To achieve good results, of course, you have to know what you are doing and what you want to achieve. 

But even if you have absolutely no idea about Boolean, it is much faster with the Shape Building Tool than by other means.