Feature Request: Creating Vector Based Vector Brushes

[Johannes]

Please add the ability to add pure vector based vector brushes based on vector objects for texture instead of PNGs.

For now we can only add pixel based vector brushes.

Being able to add pure vector brushes based on vector objects would allow us to create vector based textures and designs, which would be much easier to handle for any kind of (print) production.

For example I tried to separate the colours to a spot colour PDF for screen print from this awesome work by Pierre Kleinhouse made for the Affinity Work from home series
https://youtu.be/lL6gc8Oi2uw  .afdesign file on DropBox:  https://affin.co/LD2020PierreKleinhouse 

It was sort of a nightmare. I couldn't find a way to create a vector based spray texture within the Affinity Suite like in the second screen shot with the chimney.

Expand stroke, working with spot colours, working with boolean operations ... a lot would be easier.

 

[Jon8948123o4]

1+ Yes I assumed this to already have been the case in a modern vector design tool but it appears not so. Really important for a convenient workflow otherwise designs become difficult to change, export and manipulate. I would have to re-vectorise bitmaps and cut up again with quality loss and reduced flexibility.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Jon8948123o4

[Cuando]

+1

[Frozen Death Knight]

Agreed!

[LazerGh0st]

This is the exact function I hope Affinity Designer adds soon:

 

[JET_Affinity]

My interest in true vector-based brushes is not to emulate 'painterly' strokes, but to more powerfully leverage the base purpose and advantage of vector-based drawing in the first place.

As always, this is definitely not exactly what I have in mind, because I want something better.

Shown are just two of my own Pattern Brushes collections; hex head bolts and springs. Each Brush can turn a single-segment straight path into a bolt or spring of any diameter and any length with a single click.

However, building such constructs is much more tedious than it should be for several simple reasons:

• Note that I have a separate Brush for each orientation (5° increments of rotation about an isometric axis). What makes all that setup work necessary boils down to a couple of simple geometric transforms that could and should be built into the Brush feature's options. (Think of the parameter adjustment handles in Affinity's various live Shapes for a general idea of what I'm talking about.) A better implementation would make this whole array possible with just 2 brushes instead of with 36.
• Note that the size of Illustrator's vector brushes (therefore, the diameter of the bolts) is controlled by adjusting the stroke weight setting of the spine path. But there is no option for leaving the stroke weight of its Brushes' base artwork alone. So in order to have consistent stroke weight in an overall drawing that has multiple differently-sized bolts or springs, one has to 'Expand' the 'Appearance' and then apply previously-defined Styles. This is a typical example of Illustrator's failure to integrate separate features with each other. Illustrator's Symbols do provide the much needed option to toggle off "Scale Stroke Weight When Scaling". So why isn't that option provided in its vector brushes?
• And why can't Symbols be uses as the base artwork in Brushes?

Again, these are just two such collections. I have similar vector-based Pattern Brushes for "lasso arrows",  insulated wires with color banding, wire rope, wire loom, square tubing, piping, and more. To someone who does a good bit of technical drawing, the tedious bother is 'worth it' in the long run. But it could be done so much easier for users with a better thought-out implementation. Just more 'low hanging fruit' opportunity to beat Illustrator, rather than just mimic it.

 

 

JET

[Tim_S]

In my eyes this is one of the most needed features for Affinity Designer. The ability to make and use fully vector pattern brushes for use as strokes. The brushes in the program look great but when I need to output a vector piece the are completely useless.

[LazerGh0st]

Inkscape is an open-source, free-to-use, tool for Windows & Mac, and has this function:
 

 

[PaRunk]

I also addressed this topic with regard to real vector brushes and even added some videos of how I create them in Illustrator and what variants there are, because real vector brushes are very important to me too. Especially because of their flexibility in terms of scaling without loss of quality. In addition, you could then perhaps convert these contours into objects using the Convert command.

You would then no longer have any problems with the distortion when drawing tight curves, for example if you wanted to use a star or another object as a brush. These are currently being distorted because they are actually pictures, which I think is bad.

Maybe it would also be great if you could import and use brushes from Illustrator in Designer, as you can in Photo with the brushes from Photoshop.

[Lorox]

Although I meanwhile do like to work in Affinity Designer (as well as Photo and Publisher), it still is a major disappointment to me that there are no real vector brushes in Designer.

I've been working in Illustrator for 20+ years and I've always thought it's amazing what you can do with real, resolution independent vector brushes there (like vector based scatter brushes which encorporate random values for several properties from a predefined range etc.). I actually took it for granted that a new and promising vector design app like Affinity Designer would certainly take it from there and offer this functionality as well...

So this is one of the things I really do hope will get addressed in future versions (but somehow I'm not overly optimistic...). Nevertheless, I guess it would make a big difference for a lot of designers and illustrators.