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I'm really hoping Affinity updates to allow true 100% vector brushes to be more editable and relevant in future releases. What are currently labeled "vector brushes" are not 100% vector and cannot be expanded as vectors. They have their uses and I appreciate them - but in my line of work, I need to be able to export 100% vector - no raster in the final output.
Right now we can only modify the 100% vector brush to a simple taper on each end - As I have attached to this post, there are many other types of tapers and such I'd love to be able to do with a 100% vector brush.
Going a little further - I'm hoping for a blob-tool that can allow for any shape to be made and used -

Screen Shot 2020-07-23 at 9.33.26 AM.png

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YES!

Not trying to hijack you thread but I also require 100% vector outout - and I suggest a pre-flight tool for vector output so you can get a proper warning about rasterization (or bitmap brushes) before exporting:

It is next to impossible to make pure vector output without hassle - unless one makes simple, simple designs.

I have seen customers question whether or not Designer is a vector design program at all. It is a relevant question. Having a few vector tools is not enough to qualify.

Designer has major usability issues - you are fooled into believing a vector brush is vector - and when it is not you can still select menu items like expand curve that are simply N/A for bitmap of course. 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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Development of Designer in particular seems to be lagging far behind the other two apps over the last couple years. I don't know if they got stuck trying to solve some basic functions- like boolean operations. I know they improved the add option but haven't done anything lately to fix "divide" - though the improvements on "add" indirectly improved "divide" some.
Version 1.8 was almost completely bug fixes and improvements to the boolean operations - not much in terms of new tools. Last year I saw a video on twitter of their version of offset path and it looked great - but I have not seen it implemented yet...
I'm really hoping the update to 1.9, incorporates this feature along with some of the other standard tools many of us need to make it our mainstay vector app. I love Affinity but I dislike the length of time it takes to get these things added in. Very frustrating to try to hang on to CS6 while they catch up.

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Questions arise:

  • Why do Serif still have problems with the basic boolean features in Affinity after 5 years (and 25+ years of experience, Serif released DrawPlus 2.0 in 1994)
  • Why is development so slow of Designer
  • Will the slow, slow development of Designer trend continue the next five years? We are not exactly waiting for the ketchup effect are we? What will change? Will anything change?
  • Now that especially the vector features (vector brushes, expand stroke and boolean operators) seems to be a task too heavy for Serif to lift - or lift within a decade - will Designer ever evolve into a vector drawing program with the many customer requested features? And mature, stable features?

In reality it is a affinity Photo companion for raster output artists. It could easily be moved into Photo as a persona.

Quote

Rock solid vector tools

Affinity Designer is full of tools meticulously developed for achieving high productivity, while maintaining 100 percent accurate geometry.

+ Comprehensive vector toolset

(...)

Lets see if version 2.0 catches up on the marketing and expectations and some feature requests.

Meanwhile Adobe and Corel et al. will sleep like babies.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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2 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Very frustrating to try to hang on to CS6 while they catch up

Yes very frustrating

2 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

I'm hoping for a blob-tool that can allow for any shape to be made and used -

Yes - been requesting since first release?!?!?!

I have to say as there years slide by I find myself turning less and less positive towards Affinity, as I think my first set of posts when this forum was first made available, was the need for a fair few things including true vector brushes and a blob brush along with my No1 missing "feature" Vector distortion / perspective warping, I say "feature" as I wouldn't class any of these as features, I see them as bog standard vector tools for any software that classes itself as a professional vector application -  I have been trying to keep positive, especially when receiving any kind of moderator feedback and seeing that old list of goals for the future - I used to just try and be patient - thinking what are we gonna do if it takes two or three years for these basics to appear  ---- FIVE YEARS LATER ----- and now it pisses me off that I have to use the ten year old (and considered obsolete) Illustrator CS5 to plug gaps - I just wish Vector styler was as easy to use as Designer as it has all the basics (including vector brushes,  Vector distortion / perspective warping) along with lots of other "features" it looks like it's been in development for around two years and it's not even released yet     

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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Sorry for the rant!

Forgot to just do this:

True Vector Brushes +1

Blob Brush +1

 

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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On 7/23/2020 at 3:23 PM, Boldlinedesign said:

Version 1.8 was almost completely bug fixes and improvements to the boolean operations

Actually, 1.8 destroyed boolean operations and only now, after several minor releases, have booleans become about as reliable as in 1.7.3.

For my use of AD, the vastly improved Expand Stroke has been the only truly significant advance in the three years I've been using the app.

I was hoping that after Publisher was released there would be faster gains in Designer, but I now suspect that the team are spending the majority of their time working on version 2 of the apps and only trickling out bug fixes for version 1.

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On 7/25/2020 at 11:08 AM, anon2 said:

Actually, 1.8 destroyed boolean operations and only now, after several minor releases, have booleans become about as reliable as in 1.7.3

Interesting - I always ran into it consistently hanging on me when I did any add or divide booleans operations in 1.7.3
I haven't had that issue very often in 1.8 so far, though it still leaves a mess of scattered nodes and sometimes fills things in that should not be

 

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  • 2 months later...

Sorry for being late to the party. I just recently switched from Adobe CC and was working on my first full project when I stumbled upon the dreaded "vector" brush of Designer. Ugh, I am lucky that I had used a simple brush in my design and it only took a couple hours to recreate the look in true vector form.

This knowledge may have stopped me from switching to Affinity. To not have true vector brushes is archaic. My ability to produce true vectors to clients is vital to my work and I have done a lot of my work with strokes. I truly pray that this is resolved in the very near future, or I may have to resubscribe to Adobe :(

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Absolutely agreed. I am having to learn Illustrator 😞 in order to have editable vector brushes for current vector projects. (+ vector scatter brushes that I can break apart and edit) I'm also having to to back to an ancient version of Xara which has it's own issues.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE affinity but if I'm doing illustrations with bitmaps I find a bitmap app way faster with the added benefit that unscrupulous clients cant do their own edits.

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  • 3 weeks later...

+1 for true vector brushes, this has been mentioned countless times already!

On 7/23/2020 at 3:48 PM, Boldlinedesign said:

I'm hoping for a blob-tool that can allow for any shape to be made and used

This could be nice, too, especially if it were possible to randomise size, rotation, opacity, etc. Both blobs along the path and a single click blob tool would be useful.

Cheers, Matt

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Why are you guys so eager for a blob brush ?

How is it different from using the regular vectorbrushes and merging the shapes with an 'Add' B.O. ?

 

I always felt the AD bitmap vectorbrushes were a feature for making illustrations in a modern way, not a bug.

Coming from Inkscape i know that performance of real vectorbrushes with a lot of nodes can be very bad, and working on something, with your program lagging badly, because it cant handle all the nodes, is just awful.

AD's bitmap vectorbrushes seem to solve this problem in a very elegant way.

While AP seems to be a PS clone, AD is not an AI clone at all and never pretended to be one.

Its an illustration program that tries its own way.

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24 minutes ago, ESPR said:

Why are you guys so eager for a blob brush ?

Speaking for myself, I need the ability to create in pure 100% vector without bitmaps or rasters. Yes I could use the brush tool and build up with strokes and add them together, but as you mentioned, it leaves a mess of useless nodes and sometimes using add and divide Boolean operations freezes my app, or parts of the design disappear. It's not a clean operation yet unfortunately. The blob tool also helps a vector program gain some artistic approach. With the pen tool, there's a mechanical and precise feel that is good, but still harder to be artistic and free  flowing. Also, a blob tool can allow for a quick simple edit. It adds a more artistic dimension to affinity.

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4 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Yes I could use the brush tool and build up with strokes and add them together, but as you mentioned, it leaves a mess of useless nodes and sometimes using add and divide Boolean operations freezes my app, or parts of the design disappear. It's not a clean operation yet unfortunately.

Well if 'Add' doesnt work properly, how can you hope for a blob brush to work ?

Im no programmer, but isnt a blob brush just painting with an automatic 'Add' ?

Maybe it would make more sense to have a live-tracing feature with good accuracy. Then you could paint your "blobs" with rasterbrushes and trace everything when you are done.

Seems like a win-win to me.

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Yes I'm sure the blob brush is really just an instant add Boolean. Affinity seems to have hit a massive roadblock getting their Boolean operations to work efficiently and with every update they seem to address it a little at a time. Getting clean Boolean operations appears to have vexed them. The add Boolean is better now than before and divide was self admittedly much worse before the 1.8 update. That said, it's frustrating to not see these issues fixed completely as update after update come out. In my operations currently, if I vector something in affinity, I copy it over to illustrator to expand and merge. I'm also limited to using only a few brushes if I want pure vectors. 

As you mentioned, I could use raster brushes or even the limited pure vector brushes and then use a live trace like vector magic to convert to vector and I've done that, especially with apps like procreate. My problem with that is it's an extra step in the creation process, vector trace still requires clean up after, and some methods of inking can't be accomplished that way. For example when I ink, I overshoot my lines intentionally and then convert to curves and divide so I can select and remove the excess and delete. I can't do that if I'm not using pure vector brushes

in my opinion, I wish affinity would focus much more on truly fixing the Boolean operations once and for all, adding in the features most are clamoring for that keep it from being a true alternative to illustrator. That to me is more important than the change in 1.9 upcoming with system synch. 

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  • 2 years later...
  • 10 months later...

Im am very late to this conversation. This conversation started in 2020 and its coming up to 2024 now. Just wasted two days on the vector brush that isn't a vector issue. Not being able to expand and edit strokes can lead to issues when trying to tidy line work let alone effecting scalability without loss of quality. It makes the tool unreliable and unusable. Frustrating as I am questioning wether to use designer at all now. Would be good to have a solution to this so as to compete with other programmes and modern markets. Its seems misleading to call it a vector brush.

 

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