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(apologies if this has been mentioned already)

Beta - 1.9.0.734

I've noticed that the ends of pointy shapes like stars and triangles are sometimes clipped when the 'Miter' (US Spelling?) contour type is selected.

Also there appears to be no indication in the layers panel a contour has been applied to a shape or an option to remove it once applied other than Bake Appearance.

contour test screenshot.jpg

Fantastic to see new tools being developed. Thank you.

contour test file.afdesign

v2.4.0 Designer/Photo/Publisher | Mac mini (M1, 2020) | Sonoma 14.3.1

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2 hours ago, Jonopen said:

or an option to remove it once applied

Select the object, and with the Contour Tool active, you can set the Radius to 0 in the Context Toolbar.

-- Walt
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This appears to be a good beginning to a contour tool, but not really all that useful yet.  I would love to see a setting for multiple contours where we could type in a number and get that many contours around the object.  Also it would be useful to be able to select each contour  set the colour of each contour individually and different from the object.  and  perhaps baking ( which is pretty much just converting to curves unless I'm missing something?) could have some settings to allow either the current behaviour or the creation of multiple objects ie the original object and the contours each rendered as separate vector objects.

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17 hours ago, Jonopen said:

I've noticed that the ends of pointy shapes like stars and triangles are sometimes clipped when the 'Miter' (US Spelling?) contour type is selected.

Hi Jonopen,

This is something we're aware of and with development, it will happen to any corner that is 60degrees or less even if it is mitred.

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8 hours ago, Angelize said:

This appears to be a good beginning to a contour tool, but not really all that useful yet.  I would love to see a setting for multiple contours where we could type in a number and get that many contours around the object.  Also it would be useful to be able to select each contour  set the colour of each contour individually and different from the object.  and  perhaps baking ( which is pretty much just converting to curves unless I'm missing something?) could have some settings to allow either the current behaviour or the creation of multiple objects ie the original object and the contours each rendered as separate vector objects.

Hi Angelize, hope you're ok, long time no see on TG forum. 

I think I know where your thinking stems from (Xara Designer Pro?) 😉 and I agree with your ideas for further enhancements.

v2.4.0 Designer/Photo/Publisher | Mac mini (M1, 2020) | Sonoma 14.3.1

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1 hour ago, Sean P said:

Hi Jonopen,

This is something we're aware of and with development, it will happen to any corner that is 60degrees or less even if it is mitred.

Thanks Sean, I guessed that might be the case that you are aware of this.

Obviously it's early days and the team are working hard to develop this but I wondered if this development will eventually lead on to a blend tool? 😀

v2.4.0 Designer/Photo/Publisher | Mac mini (M1, 2020) | Sonoma 14.3.1

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11 hours ago, Angelize said:

This appears to be a good beginning to a contour tool, but not really all that useful yet.  I would love to see a setting for multiple contours...

Agree. It grieves me to see new features released in a sub-par state. It needs not only multiple contours, but control over spacing rate, either uniform or increasing / decreasing. (Think of surface contour lines on maps.) See CorelDraw's Contour Tool. It's been around so long and so many use it that that's going to be expected as minimum functionality by thousands.

As a minimal workaround, there should at least be a keyboard shortcut one could tap to commit a contour while dragging the tool, so one could continue dragging for the next contour, commit it, and so on.

JET

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Without getting too far off topic, I hope, I am a CorelDRAW user.  CD is still serving my primary vector graphic needs (Affinity Publisher is what is really filling the essential hole in my app lineup).  Contours and object blends are two fundamental tools I use all the time.  In fact, I've quite forgotten how to do realistic style vector work without object blend!

I can certainly do some very useful basic things with the contour tool in Affinity Designer as it stands.  But I am accustomed to a bit more functionality.  I am tempted to suggest that the contour tool be presented as an FX layer, so its (eventually richer) settings can be accessed through the established FX panel UI, and there's a clear indication that a layer has a live contour applied to it.

Specific example of something I could not do before this beta feature:  I'm working on a technical document dealing with topological regions and the margins just inside and outside their boundaries.  The regions are arbitrarily squiggly shaped.  The author wants some margins to be highlighted with a nice uniform width stripe on the appropriate side of the boundary curve.  I can now duplicate the curve, add and bake a contour, combine the curves, remove the stroke and add a fill.  This would have been quite impractical in AffDes without the contour tool.

Now seriously in danger of going off topic, I would prefer to fill those margins with a vector fill.  And I want to assign persistent graphic styles to objects like margins, so I can later change their fills by changing the style properties in one place, and have all the objects assigned the style automatically update.  (Just like text styles!)  Those two features (defineable vector fills and actual live/persistent/whatever-you-want-to-call-it graphic styles) are essential to my workflow.

Heading back toward the original topic, if contour were presented as an FX, and if live graphic styles included FX (as the current Designer more-like-a-template styles do), then I could also adjust contour width for a group of margins assigned the margin graphic style.  However, I don't see a way to "combine curves" to get a fillable object using a live contour curve, unless we move to more of a modifier-stack approach where things like booleans and curve combination are live layers acting on their child layers.

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On 9/29/2020 at 2:17 AM, Angelize said:

This appears to be a good beginning to a contour tool, but not really all that useful yet.  I would love to see a setting for multiple contours where we could type in a number and get that many contours around the object.  Also it would be useful to be able to select each contour  set the colour of each contour individually and different from the object.  and  perhaps baking ( which is pretty much just converting to curves unless I'm missing something?) could have some settings to allow either the current behaviour or the creation of multiple objects ie the original object and the contours each rendered as separate vector objects.

Something like this in Corel:

 

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Contour and Blend are very different tools. Contour adds additional objects based on a single or group of objects. Blend morphs from one object, or group of objects to another.

In the screen capture below you can see the various settings from CorelDraw 2020. This would be the target for Affinity if they want to implement robust, productive Contour and Blend tools.

Frank

Contour vs Blend.jpg

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On 9/29/2020 at 2:17 AM, Angelize said:

This appears to be a good beginning to a contour tool, but not really all that useful yet.  I would love to see a setting for multiple contours where we could type in a number and get that many contours around the object.  Also it would be useful to be able to select each contour  set the colour of each contour individually and different from the object.  and  perhaps baking ( which is pretty much just converting to curves unless I'm missing something?) could have some settings to allow either the current behaviour or the creation of multiple objects ie the original object and the contours each rendered as separate vector objects.

Very useful point. I just hope this tool can be similar to that one in CorelDraw. Having used the Contour in Corel for many years am also having challenges using this on basic stuff. However the ability to add steps and color to it from the toolbar would be a welcome move. Been using Affinity for 3 years now, just joined the forums o see the news and developments.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey everyone, yes I was thinking of both the blend and contour tools from XDP, which as Hakoo mentioned I believe use the same technology.

I no longer have my home based publication and my graphic design has become a hobby when I have time off from my 40 hour a week job.  and I am finding that Affinity is fitting my needs better and when I need things like contours and blends I still have a version of XDP 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi,
In Designer, you can add several contours and surfaces via the Appearance panel. I also know this function from Adobe Illustrator, but I have to say that Illustrator offers many more options in terms of settings than Designer.

Above all, I find it really bad that you can only add additional contours to objects and not to editable text, as is the case in Illustrator.

When I look at the video from Corel, the function is actually similar to Illustrator, except that you use a tool there. And I agree, if such a tool is already added in Designer, it should be possible to use it in a similar way as in Corel.

Since I work with Illustrator for a living, I would be more pleased if you could expand the functionality of the Illustration panel by adding effects and adjustments. And of course it should also be possible to apply these functions to editable texts.

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