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I apologize upfront for the numerous questions, but I'm still kind of new to Affinity and I'm trying really hard to eliminate Illustrator altogether.

Let me start by saying, I love Affinity Designer, but I ran into a big problem...

Does anyone know where to buy true vector brush kits for Affinity Designer?  Brushes that don't pixelate when exported? I saw one brush kit at https://www.retrosupply.co/collections/affinity/products/the-vector-brush-toolbox-for-affinity-designer, but I don't know for sure if they're true vector brushes.

Has anyone tried them?  

To give you an example why this has become a huge issue for me--I recently did an illustration for a customer, and because the brush I needed turned out to be raster, I had to go into illustrator, recreate part of the illustration and bring it over to Affinity.  I tried to create a similar brush in Designer, but it was still raster, so I recreated the brush I needed in Illustrator and redid the work there.

Is there a tutorial on making vector brushes in Affinity Designer, true vector brushes? 

I read somewhere that Designer doesn't support vector brushes? Is that true?

It's a little frustrating when you have to duplicate work, because the vector program you're using isn't always vector. It even warns you that part of your drawing might be converted to raster when exporting to a pdf.

Why?

Does anyone know why Designer allows raster brushes to be added to available brushes in the first place, and why--assuming Designer supports vector brushes--they wouldn't be somehow separated?

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help me figure out my options. 

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Affinity Designer brushes are a raster image on a vector curve, so not pure vector but a hybrid vector/raster brush. So you cannot expand the brush and get a vector texture from the brush. I would assume all brushes are this way free, paid and pre-installed.

As to why Affinity chose to use a hybrid brush, who knows but to my mind it seems a backward step. Hopefully we will get pure vector brushes in the near future.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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Wait.... a vector illustration app used RASTER brushes? Why???? 

 

I have years' worth of painstakingly created vector brushes that I use constantly. Film, chain, borders, rope... hundreds of things that are vector based art that will follow a path, closed or open. You're telling me no such thing exists in Affinity Designer?

EDIT: I am seeing that there is no way to designate a piece of vector art as a fill, either? No way to fill an area with an automatically repeating pattern? 

Edited by RavenMoon
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4 hours ago, RavenMoon said:

Wait.... a vector illustration app used RASTER brushes? Why???? 

I have years' worth of painstakingly created vector brushes that I use constantly. Film, chain, borders, rope... hundreds of things that are vector based art that will follow a path, closed or open. You're telling me no such thing exists in Affinity Designer?

EDIT: I am seeing that there is no way to designate a piece of vector art as a fill, either? No way to fill an area with an automatically repeating pattern? 

Serif should answer the 'whys'.

The short input I have is that Affinity Designer has surprisingly few vector tools, had issues with Booleans for years (and still has) and we saw few sign that anything is about to change in the (near) future. Personally I don't think we will see radical or medium changes. Long term? Same feeling. This is not Illustrator/CorelDRAW light for vector illustrators on a budget. Many hope(d) it is. To me at least it is obvious that Serif is not intending going into a head to head competition with competing vector programs. It is also not a company housing several vector specialists. Never did.

I observed Designer for 4-5 years and then pulled the plug. Purchased CorelDRAW for my hobby work on a private laptop - use Adobe Illustrator CC 2021 on my work machine for professional work. Waiting in vain is one of the most damaging things I experienced in life. Time is precious in every aspect of life and work.

If your workflow is to work on top of a complete (paper) draft, tracing and digitizing it then adding color and effects... Designer is okay. If you actually make advanced vector drawings from scratch and expect the software to help create, manipulate and reuse vector elements in different perspectives etc. There is nothing. 

I use it as a niche program for some posters I make in my spare time to stay sharp - and I like using it very much for that - but for advanced vector work Designer is incomplete, inflexible, buggy and static.

The funny thing is that I learned to completely ignore the annoyances of Illustrator and CorelDRAW after trying to use Designer for years. Because I just LOVE THEM for the features they do have that make so much of my work possible in minutes, not hours or not at all. Let us see in 5 years what happened to Designer in reality. Meanwhile I create in Illustrator and CorelDRAW.

Take care out there.

  • "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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Thank you for your professional insight.

Tbh, the only reason I was trying to replace Illustrator with Designer is because Illustrator is so glitchy.  It constantly locks up or kicks you out. 

If Designer would fix the brush tool, and add trace, it would be the perfect program. I like the work flow much better than Illustrator.  If Illustrator had their workflow, it would be the perfect program. I've been using Photoshop for years, and fell right into Affinity without much of a learning curve. I use all three of their programs and love them, but unfortunately, it has not replaced Illustrator. 

Oh well... wishful thinking. Maybe if we shout it from the roof tops, Serif will fix it. Even without trace, that is sometimes useless, there's no reason why they can't allow a brush to be made without rasterizing it, or implementing symbols somehow. I mean, come on... you have to create a png from a vector stroke to create the brush? It make no sense. Maybe they need to hire better people if they can't figure it out.

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5 hours ago, lineartist said:

Illustrator is so glitchy.  It constantly locks up or kicks you out. 

I've never experienced illustrator locking up or kicking me out, it's been a bit laggy and slowed down when used to create patterns and textures with a gazillion nodes but other than that illustrator for me has been very stable. Designer is far from perfect and adding a trace element will take it a step closer to being a better functioning app but only if it can do tracing well or have features that make it stand out from all the other potrace clones with GUI's and certainly the vector brush tool is lacking some important elements like actually being a pure vector brush system but I reckon that will change eventually, well it has too if Affinity want to be considered a fully fledged vector powerhouse, that and vector warping and more export options, then things will start to take off. 

I noticed in Affinity Photo that dreams do come true, with the brush from selection option and that is such a nice feature to have, so progress is being made and Serif/Affinity are listening and being pro-active so while we can dog on the dev's it might also be nice to show appreciation every now and then for the things that are being done and seen to have been done.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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Affinity is my go to, so that should say something. Designer's workflow is more responsive than Illustrator's, and for most of the work I do, it's all I need. Illustrator doesn't like commands fed too quickly.  It stops responding... at least that's how it's been for me. Maybe a better computer would do better with it, but I've heard about other people having similar problems, so I'm guessing I'm not alone.

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