Designer vector fill patterns? Also custom vector brushes?

[Ethan U]

Hey everyone, 

I was curious I had seen some tutorials showing how to create a custom brush from raster shapes and also a pattern fill of raster shapes.

Is there a way to create fill based on vector shapes? Is there a way to create custom brushes with vector shapes also?

 

Thanks so much

 

Ethan

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Ethan U

The brushes in the Affinity applications are all raster at the moment so you can’t make ‘proper’ vector brushes.

As for a “fill based on vector shapes”, that’s possible, but the best techniques will depend upon what “shapes” you have and what you want to “fill” with them.
If you can give us an example of the vector shapes you have and the shape you want to fill with them then someone can probably give you some ideas.

[Mjmnz]

Hi Garry,

I have an example that may serve as a model to explain the technique. I want to create a diffuser lens for a desk lamp. I will be using a CO2 laser to etch the pattern on clear acrylic sheet. I have attached a file that shows a simple version of the type of thing I want to be able to create in Affinity Designer. I used Fusion360/Inkscape to create this but would like to have more flexibility with other vector based designs created using AD to create laser ready SVG files rather than F360 + SVG macro + Inkscape I have to use now.

I look forward to learning how this can be done.  

Maurice

Ōhope, New Zealand.

diffuser-2.svg

[firstdefence]

@Mjmnz Some of the strokes in that SVG are too large, it imports into Affinity Designer like this...

 

After editing the strokes and making them smaller

 Thist sort of pattern will be easy to create using Power Duplicate.

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/ObjectControl/duplicate.html

 

[Mjmnz]

Thanks for the quick response. I’m familiar with the Power Duplicator and have used it to create interesting patterns like Fibonacci progressions - so yes I can see I could have used it to create the pattern although I suspect it may be simpler to use the pattern generator in Fusion360. My bad, obviously my example was not a good candidate for the vector fill pattern of the original question. I’m aware vector fill patterns can be created in Illustrator but I’d prefer to use Affinity Designer/Photo as I have these across all my devices and I don’t have an Illustrator subscription. 
 

On the stroke size issue - noted. The file opens fine in Inkscape so I assume there’s an issue with the svg scaling interpreter in Designer. I frequently have problems with scaling between Designer svg export scaling when opening with Inkscape - I always set my units to millimetres. 
 

thanks again for the response - I still have much to learn with Designer. 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Mjmnz said:

I’m familiar with the Power Duplicator and have used it to create interesting patterns like Fibonacci progressions - so yes I can see I could have used it to create the pattern although I suspect it may be simpler to use the pattern generator in Fusion360. My bad, obviously my example was not a good candidate for the vector fill pattern of the original question. I’m aware vector fill patterns can be created in Illustrator but I’d prefer to use Affinity Designer/Photo as I have these across all my devices and I don’t have an Illustrator subscription. 

You might try @GarryP's tool as an adjunct to Designer/Photo:

 

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, Mjmnz said:

The file opens fine in Inkscape so I assume there’s an issue with the svg scaling interpreter in Designer.

FWIW, if I open the file in Inkscape on my Mac, it is so sluggish it is almost unusable, but from what I can tell many of the diffuser strokes appear to be quite large, in the 10-20 mm range.