Ideas for features and tools in Designer

[Frozen Death Knight]

Just wanted to toss out some ideas on how to improve Designer's vector capabilities as to be a bit smoother when working.

Last night I was working on a drawing that used vector shapes to colour in my lineart by using the Pencil Tool and then Expand Stroke to make them a solid shape. However, I noticed quickly that the Pencil Tool keeps creating tons of nodes despite not moving the cursor a lot, which would cause a lot of errors for Expand Stroke. Not to mention the final result creates tons of tightly packed nodes because of the previously mentioned issue. 

My first suggestion would be to add an option for the Pencil Tool so that it doesn't draw a new node until you have made a certain distance or pressure with the pen, kind of like if it had Spacing the same way a raster brush has by changing the distance between each dot. This would help a lot with making more reliable results from Expand Stroke, which really struggles with the Pencil Tool and Brush Tool creating these tightly packed node groups if you hold down your tablet pen stationary while drawing for a bit.

My other suggestion would be to add a merge by distance operator when dealing with nodes that are tightly grouped together. While I was drawing I noticed that certain areas could create really tight node groups which I had to manually select, delete, and then reshape to make it look cleaner. If it was possible to clean up nodes by having them merge to each other based on distance to its neighbouring nodes, it could help speed up the clean-up process by a ton.

Another feature I would like to see for handling nodes is a toggle option to merge any node with another node when snapping them together while working on one layer. Right now you are able to snap nodes to each other, which can give off the illusion that they are now combined into one node, but in reality they are just right on top of each other. It would be very convenient if it was possible to merge two nodes into one by dragging them on top of each other.

As for the Pen Tool and Node Tool, right now you are able to ctrl+L click a curve to break two nodes apart. I love this feature. However, could we get this same feature by ctrl+L clicking the nodes as well? Right now you have to delete nodes by pressing the Del-key, which requires me to reposition my hand from the ctrl, alt, shift position on the left side of the keyboard to reach it. If ctrl+L click to delete nodes is not possible I would like to see the delete node/nodes operator on the X-key as well, which is closer to my hand positioning when using modifiers.

Been using the Compound Layer a lot lately and found it pretty useful overall. However, one thing I wish was possible would be to destructively collapse the non-destructive booleans into a single layer by destructively performing all the booleans. This would also be useful on a regular Layer (not Pixel Layer) by just selecting the main layer and then perform all boolean operators on everything inside. Alternatively you could just R click a layer with vectors inside and do an operator that selects everything inside that specific layer without having to manually select everything.

Also, please add a Blob Brush Tool and Eraser Brush Tool to Designer. Right now I am using a workaround by using the Pencil Tool and Expand Stroke to get a similar effect, but Expand Stroke still creates artefacts which can be holes inside the mesh I want to be completely solid, so it is still a bunch of extra work. Not to mention I have to keep adding them together with booleans to clean things up. An eraser brush is basically the complete opposite to a blob brush, so to me it is a no-brainer to complete this workflow.

 

[loukash]

52 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

doesn't draw a new node until you have made a certain distance or pressure with the pen

Isn't that what the Window Stabilizer is for? If you set the window to a low value, that already makes a difference.

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

merge two nodes into one by dragging them on top of each other.

This already works for closing open curves.
For joining two open curves it's a mere two-steps process:

1. drag-select the overlapping nodes
2. Join Curves – assign a keyboard shortcut to it to make it even faster (I've chosen shift-A)

Also make sure the required node-snapping options are active in the context toolbar.

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

If it was possible to clean up nodes by having them merge to each other based on distance to its neighbouring nodes, it could help speed up the clean-up process by a ton.

Oh yeah!
+1000!

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

could we get this same feature by ctrl+L clicking the nodes as well? Right now you have to delete nodes by pressing the Del-key, which requires me to reposition my hand from the ctrl, alt, shift position on the left side of the keyboard to reach it. If ctrl+L click to delete nodes is not possible I would like to see the delete node/nodes operator on the X-key as well, which is closer to my hand positioning when using modifiers

I don't really get the point of this request.
You're aware that you can change this ctrl-L to anything else you need?
As for not wanting to use the Delete key, I don't know about Windows, but on Mac you could create e.g. an AppleScript based Automator macro that would type the Delete key for you when executing a specific keyboard shortcut of your choice in Affinity Designer. Advanced macro utilites like Keyboard Maestro make it even easier. I'm using those with Affinity as well.

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

estructively collapse the non-destructive booleans into a single layer by destructively perform all the booleans

Layer > Convert To Curves

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Blob Brush Tool and Eraser Brush Tool

Hell yeah!
+1,000,000!
Heck, my beloved Freehand 9 could do that like 20 years ago!

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 4/11/2021 at 1:33 PM, loukash said:

Layer > Convert To Curves

Thanks a lot! That is exactly what I needed. Would be really nice if this operator was visible in the R click menu when inside the Layers panel, since it would make it easier to discover this feature. Also would be nice if I could just select the main Vector Layer and perform this action on everything inside it (currently it is greyed out), or at least allow you to select everything inside the layer in one go through the Layers panel with the R click menu. Would help speed up making boolean operations and converting to curves.

On 4/11/2021 at 1:33 PM, loukash said:

This already works for closing open curves.
For joining two open curves it's a mere two-steps process:

1. drag-select the overlapping nodes
2. Join Curves – assign a keyboard shortcut to it to make it even faster (I've chosen shift-A)

Also make sure the required node-snapping options are active in the context toolbar.

Well, I want to be able to do this regardless of if they're open or not. Would make cleaning up nodes on the fly a lot easier. This is just an alternative way of merging nodes other than merging nodes by distance that I mentioned.

On 4/11/2021 at 1:33 PM, loukash said:

Isn't that what the Window Stabilizer is for? If you set the window to a low value, that already makes a difference.

Yeah, that method actually helps a bit. However, I still notice drawing artefacts when the stroke size is large, so there must be something else going on that creates them.

On 4/11/2021 at 1:33 PM, loukash said:

I don't really get the point of this request.
You're aware that you can change this ctrl-L to anything else you need?
As for not wanting to use the Delete key, I don't know about Windows, but on Mac you could create e.g. an AppleScript based Automator macro that would type the Delete key for you when executing a specific keyboard shortcut of your choice in Affinity Designer. Advanced macro utilites like Keyboard Maestro make it even easier. I'm using those with Affinity as well.

Change it into what? I am on Windows, so whatever method you're using on Mac is not really going to help me here. However, I would love it if Affinity supported macros being chained to tools. I would be able to create some really useful macros this way that would help a lot for some specific tools. Anyway, it is not really what I was asking for in this case. I just want to delete nodes with a more convenient shortcut like ctrl+L click or by pressing X. The Del-key is too far away from my left hand and my right hand is used for my tablet pen.