Sketchy Lines in AF Designer

[Abraham]

Dear All

I need to draw sketchy architectural diagrams to illustrate design concepts as part of my work. We draw our sketches on a wacom pad and deliberately use a trembling hand to create a rough wavy sketchy line which contrasts well with other more finished work. When we use other programmes such as Inskspace or Sketchbook pro we get the desired result. See attached. 

I cannot get the same rough effect with either pen, pencil or even the brush tool in Designer - I need that sketchy rough effect. But even with the stabiliser unchecked AFD smooths off the line. The coloured box on the left of the attached example was drawn with Inkscape and the more smooth line on the right was done in AFD

I LOVE the idea of drawing the diagram in Designer and then it goes straight into the report ( at the correct size on the page) on Publisher.

All help appreciated.

Thx

Abs

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Are you drawing in the Designer Persona or the Pixel Persona?

Which Tool are you using? For example, if you're in the Designer Persona it could be the Pencil Tool or the Vector Brush Tool (or perhaps, with more work, the Pen Tool). Although there is some smoothing, I can get lines like the ones you show using either the Pencil Tool or the Vector Brush Tool.

Perhaps a screenshot showing the workspace and the Context Toolbar so we can see your options would help.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Although there is some smoothing, I can get lines like the ones you show using either the Pencil Tool or the Vector Brush Tool.

I only tried with the Pencil Tool but as long as I wiggle it far enough I can get very rough, jagged looking lines.

[h_d]

Hi @Abraham and welcome!

There's no direct equivalent in Designer. The best I can suggest is to use a Pencil Brush for the stroke, tweak the Pressure settings to get some variation in the weight, copy and paste into Affinity Photo, apply a Live Distort - Ripple Filter with minimal Intensity, copy and paste both curve and filter back into Designer. I've also applied a gradient to the fill:

It's not the same effect but it has a sort of hand-drawn look. 

I've attached the .afdesign file with a built-in Ripple filter.

ADD:

Same idea applied to an isometric cube:

 

 

pencil?.afdesign

[Abraham]

WOW ! You guys - thanks for the replies - I am overwhelmed by all your help. 

So WALT - as per your request please see a screenshot of my screen 'Settings and Line examples.PNG', showing the settings. So the paper is A4 landscape with res at 400DPI. 

Interestingly enough the top left is my attempt at a sketchy line using the pencil tool when the screen is NOT zoomed in, AFD just seems to smooth out the line as a matter of course. Notice the same line below (bot left) is the same line highlighted with the NODE tool - notice how few nodes are shown. 

While on the top right is the same attempt when I have zoomed right into the canvas, for some reason the result is a lot more squiggly / sketchy. The same line below (bot right), again highlighted with the NODE tool - notice that there are many more nodes created and so a slightly better sketchy result.

So there must be a way to control how many nodes AF Des generates when you draw a line. Anybody know if there is a setting to tell AF Des to create more nodes along a line as you draw it? 

Also attached is a page from one of our reports - and the reason why we bought the entire suite of AF Des/Pub/Photo products is so we can edit all aspects of the report - text etc in Pub, switch to Photo for touch-ups and switch to Des so we can create sketchy, editable vector diagrams at the right size right on the page. Save SO much valuable time in our busy office. 

This particular report was done on PagePlus before we got AF in the office - the dwgs were done on Skethcbook Pro and we had to try and guess the line weights which is why when they come into the publishing programme and are scaled to fit nicely on the page the line weights are not consistent. 

Which is why I want to find a way to create sketchy lines in AF Des. 

[Old Bruce]

27 minutes ago, Abraham said:

While on the top right is the same attempt when I have zoomed right into the canvas, for some reason the result is a lot more squiggly / sketchy. 

I seem to recall that the smoothing while drawing is done taking into consideration the zoom factor.

[Abraham]

Hi Everyone , 

Can anyone shed any further light on this issue for me?

thx

Abs 

[PixelPest]

What issue? And why not use a brush on your vector line?

[Abraham]

Dear PP

Thanks for the reply - but not what I need - read the above posts - I need the pencil vector line to not smooth out and remain sketchy - please see above. 

Thx

Abs

[PixelPest]

The Pencil tool should help then.

[loukash]

On 7/31/2021 at 11:20 AM, h_d said:

copy and paste into Affinity Photo

Why so complicated?
File > Edit in Photo
The Affinity file format is app agnostic.

[iconoclast]

It think the best tool for it in Designer will be the Pencil Tool. At first it is important to deactivate the Stabilisator. But it seems that your right: Designer seems to smoothen the stroke a bit anyway. I can't see any other adjustments in Designer that could help. So it might be the best way to drink coffee til your hand shivers, zoom in a little (because that makes it easier) and draw slow.