Rotateable Transforms

[JET_Affinity]

Unlike some mainstream drawing programs (FreeHand, Illustrator), Affinity doesn't provide Tools (i.e., icons in the Toolbox) for tactile (dragging) common transformations (scale, rotate, skew). Instead, it only provides bounding box handles.

Here's a triangular path:

It's been arbitrarily rotated from its original orientation. Unlike Inkscape, Affinity's bounding box 'remembers' a selection's rotation:

Like Canvas, it does let you switch a rotated bounding box back to its as-created pagewise (vertical / horizontal) orientation:

The bounding box provides no less than five rotation handles:

 

 

We can change the object's 'remembered' rotation by rotating it again and invoking the Reset Rotation command. Thereafter, clicking the Cycle Selection Box button switches between horizontal-vertical and the new 'remembered' rotation:

But what if I want to scale the object in some direction other than the sides of the often entirely irrelevant bounding box? For example, in the direction perpendicular to the rightmost side of this triangle?:

Why can't at least ONE of those ridiculously redundant five rotation handles (the 'lollypop' one) be used (even if by means of pressing a keyboard modifier) to rotate the bounding box itself, relative to the selection, and thereby have that become the 'remembered' bounding box orientation?

To illustrate, I've just used a simple triangle. But this ability would be a boon to all kinds of selections with any number of objects in any number of orientations. In technical drawings, for example, 'tilting' objects drawn on a plane, is a matter of scaling them in the direction of their 'thrust line' (a line perpendicular to their plane). But this is just as applicable to countless situations even in freeform 'eyeballed' drawing.

JET

(I intended to post this as a Feature Request. Moderator, please feel free to move it there.)

[fde101]

@JET_Affinity, on the context toolbar while using the move tool there is a "Cycle Selection Box" button that switches between the bounding box that follows the rotation (as displayed above) and one that matches the current orientation of the object on the page.  This also adjusts the Transform panel to match the displayed bounding box so you can use it either way.  The other transforms match the orientation resulting from this, so you can skew or scale based on either the object's as-rotated orientation or its on-page orientation.

One thing that does seem to be missing is an option to align the bounding box to the display when the page itself is rotated - that is, if I rotate the display of the page, the bounding box when using this feature can be aligned parallel to the page, but not to the screen, so if I want to scale parallel to the screen rather than the page I don't currently see a convenient way to do that.

[JET_Affinity]

On 9/14/2021 at 5:53 AM, fde101 said:

there is a "Cycle Selection Box" button

Fde,

Please go back and re-read my post carefully.

I'm well-aware of the Cycle Selection Box. I even pointed out that feature when I said:

"Like Canvas, it does let you switch a rotated bounding box back to its as-created pagewise (vertical / horizontal) orientation"

What I'm talking about is the ability to rotate the bounding box relative to the selection so as to thereby orient the bounding box's scale handles in a direction pertinent to the actual artwork.

The point is to be able to scale a selection that is already rotated as needed in the direction that it needs to be scaled.

JET

[fde101]

Ok, yes, somehow I misread that.

I'm not sure that I had come across the ability to arbitrarily rotate the bounding box before, but I suppose I can see where that might be useful.

One way to work around this to some degree would be to work out the angle you want to rotate the bounding box by, rotate the object by the opposite amount, cycle the bounding box, then rotate it back - this leaves the bounding box at an angle which is not related to the object itself, but it is lost when you deselect the object, so not entirely optimal.

[JET_Affinity]

 

On 9/18/2021 at 8:24 AM, fde101 said:

I'm not sure that I had come across the ability to arbitrarily rotate the bounding box before, but I suppose I can see where that might be useful.

This is competitive low-hanging fruit if there ever was such.

Obviously, transformations (scale, rotate, skew, translate) should of course be relative to the artwork in-progress.

But we've been so conditioned to the tyrannical vertical-horizontal fixation of nearly every feature of this genre of drawing programs that the obvious is overlooked, even by the users. Think about it: It's almost as if drawing software UI developers think 2D doesn't stand for "two dimensions", but merely 'two directions.'

A precious few 'escapes' --features such as snap-to angled guides and rotated grids--have appeared over the decades. Some attempts are better  than others. But they all fall short.

On 9/18/2021 at 8:24 AM, fde101 said:

One way to work around this to some degree would be to work out the angle you want...

I've been at this vector-based illustration thing since FreeHand 1. Believe me, I know what the cumbersome workarounds are. Thus the feature request.

Quote

...this leaves the bounding box at an angle which is not related to the object...

Exactly. That's the problem. And the low-hanging fruit. As I pointed out, Affinity does at least provide what Canvas has for decades: it can 'remember' the rotation of a selection.

But unlike FreeHand and Illustrator, Affinity does not provide transform tools. It only provides its tactile (i.e., dragged-on-the-drawing) transform features as bounding-box handles.

Well, any illustrator who doesn't just draw boxes needs to be able to perform translations in any direction relative to the artwork, not just to a rectangular bounding box.

Illustrator provides both transform tools and bounding box transform handles. And it, too, rotates an object's bounding box when the object is rotated. Inkscape doesn't even do that. Inkscape's bounding box stays parallel to the page edges even when an object is rotated.

FreeHand avoided continually cluttering the interface with bounding boxes. What most Illustrator users don't know is that FreeHand's transform tools were better than Illustrators in that they worked better (more powerfully and more controllable) when dragging at arbitrary angles.

Again: Affinity provides a ridiculous five rotation handles on its bounding boxes, all of which do exactly the same thing. Honestly, who needs that?

Meanwhile, try this: Select something. Show the Transform Anchor. Drag it to somewhere other than the selection's center. Now drag one of the scale handles. The Transform Anchor is ignored when scaling. To make drag-scaling act at least similar to what Illustrator's Scale Tool can do, you need to temporarily draw something else to serve as the 'transform anchor' and add it to the selection. Don't try to tell me Affinity's selection/transform interface doesn't still need work.

But as always, Illustrator is hardly anything to which to aspire. like Affinity, its rotated bounding boxes also cannot be rotated about its selection in order to orient the transform handles to the direction in which the selection needs to be scaled. In fact, I don't know of any program in this competitive genre that empowers the user to re-orient the bounding box relative to the selection. It's time one did! It would 'transform' Affinity's scale handles from sub-par to superior in one elegant, unobtrusive functional enhancement.

I don't want Affinity to be a cheap 'me, too' clone of Illustrator. I want it to become something better.

Low hanging fruit.

JET

[fde101]

6 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

The Transform Anchor is ignored when scaling

You need to hold down a modifier key to scale around the center, or use the point transform tool.

 

6 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

I don't want Affinity to be a cheap 'me, too' clone of Illustrator. I want it to become something better.

It already is for many of us, though it certainly does have a lot of room to grow, and a number of rough edges to smooth out.