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Affinity Designer: Curving Objects.


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Hi,

I created a very simple vector drawing as an exercise to work out how I can curve an ellipse and text around another ellipse.

I haven't quite worked out how to do it.  Is there a way I can curve the '8' and ellipse so that it looks a little more realistic?

Thanks.

= Steve

 

 

 

EightBall.png

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There is probably no easy way to do this ‘properly’ in Designer without a lot of manual manipulation.
It’s probably possible but you will need to practice with the Node Tool a lot and have a good ‘eye’ for 3D.

You can probably do it with Photo (maybe Mesh Warp?) but that might also require a lot of practice and the result will be rasterised.
If you really need to do this, especially if you need to do it often, then I would suggest using an application which can manipulate 3D designs.

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Hopefully, Vector distortions will be added at some point, which will make this sort of thing a breeze, and I do quite a lot of vector distortions in my stuff, and my recommendation for a workaround is an app called VectorStyler, which makes a decent companion app to Affinity and covers just about everything that's currently missing from Designer when comparing to Illustrator, so this sort of thing is just a copy and paste away, I have saved distortions for a few things including a ball (see screen grab vid) one of my favourites that I've used quite a bit is a T-shirt with folds and wrinkles where I have a VS distortion mesh that I can just paste in a vector T-shirt design and it distorts to the folds and as it's none destructive it adapts to the wrinkles in the shirt as you move it around - really look forward to getting this sort of ability in Designer but I'm just glad I have this sort of thing covered - if you're on PC Inkscape can also do what you're aiming for (so I gather)   

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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13 hours ago, GarryP said:

There is probably no easy way to do this ‘properly’ in Designer without a lot of manual manipulation.
It’s probably possible but you will need to practice with the Node Tool a lot and have a good ‘eye’ for 3D.

You can probably do it with Photo (maybe Mesh Warp?) but that might also require a lot of practice and the result will be rasterised.
If you really need to do this, especially if you need to do it often, then I would suggest using an application which can manipulate 3D designs.

Thanks Garry.  I expected as much.

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11 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Hopefully, Vector distortions will be added at some point, which will make this sort of thing a breeze, and I do quite a lot of vector distortions in my stuff, and my recommendation for a workaround is an app called VectorStyler, which makes a decent companion app to Affinity and covers just about everything that's currently missing from Designer when comparing to Illustrator, so this sort of thing is just a copy and paste away, I have saved distortions for a few things including a ball (see screen grab vid) one of my favourites that I've used quite a bit is a T-shirt with folds and wrinkles where I have a VS distortion mesh that I can just paste in a vector T-shirt design and it distorts to the folds and as it's none destructive it adapts to the wrinkles in the shirt as you move it around - really look forward to getting this sort of ability in Designer but I'm just glad I have this sort of thing covered - if you're on PC Inkscape can also do what you're aiming for (so I gather)   

Wow! I love that video.

Thank you.  I'll check out VectorStyler.

 

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11 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Hopefully, Vector distortions will be added at some point, which will make this sort of thing a breeze, and I do quite a lot of vector distortions in my stuff, and my recommendation for a workaround is an app called VectorStyler, which makes a decent companion app to Affinity and covers just about everything that's currently missing from Designer when comparing to Illustrator, so this sort of thing is just a copy and paste away, I have saved distortions for a few things including a ball (see screen grab vid) one of my favourites that I've used quite a bit is a T-shirt with folds and wrinkles where I have a VS distortion mesh that I can just paste in a vector T-shirt design and it distorts to the folds and as it's none destructive it adapts to the wrinkles in the shirt as you move it around - really look forward to getting this sort of ability in Designer but I'm just glad I have this sort of thing covered - if you're on PC Inkscape can also do what you're aiming for (so I gather)   

I can't work out how you did the distortion and what effect you used.

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I don't know an easy way in Designer too, but in Photo, I would give the Lens Distortion  (? - not sure at the moment if it is the right name of the filter) a try. But it is important that you do it to the eight and the whole sphere of the billard ball to get it distorted relative to it.

As an alternative I could recommend GIMP (free but pixelbased), that has a filter called "Map to object" or so. With it you can project images to different object types (sphere, square, torus...), as far as I remember. If you are interested, I could tell more tomorrow.

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5 hours ago, iconoclast said:

I don't know an easy way in Designer too, but in Photo, I would give the Lens Distortion  (? - not sure at the moment if it is the right name of the filter) a try. But it is important that you do it to the eight and the whole sphere of the billard ball to get it distorted relative to it.

As an alternative I could recommend GIMP (free but pixelbased), that has a filter called "Map to object" or so. With it you can project images to different object types (sphere, square, torus...), as far as I remember. If you are interested, I could tell more tomorrow.

Thanks.  I've decided to try it in VectorStyler as I don't want a raster image.  I just need to work out how Dazmondo77 did it as it's not clear to me from the video he posted.

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2 hours ago, Speed said:

I've decided to try it in VectorStyler

Theres more of a learning curve to VS and layers work slightly different to Affinity - you'll just need to experiment and have a play around with all the tools.

Here's the VS sphere template thing that I made - not very straight forward to create from scratch but I could show you via a screen grab vid if you want?

Sphere map.vstyler

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Speed said:

Thanks.  I've decided to try it in VectorStyler as I don't want a raster image.  I just need to work out how Dazmondo77 did it as it's not clear to me from the video he posted.

Yes, probably a good choice. I just checked the filter in GIMP and it doesn't create an authentic looking distortion. The same by the way in G'MIC.

But one additional tip: google for photos of black-8-billard-balls to compare your own creation to them. I say that because I noticed that also the shadow and the highlighting of your example don't look really authentic - concerning the perspective. I found some photos with very nice reflections on the billard balls. You'll possibly like to try something like that.

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1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Theres more of a learning curve to VS and layers work slightly different to Affinity - you'll just need to experiment and have a play around with all the tools.

Here's the VS sphere template thing that I made - not very straight forward to create from scratch but I could show you via a screen grab vid if you want?

Sphere map.vstyler 13.87 kB · 1 download

Thanks for the template. A video would be great. Thank you.

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45 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

Yes, probably a good choice. I just checked the filter in GIMP and it doesn't create an authentic looking distortion. The same by the way in G'MIC.

But one additional tip: google for photos of black-8-billard-balls to compare your own creation to them. I say that because I noticed that also the shadow and the highlighting of your example don't look really authentic - concerning the perspective. I found some photos with very nice reflections on the billard balls. You'll possibly like to try something like that.

Thanks for the tip. I wasn't trying to create anything accurate. It was just an experiment in trying to curve the text and white ellipse.

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6 hours ago, Speed said:

Thanks for the template. A video would be great. Thank you.

Here ya go boss - hope it makes sense - just copy and paste between APub (designer persona) and VS.

As you'll see from the video, complex vector work slows down a bit in VectorStyler but works great - and retains all your colours and spots between apps - really hope we get something similar in Affinity in the future --- Hope this helps

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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10 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Theres more of a learning curve to VS and layers work slightly different to Affinity...

I admit that I have spent very little time trying to learn how to use VS, but for me the biggest problem with learning it is that the toolbar icons do not make a lot of sense, or suggest what they are for, at least to me. 

I really wish it had an option like in Affinity to show both icons & names, because as it is I spend all my time trying to figure out what does what.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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7 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Here ya go boss - hope it makes sense - just copy and paste between APub (designer persona) and VS.

As you'll see from the video, complex vector work slows down a bit in VectorStyler but works great - and retains all your colours and spots between apps - really hope we get something similar in Affinity in the future --- Hope this helps

Thank you very much!

 

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5 hours ago, R C-R said:

I admit that I have spent very little time trying to learn how to use VS, but for me the biggest problem with learning it is that the toolbar icons do not make a lot of sense, or suggest what they are for, at least to me. 

I really wish it had an option like in Affinity to show both icons & names, because as it is I spend all my time trying to figure out what does what.

It certainly is a bit different.  I'm struggling a little bit with the difference but hopefully I'll get there.

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14 hours ago, Speed said:

It certainly is a bit different.  I'm struggling a little bit with the difference but hopefully I'll get there.

Yes Speed - not a total pleasure to use and you really need to dig in to discover a lot of features, but for me, Vector distortions, true Vector brushes, Vector pattern fills, gradient mesh, simplify path and the ability to print CMYK proofs to postscript devices are taken for granted necessities that I got used to using years ago starting with Freehand 8 - I'm just glad I now have a tool that's part of my workflow, which enables me to get jobs out, without too much discomfort -- saying that, I'm an Affinity fanboy (former Adobe fanboy) that eagerly awaits these features in a future version of Designer 

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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@Dazmondo77 thank you for sharing how you did the spherical distortion in VS. I will give that a try as I could find many uses for that feature. Would you be willing to share more about how you did the realistic wrinkles and folds in the shirt mockup template? I would love to create something like that to use for my work as I design a lot of shirts. Would you be willing to share this video (and hopefully the shirt mockup video too) on the VS forum tutorial section? I'd be grateful!

I agree that VS is advanced and has a steeper learning curve than designer. I think part of the complexity of VS, especially compared to affinity designer is the massive number of features VS has that affinity lacks. There's a certain value and pleasure in using a simpler program. I was trying to think what makes the UI in affinity more of a pleasure to use. I like way the panels in affinity move smoothly and can be easily rearranged- this is an area VS needs work on for sure...

I'm a little biased because after so many years of using Illustrator, the interface in VM is similar and was similar in layout. I know a couple planned updates in VM will help the user experience like the ability to reduce panels to symbols and also saveable customized panel arrangements like in illustrator. Hoping some of the clunkiness in the panels gets fixed also.

@R C-R I'll have to look and see what you mean about affinity panels showing both names and icons. I know there had been discussion about how to make VS easier for beginning users. Right now if you hover over the tool in the tool bar, it tells you it's name 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

@R C-R I'll have to look and see what you mean about affinity panels showing both names and icons.

Not panels, the Toolbar that runs along the top of the UI. For that, you have a choice of just icons or icons & text.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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15 hours ago, R C-R said:

Not panels, the Toolbar that runs along the top of the UI. For that, you have a choice of just icons or icons & text.

Currently in Vectorstyler, if you just hover over the tool, it tells you the name of the task and the function description. Are you preferring the name and description are always displayed?
My cursor arrow is hidden by the screen shot app, but you can see the description right below the tool

 

1450165639_BLD2022-07-11at09_26_40.thumb.png.6a1baec6b6bc22941e13b760dfcdf8fe.png

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1 hour ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Currently in Vectorstyler, if you just hover over the tool, it tells you the name of the task and the function description. Are you preferring the name and description are always displayed?

I would like to have the option of having the name & icon to be visible without having to wait for the tooltip to appear, just like in the Affinity apps.

Also, if there is preference in VS like there is in the Affinity apps to adjust the delay before tooltips appear, I have yet to find it. Shortening that also would help when learning to use the app because as it is, I spend a lot of time hovering over most of the toolbar icons waiting for their tooltips to appear so I can figure out what they are supposed to do.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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4 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

@R C-R yes the time delay on when the description appears upon hovering over an icon can be adjusted in the preferences panel.

Thanks! I finally found that as the last item in Preferences > User Interface. It is adjustable from 2 seconds max all the way down to 0.0 seconds! I set it to 0.3 seconds for now.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Boldlinedesign here's a Vid to demonstrate the T-shirt vector fold distortions you asked about, copy pasting back n' forth between Pub and VS - I now have it setup as as my goto template for mocking up my T-shirt designs - I had to create the folded T-shirt myself by taking bits from a bunch of different T-shirt pix and trying to combine them to get the folds looking more like what I originally had in mind, so I don't really want to share it as I've already used it on album artwork - with this method, I can knock up an half decent mock-up in a few clicks, as all you have to do is place the t-shirt design inside the VS group with the live Mesh distortion FX and then paste the whole group back into Pub with the vector distortion applied - works for me anyway - hope you find it useful?

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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