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Pen tool dash line style - rotate dots


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Hi, I'm using the pen tool to draw some lines similar to a topstitch, it all works fine but I wonder if there is a way to rotate the dots, in cases where don't want them following the straight line. I attached an image, in red my draft idea.

I did not find a way to do this but I think it would be a good feature to have.

 

 

Screenshot 2022-07-16 140356.png

Affinity Photo / Designer. PC Win10. Website: https://www.evargas.art

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An alternative workflow could use curved text

… with certain characters like or | or /   (and kerning to set their distance)

243340288_dashedstrokeascurvedtext.thumb.jpg.629e065935d5f3f1cbf0880af1014068.jpg


… or with pinned objects

389591193_dashedstrokepinned1.jpg.7fa01b7dbb6d5370958036c3935fbf9d.jpg

867355802_dashedstrokepinned2.thumb.jpg.81e8cd0823c0af8ebd6a1d6f290e1ca7.jpg

… while objects could optionally be instances of a Symbol, which would transfer any change to all instances synchronously.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Thanks thomaso, good to know there are other ways to achieve it too!

I read somewhere in the forum that Affinity does not have a specific tool for seam lines  / topstitches, but it seems we can have a lot of variation by combining different layers with different rotations and size of dots, that's great. My idea is to use it as a mask for later applying a more complex fill over it, I use 3DCoat Textura for PBR textures, which will then add color/normal/roughness maps.

Affinity Photo / Designer. PC Win10. Website: https://www.evargas.art

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On 7/16/2022 at 10:10 AM, E.V. said:

Hi, I'm using the pen tool to draw some lines similar to a topstitch,

Sad to say that one can be as old as I am and still have these massive gaps in my knowledge. What is a topstitch?

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

What is a topstitch?

I quick Google web search gets lots of results, among them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topstitch & https://blog.treasurie.com/top-stitching-tutorial/

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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Yes the meaning is that from Wikipedia, it’s a visible line outside a garment. Some people sculpt this then later “bake” it into a texture map. I’m seeing what I can do to avoid the sculpting part.

Thanks Jimmy for commenting on the text path, for now I’m more inclined to just go with the pen tool and simple shapes, but I’ll keep an eye on that too for more complex shapes.

Affinity Photo / Designer. PC Win10. Website: https://www.evargas.art

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Another creative way is to use a dotted stroke with very large stroke size, (100px), and very small dash and gap sizes (0.1).

It does not behave nicely on sharp curves, the lines degrade to trapezoid shape.

543EC5D1-DE1B-4DB6-8B8E-2796F87FEF0B.png

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

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Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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On 7/17/2022 at 7:47 AM, thomaso said:

… or with pinned objects

Is pinning available in Photo/Designer? I see it in the Publisher web manual but I don't use Publisher :(

In Photo/Designer going to "view/Studio" there is no "Pinning".

image.png.77e85e7335f81e7119873adf1ad8811f.png

 

The curved text approach looks good too, it behaves well in straight lines, I like that, maybe with some custom font it can do crazy things.

image.png.cbcad826aa3e51cdd7cbd1901956cf3d.png

 

Edited by E.V.
Added curved text comment

Affinity Photo / Designer. PC Win10. Website: https://www.evargas.art

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Pinning is a Publisher only feature.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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4 hours ago, E.V. said:

Is pinning available in Photo/Designer? I see it in the Publisher web manual but I don't use Publisher :(

Doesn't matter for your use at all, in Designer you simply paste it into a text 'frame' (=curve) and it creates that "inline" object, too. (it's just that I made my example in Apub where it gets pinned automatically).

1431165970_symbolontextcurve.thumb.jpg.16b0687a670efb9b77c9e7656e3cf8e7.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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