The Shiny Chiseled Bevel …

[Dr_No]

Hello again, and welcome to the Wide World of Wondering Questions! Today's Big Question is:

How can one create bright, shiny, chiseled beveled edges in Affinity Designer?

It's quite easy in Illustrator, but I have not yet found the Majickal Settings allowing one to make sharp-edged, shiny, reflective(simulated) beveled edges on text. It is quite maddening, as there are some FX I'd really really really like to apply sharp beveling to, but so far I can only get Affinity Designer to make soft, rounded, ‘glow’-y fade bevels. It is maddening. I've attached a screencap of a project currently in-process that would be ever so much improved with shiny crisp beveling. Please advise if you have the recipe for achieving the Secret Sauce result … Thanks so much for your input.

[thomaso]

Assuming your screenshot shows the result you do not want because of the soft effect in the fill color (black): Try a 3D Effect and set its "Soft" to 0, for instance:
(the small version has a stroke applied but now the effect appears not to work properly in the letter 'N')

[Dr_No]

Tomaso – thanks so much for that tip. Is there any way to prevent the INTERIOR angles (see the inside corners of the ‘N’ where verticals meet diagonals) from rounding off? Other than that, this appears to do exactly what I'm attempting to do. Now if only the interior angles can be sharpened up like they can be in Illustrator … all the letters except the ‘N’ look great, tho’ …

[thomaso]

Though the stroke options (join, align) can influence the stroke angles … 

… I am not able to fix the rounded interior angles in the letters (not only 'N'). They appear to be caused by the specular part of the effect, no idea why. – Maybe a bug?

[Dr_No]

Thomaso … that's the same effect I noticed when experimenting with your solution. I agree the specularity seems to play a part in the ‘rounding’ , but it's probably not the sole - or maybe not even the actual - cause of the failure to create sharp / angular bevels. While playing around with the settings, I noticed that the use of the Outline tool seemed to make the problem worse, not better. Where the outline was positioned also seemed to make no differents, but Outside seemed to have the most noticeable effect. The Profile function in the 3D window also seemed to have a bearing on the intensity of the sharpness / roundness at the joins, but I found no Profile able to eliminate it. Thanks again for your input and testing.

[firstdefence]

Affinity products aren't the only apps that round off the internal corners, Logoist 4 does it, and a few others that can generate beveled text. Illustrator is by far the best vector app at beveled text and to get close or better you would have to wander into the 3D world and use such as Blender, which can be a bit daunting when a beginner. I mention blender because it's free.

Illustrator bevelled edge

The only other way to get a decent sharp internal bevel is to literally draw it. You can use the contour tool to shrink a duplicate of the text and use a sharp contour type, then use the pen tool to created the sharp angles on the internal corners.

Affinity pseudo basic chisel bevel, this can obviously be refined with gradients etc.

[thomaso]

5 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

You can use the contour tool

Does the Contour Tool create for you consistent, reliable results? With this L curve it seems to react rather coincidentally to me …

BTW, do you know whether the rounded inner angles of the 3D Effect & Outline Effect have been discussed before, respectively got logged as issue?

[Dr_No]

firstdefence … Thanks for the heads-up on options like Blender. While being able to achieve the beveled result directly in-program would be the preferred option, there may ultimately be no way around avoiding the need to use a 3rd-party app. Alternatively, one can still use Illustrator to create the beveled type and (a) export it as a .png or (b) export it as a native .ai file and open that in Designer (all the while keeping fingers crossed that the attributes won't change in the process). 

thomaso … I’ve tried the Contour tool with very mixed results - and I can't pin down what precisely causes the inability to successfully replicate instances. It's more or less a ‘sometimes’ kind of tool — sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In short: good concept, needs work.

[firstdefence]

22 hours ago, thomaso said:

Does the Contour Tool create for you consistent, reliable results? With this L curve it seems to react rather coincidentally to me …

BTW, do you know whether the rounded inner angles of the 3D Effect & Outline Effect have been discussed before, respectively got logged as issue?

Hi, as far as I am aware, the issue hasn't been reported as a bug. I don't even think this would be considered a bug but a consequence of the method, when you look at other apps that apply bevels it appears to be an accepted part of the effect. Adobe Illustrator goes up and beyond with the bevelling, they have probably gleaned quite sophisticated code from their library of software and I would expect nothing less from them.

As far as the contour tool goes, it needs work, if you adjust the contour, bake it and then adjust it again you get all manner of corruptions. I'm sure this has been logged to be looked at.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Hi, as far as I am aware, the issue hasn't been reported as a bug. I don't even think this would be considered a bug but a consequence of the method,

I am not well experienced with that tool in any app – but should it not export at least the Affinity shapes identically in a PDF? Below the left object looks most normal of the three in Affinity – while in an exported PDF it appears as most disturbed – whereas the right object looks the same in both files, though it is the most disturbed in Affinity.

[Dr_No]

firstdefence and thomaso … Thanks for your examination of the Contour tool while we’re in this discussion of beveling and things associated with achieving a decent-looking bevel we can be proud to present to clients. The examples furnished by thomaso are excellent illustrations [sic] of why I no longer use the Contour tool - it's not predictable. As for rotten beveling being an accepted part of the effect, that's wide open for debate. Anyone remember Macromedia's Freehand MXa … ? Beautiful bevels. It also was the first (I believe) to introduce movable ‘paste inside’ shapes. After Adobe bought them, I hoped its best features would be incorporated into Illustrator but no … Adobe just wanted to kill the baby competitor in its crib. Perhaps more Affinity Design users can share their experiences with creating decent bevels without rounding … ? Thanks again.

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Hi, as far as I am aware, the issue hasn't been reported as a bug.

2 hours ago, Dr_No said:

the Contour tool - it's not predictable. As for rotten beveling being an accepted part of the effect, that's wide open for debate.

There are some bug reports from early 2021, tagged as afd-4808. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=afd-4808

Strangely, some of them only show a screen redraw problem, while others concern the calculated geometry.

Since the geometry issues of the contour tool seem to be related to certain angles, I assume that the Contour tool & the corner issue of the Bevel/Emboss effect, respectively the 3D effect have common culprits in their shape calculating algorithm. If true, this might make it needless to discuss the issue of the latter separately.

[Medical Officer Bones]

Blender was mentioned here. Since text in a 3d app is "real" geometry, bevels behave like "real" bevels as well.

And lighting and materials are of course completely controllable. The following example is a screenshot from the 3d viewport: it works in real-time. No waiting required for rendering to be finished.

Although bevels in 3d can go horribly wrong too...

Anyway, lettering with bevels is very simple to achieve in Blender.

[prophet]

Seems like the Bevel FX should have the same controls as the Contour Tool