Affinity Designer: texture/image overlay

[af_user]

Dear community

 

I'm struggling to find a solution in AD with overlaying some vector shapes with an image. Say my canvas has various shape objects such as circles, rects, triangles and what not and I want to overlay them all with one single big image. 

 

Now it is trivial in AD to create a mask by duplicating all of the geometry that needs to be overlaid and drag/drop into a layer mask (the right edge of layer icon). This will mask out any empty space between the objects and give the exact visual result I need.

 

Now the problem I have is how do I rasterise all this objects (each is a separate vector layer) with the overlaid image on top of it? So that I can move them around preserving the overlaid image?

 

An obvious solution is to repeat this same masking procedure described above for each object separately then rasterise the result. Which works. 

 

But I have hundreds and hundreds of these simple shape objects so overlaying one at a time is not an option as it will take me ages.

 

Any ideas please? 

[JimmyJack]

Okay, I might have a solution. But before I try and type it out....a couple questions.

 

Are your shapes all separated from each other? I mean in terms of space on the page (I realize there are on their own in the layers panel).

Or do they overlap? 

 

What kind of overlay are we talking about? A clean image across all object? Or is there a blending method involved that gives each shape a different effect?

[A_B_C]

Hi af_user,

 

I must admit, I am struggling a bit with a proper understanding of what you want to achieve. You seem to be talking about overlays in one place (“I want to overlay them all with one single big image”), while in another place you are saying that the space between your vector objects should be empty or white (“this will mask out any empty space between the objects and give the exact visual result I need”). This is not meant as a criticism, please don’t misunderstand me, I just want to understand your objectives in order to suggest a proper way of achieving them. I believe JoePoe understood your words in the first sense, while I am inclined to understand them in the second one … please help us out …

 

Do you want to achieve something like my example below?  :)

Kind regards, Alex 

[af_user]

Sorry guys, you are right. The description makes it impossible to understand what I'm asking for :(  I should have used a different example not tied to specifics of my project. Please let me try to put it in a different way.

 

The closest analogy that springs to mind is the classic puzzle game. You have your puzzle pieces (as vectors) positioned in the right order on the canvas. Each piece is on its own vector layer.

 

Then you have your overlay image that you want to put on top of the puzzle pieces. 

 

The task is to somehow slice the overlay image in such a way that the slices completely repeat the form and position of each piece and can be moved around individually.

 

A random puzzle image off the web:

 

[A_B_C]

Okay,

 

I have an easy, though only “nearly precise” method for you:

• Step 1. Create your puzzle pieces as vector shapes, but make sure they they don’t intersect pairwise. That means, make sure that each two of them don’t intersect and do not share a common border. A fraction of a pixel will suffice as a distance between two of them (that’s the “nearly precise” part).
• Step 2. Add them together using a boolean Add.
• Step 3. Now make your image a child of the result of this Boolean Add operation.
• Step 4. Select the parent layer and apply a Boolean Divide.

That should work …  :)

Alex

Puzzle.afdesign

[af_user]

Thanks a ton A_B_C!

 

That works a treat in many cases (including the puzzle example) but fails in some where you have an inner/outer shape. Please see the attached test1.afdesign. Despite the shapes not touching, on the final 'divide' step it will fill the whole outer shape :(

 

test1.afdesign

[A_B_C]

You are right … that seems to be related to a known bug (or at least, some would call it a bug) in the Divide operation:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/16941-divide-tool-issue-in-ad/?p=77461

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/12629-affinity-designer-customer-beta-1351/?p=56676

 

But I am sure this will be fixed some time in the future … do you hear us, Matt?  :D  ;)

Kind regards, Alex

[JimmyJack]

Yup, that's the method I was using.

 

and

 

Yup, I was afraid of that (overlapping/enclosed objects)

 

and

 

Yup, Divide is a bit screwy. Very frustrating. Matt says he IS aware.

 

The next question is.... how many "special cases" do you have? Even a couple dozen might be worthwhile to re-subtract on an individual basis. If we're talking typography Counter spaces..... fugetaboutit.

Or (and I hate to suggest this) if your background is all one color give all the overyling geometry that fill... -_- . 

 

Edit: ABC.... for some reason I didn't see your link after my post on that thread. Ha indeed  :D!

[af_user]

Unfortunately I have quite a few of those. The geometry is quite complex due to nature of the project. It is procedurally generated and exported from an SVG.

 

Any ideas guys on when the divide issue might be addressed? Is it months away?