Warp Tool behaviour illogical/unexpected. Straight lines turn into curved ones. (Affinity Designer)

[funksy]

I'm fairly new to Affinity Designer. Like most people, I come from the Adobe world. Soon after starting with AD I started to miss the free transform tool found in the competitor's software. I found an old thread in which for over five years people were demanding a free transform tool to be included in Designer. Then with the introduction of v2, those demands seemed to have been answered, in form of the Warp Group feature.

The Warp Group is a really cool and powerful feature which, on the surface, seems to do the task of the free transform tool. I did notice some unexpected behaviour with it though.

The warp tool curves straight lines when it shouldn't. The image below best illustrates my issue with the tool. In the example I'm warping a simple triangle (with straight sides and sharp nodes) with the Quad Warp tool. I'm expecting the warp tool to keep the sides of the triangle straight. Instead it curves them. To me, this is not the expected behaviour, nor is it how the free transform in other software work and I think it should be fixed.

 

With the Perspective Warp the effect isn't as strong, but it can still be seen (image below).

For comparison, the image below shows the free transform behaviour in both Photoshop and Illustrator. So I ask: why should Affinity Designer's Warp behaviour be any different? So far I've really enjoyed exploring AD and its features, but little discrepancies like this in the tools are quite frustrating to me.

Edited January 18, 2023 by funksy
added tags, edited title

[MEB]

Hi @funksy,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your report. I'm logging this to be looked at.

[lepr]

This curving distortion has been a problem for a project I'm working on in 2.1.0, and will impact more that I have lined up.

I notice there is (at this particular moment) no tag with a log number attached to this thread. Has this definitely been logged for the developers' attention?

[lepr]

I notice there is (at this particular moment) no tag with a log number attached to this thread. Has this definitely been logged for the developers' attention?

[Dimmo]

Similar problem when you add nodes to a shape in warp, new nodes only have smooth or cusp options and not like a regular shape that has sharp, smooth and smart 

[lepr]

1 minute ago, Dimmo said:

Similar problem when you add nodes to a shape in warp, new nodes only have smooth or cusp options and not like a regular shape that has sharp, smooth and smart 

That's not related to the problem in this thread.

[lepr]

12 hours ago, lepr said:

I notice there is (at this particular moment) no tag with a log number attached to this thread. Has this definitely been logged for the developers' attention?

Forget it. I'll make another thread as an actual bug report to see if that gets the attention of a developer.

[Dan C]

@lepr,

Apologies, it appears as though my colleague forgot to 'tag' this thread however I can confirm this is logged with our development team already and has been verified as requiring improvement in a future update.

I hope this clears things up!

[_Th]

On 1/18/2023 at 7:55 AM, funksy said:

The warp tool curves straight lines when it shouldn't.

Trying hard to understand why—or even how—it creates curved lines when none existed. Serif has gotten SO much right with the suite. I love all the new features and updates, but these basics, these "little things," really wreak havoc on the professional's workflow and hinder more people from making the switch from that other software. I know there's a lot of clamor for AI additions but, personally, I say this stuff has to get nailed down first.

This basic functionality really should be addressed ASAP.