Envelope distort – Arch

[NK_01]

Hello everyone,

Trying to replace Adobe Illustrator with Affinity Designer in the long term, I stumbled upon an important adjustment I could not replicate with Affinity Designer yet – not even with the V2 mesh distort function.

How can I achieve an "Arch"-distortion as shown in the first screenshot (done by Adobe Illustrator) with Affinity Designer?
I only managed to get an "Arc"-distortion, but as you see in the second screenshot it doesn't bring the effect I want.
Manually adjusting is also not an option because it just distorts the corners. Since the handles are not straight corners, it also gives the text an unwanted curvy look and does not transform the other letters upright (like in the "Arch" effect).

Does anyone have a hint how to achieve this effect?

[GarryP]

Try the Quad warp type and drag the centre of the top and bottom bounding lines up from the middle.
Use one or more Guides to help you do the dragging (even if there’s no snap to guides in the Warp Group functionality, at the moment).

See attached video where I use a Rectangle and a Guide to help me find the drag start/end points.

Edited April 4, 2023 by GarryP
Added video.

[NK_01]

Thank you very much for the immediate and very helpful reply.

Snap to guides or objects – like you mentioned – would be a great feature for mesh transformations that hopefully will be implemented in the future.

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.

Node snapping for Warp Groups is coming with V2.1, but I don’t know if this also applies to dragging the line - as in my video - as I’m not using the current beta which has that functionality.

See here for more information: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/181198-vector-warp-nodes-now-obey-snapping/