Spiral Tool

[Frozen Death Knight]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Fun fact:
Copying a Spiral from v2.3 to a v2.2.1 document will keep it as a "Spiral" object, albeit altering the curve slightly. And with no options to manipulate the spiral any furter apart from the standard options available for any vector shape.

So apparently some basic spiral support was already present in v2.x under the hood.

My guess is that it just converts it to a regular vector curve, just like it does when copy+pasting from Inkscape/other vector program inside Affinity. I use Inkscape occassionally just for the spiral shape and the vectors remain compatible across the board by copy+pasting.

[loukash]

Just now, Frozen Death Knight said:

it just converts it to a regular vector curve

No, it's a "Spiral" object shape. It does not convert to regular curve. Just try for yourself.
That's not necessarily a good thing in case you want to use v2.3 as an external "spiral plugin": To preserve the exact curves, it needs to be converted before copying.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I made a bunch of presets for the Spiral Tool. I encountered one problem where the preview thumbnails are very inconsistent and hard to see:

In my honest opinion, I think that the shape previews should be just shown as thin vector lines rather than fills. All of the shapes I saved look the best when it's only vector lines. The fills just ruin the silhouettes. Doesn't help that the lines are all black and the fills are white.

I suggest just dropping the whole fill aspect and just go with lines. Spirals can be used to build filled shapes, but you seldom make filled shapes with spirals.

Also, after having made so many presets, I think it would be a good idea to make it so that hovering the thumbnail of each preset will actually preview on the canvas, just like how text fonts and layer blend modes behave. It takes a while to scroll through the list and applying multiple different presets, so being able to preview it when having a shape that works with that tool would be appreciated.

[ronnyb]

Hey @Ben, Pressing the up or down arrow keys on a Decaying Spiral's Segment Angle field or using the scroll wheel to adjust values yields glitch UI response, as if the values are stuck....

[Frozen Death Knight]

25 minutes ago, loukash said:

No, it's a "Spiral" object shape. It does not convert to regular curve. Just try for yourself.
That's not necessarily a good thing in case you want to use v2.3 as an external "spiral plugin": To preserve the exact curves, it needs to be converted before copying.

Interesting. I tried it myself just now and can confirm that it says "Spiral". However, it's just as well to convert everything into curves. There is only one spiral shape that is compatible with 2.2.1.

2.3:

 

Copy+pasted into 2.2.1:

[loukash]

11 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Copy+pasted into 2.2.1

Exactly.  
What I meant on previous page: it's a "fun fact" that v2.2.1 is aware of the "Spiral" object.
Whereas pasting into v1 will convert to curves as expected.

[CM0]

Nice addition!

BTW, it would also be useful to be able to reverse the stroke path when using brushes.

[Sean P]

15 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I made a bunch of presets for the Spiral Tool. I encountered one problem where the preview thumbnails are very inconsistent and hard to see:

In my honest opinion, I think that the shape previews should be just shown as thin vector lines rather than fills. All of the shapes I saved look the best when it's only vector lines. The fills just ruin the silhouettes. Doesn't help that the lines are all black and the fills are white.

I suggest just dropping the whole fill aspect and just go with lines. Spirals can be used to build filled shapes, but you seldom make fill shapes with spirals.

Also, after having made so many presets, I think it would be a good idea to make it so that hovering the thumbnail of each preset will actually preview on the canvas, just like how text fonts and layer blend modes. It takes a while to scroll through the list and applying multiple different presets, so being able to preview it when having a shape that works with that tool would be appreciated.

Thanks for this - it was actually something I noticed myself and is something we do have logged! 

 

[Sean P]

15 hours ago, ronnyb said:

Hey @Ben, Pressing the up or down arrow keys on a Decaying Spiral's Segment Angle field or using the scroll wheel to adjust values yields glitch UI response, as if the values are stuck....

Thanks Ronny - this looks to be an issue when using 6 decimal places again. I only get the Up/Down issue when using 5 or 6 decimal places. I'll get this loggged.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Sean P said:

this looks to be an issue when using 6 decimal places again. I only get the Up/Down issue when using 5 or 6 decimal places.

Yes, as an "avid 6 decimal places aficionado", I noticed this as well.
Also, there are quite a few other spots (input fields) all over Affinity where the 6-places setting was always causing troubles since v1.

[lenogre]

One of my wishes is granted !

[EnryDraw]

I did this in Designer 2.3.0 BETA with the new Spiral Tool !! 

 

[dominik]

1 hour ago, EnryDraw said:

I did this in Designer 2.3.0 BETA with the new Spiral Tool !! 

Hello @EnryDraw and welcome to the forum.

A nice glossy spiral indeed.

I myself am impressed with the versatility of this new tool. So far I was not able to make it crash.

d.

[StuartRc]

Finally had some time to play with this new tool...fantastic... must admit...I cannot see any obvious issues with the tool itself.
Powerful! especially when combined with the Vector Flood Tool and Shape builder...

[shapelet]

fibunaci spiral nice

 

[Tauridean]

I'm sure somebody else must have noticed but when you click the 'Use Cusps' option for Linear and Decaying spirals it also changes the handedness. But not for the other types.

[Sean P]

2 hours ago, Tauridean said:

I'm sure somebody else must have noticed but when you click the 'Use Cusps' option for Linear and Decaying spirals it also changes the handedness. But not for the other types.

Hi Tauridean,

This appears to be working for me - do you mind attaching a video sample of the behaviour you're getting please?

[Tauridean]

Video as requested

[Sean P]

Thanks for the video!

Everything looks to be as expected for me here. I can't see your Segment Angle, but I think its about 299-300% and your Inner Radius looks to be set to about 30%.

When you use a segment angle of greater than 90degrees, the arc becomes divided, so intermediate points are added to maintain the accuracy of the generated spiral (as I understand it), however these as these are not required when using cusped segments, so they are not used. I've attached a video that might help visualise what is happening a little better using the Pie Tool to visualise the segment angle.

The reason for just Linear and Decaying exhibiting this, is that these are the only types that have a definable Segment Angle.

[Tauridean]

1 hour ago, Sean P said:

Everything looks to be as expected for me here. I can't see your Segment Angle, but I think its about 299-300% and your Inner Radius looks to be set to about 30%.

I see the issue. With any segment angle above 180 degrees it looks as if it has changed handedness but actually hasn't. Thanks for taking the time to put me straight.

[Sean P]

1 hour ago, Tauridean said:

I see the issue. With any segment angle above 180 degrees it looks as if it has changed handedness but actually hasn't. Thanks for taking the time to put me straight.

You're welcome! I'm glad that video was helpful.

[EricP]

Affinity "infinity"

[ronnyb]

On 10/25/2023 at 8:15 AM, Ben said:

Yes - the construction for a Phi spiral would be fundamentally different to Fibonacci.  The Fibonacci we build from the centre following the sequence.  A Phi spiral would be a constant scaling from the outside.  I'll have a think.

Actually - try using the Decaying spiral, set "Decay per segment" and use 100-(100/phi) for the Decay value. I could probably add this as a preset.

We do have a continuous spiral - it's the plotted one.  Each point is correctly placed.  Currently it's line segments only (though you can increase that to add accuracy).  If I can figure out the maths for correct(ish) curve segments I'll add it.

@Ben Thanks, your technique using the decaying spiral works perfectly —I checked the measurements and it's good!

Am I correct in assuming this technique still yields an approximation of a true golden spiral, as it "decays" 4 times per complete turn, in 90 degree segments?

Hope you can figure out the maths for the Plotted spiral type!!!

[MxHeppa]

Really nice thing.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Noticed that Decay does not work when hovering over the name to slide the values on Windows.