Gradient Following Spiral?

[HT_5634]

I've been playing around with the new spiral tool, which has been great except whenever I add a gradient to a spiral it doesn't follow the shape of the spiral. Instead it seems to be acting like the spiral is a circle and just doing the gradient from one side to the other, regardless of which gradient option i have selected:

So is it possible to have the green start on the oustide and then transition to blue as the spiral moves inwards to the middle?

[MEB]

Hi @HT_5634,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Just change the Gradient Type to Elliptical in the context toolbar (don't forget to set the Context to Stroke also in the context toolbar so the gradient is applied to the stroke not the fill).

If you want the gradient to follow the path itself from outwards to inwards ((which is a different thing)) then only using a brush.

[loukash]

4 minutes ago, MEB said:

change the Gradient Type to Elliptical

This will somewhat fake it, but it still doesn't actually follow the curve.
The closest workaround I found so far is described in this thread:

 

[Pšenda]

34 minutes ago, HT_5634 said:

regardless of which gradient option i have selected:

[loukash]

Just now, HT_5634 said:

this is what it looks when its on eliptical

Use the Gradient tool and move the origin to the center of the spiral to get the fake progression.

[lepr]

40 minutes ago, HT_5634 said:

follow the shape of the spiral.

For the stroke of the spiral, use a 'vector brush' with texture that is a linear gradient. You might want to use a greyscale gradient and then apply a Gradient Map Adjustment to the spiral to colour it.

[HT_5634]

4 minutes ago, loukash said:

Use the Gradient tool and move the origin to the center of the spiral to get the fake progression.

thanks i didnt realise i had to do that because i was using gradients from the swatches panel and not the gradient tool itself

[loukash]

46 minutes ago, lepr said:

For the stroke of the spiral, use a 'vector brush' with texture that is a linear gradient.

@telemax's Arrows collection contains exactly those: 

 

 

29 minutes ago, lepr said:

You might want to use a greyscale gradient and then apply a Gradient Map Adjustment to the spiral to colour it.

Also of note is that such an object will inevitably rasterize on PDF or SVG export.

[Markus van der Westhuizen]

Would be nice if the gradient can be taken along the stroke like in Illustrator.

BUT, I'm sooooo happy that spirals are finally available in Affinity. I've requested this feature so many times and waited many years. And the spiral features are a lot better than Illustrator, so thank you Affinity Serif!!!

[loukash]

6 hours ago, Markus van der Westhuizen said:

Would be nice if the gradient can be taken along the stroke like in Illustrator.

VectorStyler can do this. I tried that yesterday, too. (VS is still on sale right now, so grab it while it's hot!)

The problem here is how to get such a gradient into Affinity because Affinity still doesn't know how to interpret it, although a PDF exported from VS will display the gradient correctly as vector in Packzview, and even in the MacOS Preview app. You can place (not open) the PDF in Affinity, but then the spiral will be rasterized. Duh.
If I opened the PDF or copied and pasted the spiral, Affinity would just display a black stroke.

Sadly, in some vector disciplines, Affinity is still a decade or more behind the "state of art".  

[lacerto]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

You can place (not open) the PDF in Affinity, but then the spiral will be rasterized.

How did you export?

vshelp_gradientalongpath.pdf

[loukash]

8 minutes ago, lacerto said:

How did you export?

Oh, I don't remember. The PDF export options in VS are too confusing. (No, I didn't RTFM yet… ) Probably just the first best default setting.
But perhaps I was only confused that in Affinity I'm seeing antialiasing in a passthrough PDF when zooming in closely. Mea culpa. I'm rarely ever placing any PDFs in layouts.