create a new vector brush in affinity designer

[notabene34]

Hello,

I am following a graphic design tutorial, but it is based on Illustrator. I thought it should be possible to follow this tutorial using Affinity Designer, but I encountered a problem right from the first video of the course.

In Illustrator, it is very easy to create a vector brush by dragging a vector object onto the Brushes panel. The object is immediately converted into a vector brush, and there are numerous settings available to customize it.

However, in Affinity Designer, I can't find this function. It doesn't work with a vector object, and it seems to work only with an image file. For example, in Illustrator, if your initial vector object is made up of two half-spheres, one black and the other white, you can create a two-tone black and white brush.

Does anyone have a solution, or is this impossible with Designer?

Thank you for your help,  
Christian

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, notabene34 said:

It doesn't work with a vector object, and it seems to work only with an image file.

There are only a few ‘real’ vector brushes available in the Affinity applications – they are in the Basic category and they are all simple round brushes – and users cannot create their own.

Apart from these few exceptions, what’s called a Vector Brush is actually a raster which is repeated/stretched along a vector curve – it’s not really a brush painting vectors, it’s a raster brush that works along a vector curve.

[notabene34]

Ok thank’s for your response

[GarryP]

You're welcome.

[sfriedberg]

In the past I have said glowing things about the "skeletal stroke" vector brush functionality of Expression by Creature House (early 2000's, before Microsoft purchased the product and buried it).  It would be wonderful if Affinity Designer gradually acquired that functionality.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[sfriedberg]

No, MS started adapting the Creature House Expression technology in Expression Design and Expression Web, but those adaptations really aren't the same thing.  MS clearly changed their minds about branding several times, breaking the single C.H. Expression product into what was supposed to be an entire Expression-branded suite of graphics tools, and then rapidly dropping the entire suite.  My impression is that the product line managers were very web-centric and when web-specific graphic design did not immediately catch fire, they simply moved on to something else.

The last time I looked, MS Expression Design 4 did not have all the skeletal stroke features of C.H. Expression 3.3.  Perhaps they are hidden somewhere in the the UI, but I've felt no desire to do a detailed point-by-point comparision.

Expression 3.3 is basically legal abandonware at this point.  It has been released for free but is extremely difficult to locate on MS's website.  They have changed the download link multiple times and the last couple of times I searched for it, it was not indexed. [Added in edit]  If you look at the Expression Design 4 link you provided, you will see it is a non-Microsoft website established precisely because finding Expression Design 4 on the MS website is next to impossible.

So I will stick by my earlier expression of "before Microsoft purchased the product and buried it".

However, my point was that the skeletal stroke features of Creature House Expression were extremely powerful, flexible and easy to use, and that it would be desirable if Affinity Designer acquired some of that capability over time.  I suspect we are in agreement on the point.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[sfriedberg]

I don't assert that Microsoft killed Expression as an anticompetitive move, just that they acquired it, abandoned it and buried it.  It is nice that they released it freely before purging most references to it.  There are lots of examples of stuff that software companies have buried without intending it as an anticompetitive move.  In fact, the entire reason I started using the Affinity suite is that Corel decided to drop Ventura Publisher a few rounds of development after acquiring it.  Corel's claim that CorelDRAW acquired the layout and long document capabilities of Ventura is breathtakingly incorrect. 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[karenlepage]

On 9/3/2024 at 3:13 PM, sfriedberg said:

In the past I have said glowing things about the "skeletal stroke" vector brush functionality of Expression by Creature House (early 2000's, before Microsoft purchased the product and buried it).  It would be wonderful if Affinity Designer gradually acquired that functionality.

I miss Microsoft Expression (sorry I didn’t know it when it was original) and moved everything over from Adobe CS only to see it cancelled and have to go back to illustrator. It took me years to get over not having spline drawing tools. 
 

Sorry I’ve nothing useful to add here, but you have another vote for expression’s forgotten tools.