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Just please don't restrict the mesh to the shape itself. That is the way it works in Illustrator which ends up limiting the flexibility of the tool. I really liked the Mesh Fill in DrawPlus, and that it was independent of the actual shape for creative freedom.

 

@MEB the separation is a plus really. Though I can see the benefit of allowing both.

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I was having a look at this over the weekend - am very excited by it at present and I'm pretty certain we can bring in the meshes from .ai files and make them look identical because I just found out they use the same principal we wanted to use - but hopefully we can make them faster (we'll certainly try our best!)

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Honestly though I used to use a ton of gradient meshes in my work and it got to the point where I was spending too much time creating elaborate crazy meshes for shading and high lighting... I really think the combination of AD's effects lineup and raster painting tools sort of negate going too deep into the gradient mesh direction...

 

still, having said that there are times when a quick mesh can do the trick as well and I'll be curious to see how Serif implements it.

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You know it's wonderful that you guys have all of these nifty pie-in-the-sky ideas as to what mesh might be or might not be in your new program, but it's been three years now. This is getting extremely trying. For my uses, this software is a sort of a rinky-dink app, until there's mesh gradient.

 

I use serif drawplus X8 very regularly, and love it, and I would like to love Affinity designer also, but the mesh gradient tool is the absolute most important tool I use, I will not waste any time learning anything in Affinity designer until such time that you have a mesh tool that is every bit as capable as the one in Drawplus.

 

You could charge $500 for the software, and I would buy it if it had gradient mesh. You could charge $5 for the software, and I'd still scoff at it if it didn't include gradient mesh. But the really sad thing is that you've been talking about adding it for 3 years now, and even in a post this year in this thread all you can say is that it's on your roadmap.

 

On your roadmap for when? When exactly is this roadmap going to start occurring? What is it that you're actually concentrating on right now? Affinity designer getting to a mesh stage is starting to seem about as likely as taking a road trip from California to Beijing playing Destiny on a Nintendo Switch. It reminds me of waiting for the 3DO M2 to come out, or the Phantom, or the Indrema. It reminds me of waiting for Duke Nukem Forever. I can only hope it will be earth-shattering when it finally arrives because I can't really imagine what's taking this long.

 

So go ahead and take your time, take all the time you need, because in that time I'll be learning all about how to use my latest purchase, which is the newest version of coreldraw. Maybe by the time you guys actually release a worthwhile product, I'll still be interested in purchasing it. I sort of doubt it. Best of luck though.

 

All told I waited 2 years for you guys to actually get this together. I waited two years before I decided to make a different purchase. I'm not going to go with the Creative Cloud, so Adobe lost me, and I really wanted the purchase to be Affinity designer, but gradient mesh is critically important no two ways about it. So I finally dropped $500 on Corel, and it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to be coming back to Serif, you probably just lost a customer. For the record, I have purchased Drawplus 7, 8, X2, X4, and X8, as well as Webplus 10 and several random Serif packages (fonts, etc.). I'm a long-time Serif customer and I really appreciate everything that you guys have contributed to the art world, but I just couldn't wait any longer. I had to make my purchase, and now that I'm learning Corel I don't think I'm going to be back. But thanks for the great times!

 

On a final note, I will say this: what really irritates me is not that you haven't added the feature, but that you keep dicking people around promising that you're going to get there eventually with no guess as to when that might be. I figured it would be within a couple of years, so I waited. I shouldn't have. If I hadn't waited, and had just gotten a version of Corel back then, then chances are I might have purchased Affinity designer anyway just to see the other cool things that it can do. But I waited because you guys said it was coming, and the more I waited the more irritated I got that it doesn't seem to be happening. So at this point I'm just very frustrated overall with the lack of progress and the lack of any estimate as to when it might occur, and the obvious fact that your developers are concentrating their resources elsewhere on other applications prior to your roadmap being anywhere near complete for the first one. I suppose I'd rather support developers that can actually deliver on their promises, and who don't make promises they can't deliver on.

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@revo

 

Ha! Well, I'm happy for you and your very large purchase and wish you many happy hours of pixel-painting onto/away from your vectors. (oh wait, is that not possible?!?! Well however do you use that piece of software!?!?... you see my point?...) To think that Designer is 'rinky-dinky' because it doesn't have a feature you need is absurd. Have you seen the artwork produced in Designer - even without this oh-so-fundamental tool?

 

The important thing to remember is simply that everyone is different and we don't all need the same things. We said we'd add it, we will.. but when we get to it. We've added lots of other things so far and they were added to enable use-cases that otherwise wouldn't be possible. We've also recently released the iPad iOS application - so it's hardly like we've been sitting on our hands whilst congratulating ourselves...

 

I'm sorry that it doesn't offer you the tool you want right now, but it will. Until that point, just try to have some objectivity - or at least a little less negativity?

 

Hope this post comes across in the manner in which it was intended - I appreciate it's important to you and you're frustrated at waiting, but name-calling and disparaging are not the way to achieve anything without first looking at the bigger picture...

 

Thanks,

Matt

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Ha! Well, I'm happy for you and your very large purchase and wish you many happy hours of pixel-painting onto/away from your vectors. (oh wait, is that not possible?!?! Well however do you use that piece of software!?!?... you see my point?...)

I'm afraid I may have missed your point. I understand enough about programming and vector mathematics to know that a gradient mesh is a fairly basic series of mathematical computations once you have a reasonably-complex base in place, which it appears you do. Inkscape, as an example, has had side-implementations of gradient mesh for years, but in that case, the SVG format has rather limited the program's capability to support gradient mesh as a standard, but over on the Affinity Designer front, it makes little sense to me as to why it would take this long to implement something that clearly already has all of the prerequisites long-finished. Mesh is vector, it doesn't fit any raster or pixel-painting definition.  I bought Corel Draw now, to use the vector-based mesh system they have designed, which is fine enough I suppose. So, no, I don't really understand the reference to "pixel-painting away from my vectors," perhaps you could clarify. Did you think I said PaintShop Pro or something? That's a different software package. 

 

To think that Designer is 'rinky-dinky' because it doesn't have a feature you need is absurd. Have you seen the artwork produced in Designer - even without this oh-so-fundamental tool?

Point taken. "Rinky-dink" was going too far, my apologies. However, in the same light, I can point you to some galleries showing you some absolutely amazing artwork produced in Inkscape, and, I suppose at the moment, I'd put Inkscape and Affinity Designer on even footing, since neither support gradient mesh and neither support .DPP format.  

 

No doubt about it, there are some incredible pieces designed in Affinity Designer, and you guys have done a tremendous job designing the software. I truly mean that, and I wish you continued success. Nobody expected Serif to make Affinity Designer take the Mac world by storm the way it did, and that was impressive, even if you did sort of abandon us Windows users for a while there. :)

 

Also, my neighbor makes amazing paintings with a brush on a piece of canvas.  If I put a brush to a piece of canvas, you'd have some nicely ruined canvas.  My point is, yes, many designers can clearly use your software to make incredible stuff that frankly, I couldn't make. Same with Google Tilt Brush, same with a lot of things. I tend to have difficulty holding a brush or stylus for long periods, so I use a mouse.  I spend hundreds of hours detailing vast meshes, and then I put 40 or 50 of them together into my illustrations.  I really love doing it, and they look great in the end, and are infinitely scalable from a stamp to a wall. That's why I like designing in mesh in vectors,

 

But, you're right, absolutely. It's not "rinky-dink" and I shouldn't have said that. It's production-quality, but critically lacks an important tool for my uses. For the record, the sole reason I bought Drawplus 7 way back when was that I was shocked it supported gradient mesh, so, it's probably just that I got used to your software prioritizing that feature more.

 

The important thing to remember is simply that everyone is different and we don't all need the same things

Yes, this is true. I suppose it comes down to what I expected as to your release schedule. In general, I've notice that your software turns about every two years lately.  Starting with Drawplus 7 and continuing to the last release, you released new versions in 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2015.  Your roadmap which lists gradient mesh, indicates that it is a feature planned for the Version 1 software of Affinity Designer, which means, starting from 2015, it's reasonable to expect it to be done by 2017.  It seems perhaps you've changed to a different release style, where it will take you much longer than two years to progress between versions.  I'm not sure.  At times, it looks like Affinity Designer will be abandoned so that you can focus on your iOS priorities.  It's hard to tell, from out here, when the best answer anyone can get is... how did you put it?

 

when we get to it.

Yes, right. Great. How about pushing it to your version 2 roadmap? Are you really still finishing up your version 1 software 3 years after it hit Mac? Seems odd, but okay.  If that's the way you're running things, good enough, I guess.  I don't think it's a winning strategy, but, if it's working, keep doing it.  I'm hoping maybe Serif will consider selling Drawplus to the open source community in a similar way to how Blender came out, I think we can crowd-fund a million bucks to open source Drawplus. But, that's probably a really long shot Serif would consider that. It's a shame Drawplus has to die when Designer it still not feature-equivalent.

 

We've added lots of other things so far and they were added to enable use-cases that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

Okay. Fair enough. Perhaps I'll still buy it eventually.

 

I'm sorry that it doesn't offer you the tool you want right now, but it will. Until that point, just try to have some objectivity - or at least a little less negativity?

 

Hope this post comes across in the manner in which it was intended - I appreciate it's important to you and you're frustrated at waiting, but name-calling and disparaging are not the way to achieve anything without first looking at the bigger picture...

I apologize for any name-calling or negativity, I've been following this thread for two years and hadn't seen it for a while, and when I saw, again, in 2017, there was a new post from Serif that still couldn't even make a guess as to when gradient mesh will come, I vented my frustration. Apologies, but, I hope you will consider pushing it off onto your V2 roadmap at the minimum, because it's weird to be on the V1 roadmap and not be done yet. Maybe you don't agree. Either way, thanks and have a good one.

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revo

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" You know it's wonderful that you guys have all of these nifty pie-in-the-sky ideas as to what mesh might be or might not be in your new program, but it's been three years now..this software is a sort of a rinky-dink app, until there's mesh gradient.

..sad thing is that you've been talking about adding it for 3 years now, and even in a post this year in this thread all you can say is that it's on your roadmap.

On your roadmap for when? When exactly is this roadmap going to start occurring? What is it that you're actually concentrating on right now? Affinity designer getting to a mesh stage is starting to seem about as likely as taking a road trip from California to Beijing playing Destiny on a Nintendo Switch.

All told I waited 2 years for you guys to actually get this together..before..a different purchase..Adobe lost me,..Affinity designer, but gradient mesh is critically important no two ways about it...dropped $500 on Corel,..unlikely..to be coming back to Serif,..just lost a customer..I'm a long-time Serif customer..appreciate everything..but I just couldn't wait any longer.
On a final note,.what really irritates me is not that you haven't added the feature, but that you keep dicking people around promising that you're going to get there eventually with no guess as to when that might be..very frustrated overall with the lack of progress..and the obvious fact that your developers are concentrating..on other applications prior to..near complete for the first one...I'd rather support developers that..deliver on their promises,..don't make promises they can't deliver on. "


Thanks Revo(MEB & TonyB),

                                                  you've summarized for countless many loving but leaving Drawplus because its near singular destiny remains maliciously unfulfilled.
Your generation experienced them talking about and your waiting 3 years, but it's been on their "roadmap" for Over 13 Years!, as seen in pasted 2007, Drawplus X2 Mesh Fill feature addition discussions

This decade's timeline proves MattP and Serif talk, like having philosophical converse with an oversea's telemarketeer, he'll suggest obviously laborious workarounds or DIY solution, suggest you unqualified to comprehend the numeric, commercial and temporal impossibilities of a fully operational gradient mesh, like Adobe Illustrator's(he'll soon equal, hes' always "new ideas"), all of which could be achieved if Matt would complete the gradient mesh fill he was commissioned to: "..a gradient mesh or mesh fill that is unaffected by or not conformed to the path it fills is literally and visually just an ordinary Radial Gradient."  


..i wrote this to Matt when ready to give up 3 years after my generation requested\demanded a completed Drawplus gradient mesh. Then Serif site closed down for same reason making all those customer mesh requests\complaints inaccessible.

Also, in light of all this Revo, don't apologize for speaking truth experienced by too many and for as long. Trying to get back in Matt's good graces obviously's been done much and what sustains him, and another reason besides his now obvious inability, that he'll Never complete their mesh software.
So after 13+years, if you await a true Gradient Mesh in Drawplus, just leave now.
Danceman

There IS one true Gradient Mesh, thats Animatable!! outside of Adobe Illustrator, but this website(Not its members) doesn't deserve to know. To those who do, PM me and i'll let you know the! software.

 

* Drawplus X2 Mesh Fill feature addition discussions, from later to earlier in history *:

1)
" 25th June 2010, 03:15 PM    #40  
danceman
New Member
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 23
Re: How to force mesh fills to conform to the path they're filling
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
Originally Posted by danceman
For heavy mesh users aware of Drawplus this is the most frustrating, avoidable waste of power imaginable...
more specifically, a gradient mesh or mesh fill that is unaffected by or not conformed to the path it fills is literally and visually just an ordinary Radial Gradient.
(illustrated by my posted screenshot "3_DP2-CircularMesh=NotDynamicAfterPATHNodeMove.png")
Therein is the waste of power referred to: all that brilliant mesh filling code becomes merely radial regardless of the target shape because this final, mesh defining step is omitted."

2)

" 9th June 2010, 10:07 PM    #39  
danceman
New Member
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 23
Re: How to force mesh fills to conform to the path they're filling
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello again Matt.
The deadlines i mentioned are for cinema studio footage i'm submitting to department heads for approval and production. My work on their films
require a "shape conforming" mesh fill on every shapes curve in each motion-based keyframe of the footage. For only one, moderately complex shape in Drawplus it takes 16 minutes to add mesh nodes then align that mesh grid with the shape its applied to (making the mesh fill shape conforming). Then another 20 minutes to color the additional 36 intersection nodes created on average and by default. This is after first sampling colors from their corresponding positions on Adobe Illustrators gradient mesh which on average requires a single mesh and about 3 minutes to do the same thing per shape. Now in the very simple, animated intro i'm working with theres only 7 shapes sofar, but thats already 4 hours 20 minutes meshing per keyframe in Drawplus, as opposed to 21 minutes in Illustrator. And there will be many dozens of keyframes.
So its more practical to produce speedy mesh keyframes in Illustrator and then produce the tweens in tedious, bitmap morphing software than be slowed to 4+ hours per keyframe in Drawplus even with the near instant mesh tweening of your awesome Keyframe Animation. For heavy mesh users aware of Drawplus this is the most frustrating, avoidable waste of power imaginable and the only thing keeping Drawplus from common use in the motion picture industry.
So unfortunately, myself, my staff, partners and industry peers have no choice but to continue using Adobe Illustrator until Drawplus has a dynamic gradient mesh at least equal to Illustrators, but please, please, please let me know the moment your version is released!
Danceman "

THE FOLLOWING AND MUCH MORE:

3)

" Hello Serif Developers, Tech.Support and Community,..
and thanks for such excellent programming and products.
DrawPlus is the only software worldwide that can blend and tween gradient meshes. Unfortunately the mesh gradient does not conform accurately to the shape being filled. Nor is the mesh fill dynamic, updating its shape to conform to any changes in the path shape.

DYNAMIC MESHES:
a) I've attached screenshots...
"1_AI-CircularMesh=CircularGradient.jpg" showing Illustrator's circular gradient mesh conforming to its circular path

"1a_AI-CircularMesh=DYNAMICGradient.jpg" Illustrator's circular gradient mesh conforming DYNAMICALLY to path edits

"2_DP-CircularMesh=DIAMONDGradient.png" Drawplus's mesh fill remaining diamond shaped in its circular path.

b) Also attached are...
"3_DP2-CircularMesh=NotDynamicAfterPATHNodeMove.png" exposing the DrawPlus MESH fill edge after a PATH node is moved and..

"4_DP3-CircularMesh=DynamicAfterMESHNodeMove.png" showing the MESH fill conforming to the path after a MESH node is moved to match the PATH node position.

1) Please force mesh fills GRADIENT to conform to the path they're filling? and to update dynamically as the path changes?
2) conform the mesh fill GRID to the contour of the shape being filled? (like Illustrators gradient mesh). I do this by hand and it helps the fill
conform to the path.
2a) Then after aligning the mesh GRID with the path allow the edit of both as once ie: Apply to Fill AND Line simultaneously?

MESH ENVELOPING:
3) Allow enveloping the rectangular, mesh fill GRID into the shape of path being filled ie: make a fill path (or copy) the envelope for mesh GRID? I've attached
screenshots 2 thru 6 showing how its done in Adobe Illustrator...
2.jpg = Mesh path (rectangle)and Envelope path,
3.jpg = add mesh point to mesh path (rectangle)
4.jpg = color mesh points, edit envelope path,
5.jpg = edit mesh points,
6.jpg = Object > Envelope > Make with top layer
Drawplus will not import Illustrator gradient meshes so i must learn to envelope this way in Drawplus. Or...
4) Allow the import of A.I. gradient meshes?

5) Allow Customer or User DESIGNED Envelopes to be used instead of "Present Envelopes"

6) Allow adding a Single! Mesh Node instead of multiple nodes on intersection lines...
... Another crucial requirement of successful gradient mesh or mesh fill usage is that Less Is More, Much More. The transition between FEWER mesh node, gradient colors is actually predictable thus controllable. As opposed to having to paint those gradient transitions over MULTIPLE UNNECESSARY nodes between the 2 colors you want to blend. This is whats required using Drawplus's current mesh node adding which creates multiple nodes on the mesh intersection lines instead of just the one on the place double-clicked.

A gradient mesh allows photorealistic technical illustrations and art in part because it shades 2d shapes 3 dimensionally ie: a circle is shaded as a sphere by a mesh point. So by tweening meshes one can morph 3d realism in a linear, 2d environment.
A dynamic!, realtime shape conforming Mesh Fill is actually realtime, 3D shading/texturing on 2D media, and in your animating environment this becomes responsive and dynamic 3D surface/shape Morphing.
Illustrator and CorelDraw cannot animate and would lose many clients to you soon as its known Drawplus will animate and envelope path conforming!, dynamic! gradient fills.

Please let me know how and how soon these significant capabilities could be accomplished now in DrawPlus X3,X4 or implemented in a patch or next release.

Thanks again, also for any help you've time to give,
Danceman "

 

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