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Probably on my top 10 most used features in Illustrator is the stroke width tool, which allows you to adjust the width of the stroke at each anchor point.  This can somewhat be achieved using the Pressure tab within the pen line settings, but it isn't nearly as precise.

 

A couple of solutions might be:

  • Add a stroke width tool to allow anchor points to be adjusted.
  • Within the pressure panel, display a point on the graph for every anchor point from the shape.  And allow these to be adjusted only vertically on the graph by holding shift, so that they stay on the anchor points.
  • Create a new panel in the pen menu that allows for a numerical value to be entered in for stroke width.

 

Thanks for listening.

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I agree although in illustrator once you expand the paths that are adjusted with the stroke width tool you are left with way too many anchor points (nodes) and that is not ideal. Therefore I have been avoiding using it for that reason... so any implementation here in AD of a similar feature should avoid that pitfall.

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Hey nametag, have you tried clicking on the "pressure" button in the "line" panel. You can adjust the strokes width on a curve by adding "points or nodes" and moving them vertically for thickness and horizontally for position along the stroke. For me this is a more elegant solution than the width tool in Ai.  It's fairly amazing control, non-destructively. Great feature!

 

Now if we could adjust opacity up and down on each one of those "nodes" it would be da bomb!

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Hey nametag, have you tried clicking on the "pressure" button in the "line" panel. You can adjust the strokes width on a curve by adding "points or nodes" and moving them vertically for thickness and horizontally for position along the stroke. For me this is a more elegant solution than the width tool in Ai.  It's fairly amazing control, non-destructively. Great feature!

 

Now if we could adjust opacity up and down on each one of those "nodes" it would be da bomb!

 

Hey retrograde,

 

Yeah, I've tried this, and I do think it's a good alternative to the feature request.  One of my suggestions was to take the anchor points from your shape, and plot those as "points or nodes" within the pressure panel.  The only real issue I see with using only the pressure panel is that the longer your line segment becomes, the harder it is to fine tune the stroke widths. Other than that, it's a very nice tool.

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  • Staff

...you can adjust opacity of the line based on the pressure profile! :)

 

The default line doesn't have this property selected, so here's how to enable it:

- Draw a curve

- Go to the Line Page

- Click the 'Properties...' button

- Drag the 'Flow variance' slider to the right and you should start to see the effect

- Play with the pressure on the curve

 

...incidentally, up until the other day you could just hit the delete key when you had a node selected in the pressure window - I'll get it fixed :)

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Hi MattP, so I just tried your above steps and I think I got it to work. I guess I'm a little confused as to the relationship between the properties panel and the pressure setup in the line panel...  when I make the adjustments in the properties panel I don't see any changes to my line on my page. Only when I play with the pressure curve graph do I see anything happening. Is this correct?  When I first started to play with the pressure graph earlier I thought it was affecting the line width, here it seems to be affecting the opacity. It looks to me as though the pressure setup in the line panel controls the controls in the properties panel. I have the feeling I am missing something very cool and powerful - I almost want to see the pressure parameter controls in the properties panel instead of in the line panel... anyway I'm excited for the potential of all of this ability to tweak width and transparency in lines and objects.

 

Is there a short video out yet showing the way to work with the properties panel and the line panel? I feel I'm either missing something or doing it wrong... cheers!

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89840911ae1b0aabdfe59ce915d986812ec85e1d

 

Here's an example where a little bit more control over stroke width would be extremely useful.  I think simply having handles for the anchor points within the pressure panel would allow for more control of the smoothness/sharpness of the width.

 

There is a natural curve added to the segments, but when the points get too close, or there is too dramatic of a change in pressure, they lose the curvature, and the stroke width changes abruptly.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just downloaded the beta and it looks promising!

Line width was the first thing I was looking for, I use it a lot in Illustrator.

 

I found the pressure button after searching the forums and landing here.

Here is how I think it could be improved:

 

  • Put the adjustment / controls on the anchor point. 
    You want to be able to adjust lines and point right on your artboard after you've drawn them, not through menu's and panels.
  • Show preview lines of what my width will look like after I release the controls.
    Now you you see it happening while making points in the pressure window, but it's too far apart / not linked enough.
  • Keep the lines fluid, don't auto-add to many points.
  • Make it more about controlling "point thickness" like in Illustrator.
    I think a lot of (vector) illustrators want total control over their lines, the width, but also the anchor points and how they bend/ curve.

 

If done right I think this would be a great selling point / feature for Affinity Designer!

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Being able to adjust the line width on the control points is just too limited. The objective of a good Bezier curve is to have the least possible points. To vary the width on few points is just too limited. So, the way Serif is doing it is much better.

However, I do agree that there should exist a set of vertical lines in the relative position along the curve to show where the control points are.

Also, and this is really important, the pressure dialog NEEDS to be scalable horizontally.

It is just too short to control the pressure along long curves.

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Another thing that would improve (my) workflow is being able to adjust the line/ stroke width in the top menu bar (next to curve / fill) too.

Place the slider on the right of those. I know that slider is in the line panel too, but that panel is on my other screen, about 1400 pixels and a 20 cm arm slide on my tablet away.

The top menu bar is closest to where I've just drawn a line.

 

The way it is now is that you have to first click that window open to slide adjust your line width. That and moving to the other panel takes more moving / time.

It would also be neat if there was a shortcut attached to it, like cmd + something for thicker line & cmd + something else for thinner line. Like you adjust brush size in Photoshop.

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Editing pressure points on a curve directly doesn't mean it must be on existing nodes. You could map the length of the curve the same way its currently for rendering and place the pressure editing points in their respective positions. Its something commonly used in compositing software where rotoscoping mask feather fallof is usually decoupled from curve control points.

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  • 1 month later...

post-483-0-93363200-1412680254_thumb.jpg

 

I think this would work much faster.

Would save me a lot of clicks.

 

But I still think this would be even better.

Like I said before, having the controls ON the line you want to edit, not in some panel/ window somewhere...

 

post-483-0-79489300-1412681061_thumb.jpg

 

Where being able to bring out these "width control points" with a keyboard shortcut while hovering over the line would be nothing short of a an illustrating superpower.  :ph34r:

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Yeahh! That looks nothing short of amazing. 

Also to show how important it is and how intuitive those on - your - line options are. 

 

As long as it also still has the option to adjust single width points. 

 

It would be awesome if you guys incorporated some (or all...) of those features.  :D

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For me perfect solution for line width is here http://www.astutegraphics.com/software/widthscribe/

 

Anime Studio (a vector-based animation app) has a stroke width tool, this operates on each point, you move the cursor/mouse to the right to thicken and left to thin. I like it better than the width scribe demo I tried out.

Mac OS X Catinlina, 2014 iMac, 3.5 Ghz Intel Core i7, Huion Kamvas Pro 22 Graphic Tablet, 16GB RAM, MacOS10.12 || Magic keyboard w/numeric keypad, wireless trackpad, Kengsington Edge Trackball || Flux Capacitor in a secure location

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No matter which way this ends up rolling out and there are some very cool ideas being presented here, my request would be to remember to try to keep the number of nodes once expanded enough to retain the shape but no more. The current setup in illustrator adds tons of extra un-needed anchor points to "width tool" lines that are expanded.

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