Affinity Designer: Mask / Compound Stroke without closing the stroke?

[polyflow]

Hi,

I'm wondering if it's possible to mask a stroke in Affinity Designer and keeping it open? As you can see in the image attached, I'm creating a compound object (Stroke + Sphere Shape). Unfortunately the stroke always gets closed after creating the compound object.

What I'd like to do instead is to split the stroke in 2 with a sphere mask. This should be done in a non destructive way so that I can adjust the sphere mask later on. Is this possible?

 

Thanks and best regards,

Daniel

[stokerg]

Hi Polyflow and Welcome to the Forums,

 

As we cant create a compound with an open stroke, you'll need to select the Stroke on the layers panel and click Layer>Expand Stroke.  If you now create the compound shape and look at the layers panel, next to the Ellipse is an icon for the combine method, change this from Add to Subtract, which i think you've done from looking at the screenshot.

 

Hope that helps

 

[polyflow]

Thanks for the fast reply, stokerg,

Expanding the stroke is not the optimal solution in my case. What I'd like to achieve is a look similar to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb0_ijtmyVk

As you can see, the artist uses a mask to clip the strokes and then he tapers them with some modifier. Is this possible in Affinity Designer? Or how could I do something like this?

 

[gdenby]

Hi, polyflow,

 

The vid goes by pretty quick, but at least some of what I saw can be done rather easily. It is just a matter of nesting the stroke effects inside parent layer(s). A quick example. The strokes can be re-positioned, re-shaped somewhat, colored, blurred, etc.