BHIP Posted May 8, 2018 Share Posted May 8, 2018 Hi, I am still a novice at graphic design and I hope I'm not asking for too much with this question. I would like to take this image (and others I have created) and make them editable in AD or AP. I'm asking for best ways to convert the file, and what to convert it too, so I can change the colors of the lines, make the background transparent, etc. Hugely complicated - I know. But it can't hurt to ask, can it? I'm also experimenting on how to actually make these kinds of designs in AD, with some luck, but not much. Your help is greatly appreciated. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 8, 2018 Share Posted May 8, 2018 Hi Bill, what format are the files in at the moment? With the lines being so fine it would be hard to remove the background and it still be neat. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 8, 2018 Share Posted May 8, 2018 1 hour ago, BHIP said: I'm also experimenting on how to actually make these kinds of designs in AD, with some luck, but not much. Have you tried offsetting the rotation center of a curve & power duplicating it around that center? A crude example of this is shown below & in the attached power duplicate example.afdesign file: The curve shown selected (red & with a thick stroke so it stands out in the screenshot) has its rotation center moved to the location shown by the target symbol. Duplicating it once & immediately rotating it by 5° produced the curve just to its left. Then using power duplicate (CMD + J on a Mac or Duplicate from the Edit menu) 70 times creates the remaining 70 curves. By using a more complex curve to begin with and/or grouping, duplicating & flipping the duplicate group, you should be able to create designs more like your examples. Jdbradbury 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BHIP Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 3 hours ago, firstdefence said: Hi Bill, what format are the files in at the moment? With the lines being so fine it would be hard to remove the background and it still be neat. Hi firstdefence they are currently in png format. I got this app that makes these things and the only option, right now is to save the picture. I'm working with the developer to have it save as pdf as well. firstdefence 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BHIP Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 1 hour ago, R C-R said: Have you tried offsetting the rotation center of a curve & power duplicating it around that center? A crude example of this is shown below & in the attached power duplicate example.afdesign file: The curve shown selected (red & with a thick stroke so it stands out in the screenshot) has its rotation center moved to the location shown by the target symbol. Duplicating it once & immediately rotating it by 5° produced the curve just to its left. Then using power duplicate (CMD + J on a Mac or Duplicate from the Edit menu) 70 times creates the remaining 70 curves. By using a more complex curve to begin with and/or grouping, duplicating & flipping the duplicate group, you should be able to create designs more like your examples. Thanks R C-R I have been experimenting but you have given me a way to make this easier. I really appreciate the help. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 4 hours ago, firstdefence said: With the lines being so fine it would be hard to remove the background and it still be neat. Filters->Erase White Paper does a pretty good job, though not perfect. But it would be better if the tool that created them could do so with a transparent background originally. And, ideally, it would allow specification of the color, too. BHIP 1 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 The type of pattern you want to produce reminds me of guilloche patterns, albeit in a simplified form, these were used on banknotes as a form of security and not just a pretty pattern. There is a very competent app called Excentro that is designed to produce guilloche patterns similar to the ones you want to make. It makes use of sine functions among other equations. I wondered if Affinity with its equations feature could emulate it, albeit in a simpler form. Excentro can produce guilloche like this: Excentro do a Lite version for about $25.00, the full blown app is $500 Alfred 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutchshader Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 another way to do this, using symbols and power duplicate: spiraltest.afdesign Alfred and firstdefence 2 Quote intel core i5, 16GB 128Gb ssd win10 Pro Huion new 1060plus. philips 272p 2560x1440px on intel HD2500 onboard graphics Razer Tartarus Chroma Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 31 minutes ago, dutchshader said: another way to do this, using symbols and power duplicate: spiraltest.afdesign Like the Orange one. Amazing how two ellipses and a line can create such a nice pattern. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BHIP Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 12 hours ago, walt.farrell said: Filters->Erase White Paper does a pretty good job, though not perfect. But it would be better if the tool that created them could do so with a transparent background originally. And, ideally, it would allow specification of the color, too. 6 hours ago, firstdefence said: The type of pattern you want to produce reminds me of guilloche patterns, albeit in a simplified form, these were used on banknotes as a form of security and not just a pretty pattern. There is a very competent app called Excentro that is designed to produce guilloche patterns similar to the ones you want to make. It makes use of sine functions among other equations. I wondered if Affinity with its equations feature could emulate it, albeit in a simpler form. Excentro can produce guilloche like this: Excentro do a Lite version for about $25.00, the full blown app is $500 This is beautiful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BHIP Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 5 hours ago, dutchshader said: another way to do this, using symbols and power duplicate: spiraltest.afdesign Wow! These would be examples of my goals. Thanks for the inspiration. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdenby Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 Also, using power duplicate and symbols. These started w. 1 curved line, with pressure change stroke size, and color gradient. Made quickly, 4 samples in of 8 made in 8 minutes. Mithferion, BHIP and firstdefence 3 Quote iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb, AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil Huion WH1409 tablet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 For those who don't know, it is maybe worth mentioning that it is possible to use the rotation center instead of one of the 9 anchor points as a reference for the "R" rotation field in the Transform panel -- as long as "Show Rotation Center" is active, it will automatically use it in the panel. Using that, you can enter any angle you want for the first duplicate directly in that field without having to drag the rotation handle on the canvas. But what makes this really useful is the "R" field accepts expressions, so for example you can enter "360/n" where n is the number of 'petals' or 'lobes' you want in the design, & power duplicating from there will rotate the duplicates by that increment precisely, even if it is an angle you can't enter precisely as a number, like 360/7 or 360/21. Combine that with symbols and/or with some of the shapes & the possibilities are almost endless. BHIP 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wosven Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 I didn't know Excentro, but those drawings remind me of an Inkscape image I really like (but I wouldn't know how to do this or use equation to do it) You can find the SVG file here. BHIP 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 That patterning looks very much like Flame Painter BHIP 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wosven Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 But it's done with adding sub-pathes: fake3Dmesh.mp4 BHIP and firstdefence 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 1 hour ago, Wosven said: But it's done with adding sub-pathes: fake3Dmesh.mp4 Nice video showing how to create this effect. BHIP 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 That is, the AD-missing blend tool... also there seems to be no way to do gradient to a path(s), (unless it is a raster effect, which turns all vector to bitmap in export). BHIP 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hangman Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 Or with the free Guilloché Pattern Generator as mentioned in this post by Armadillo. Create your Guilloché Pattern, right click and save as a PDF file. Open in AD as a vector file so you can change colours and any elements of the design. BHIP and firstdefence 2 Quote Affinity Designer 2.4.2 | Affinity Photo 2.4.2 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.2 Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.7.4, Magic Mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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