Multiple Curves in one stroke

[Lobsang Karma]

Hi All!

Thank you for having me on the forum. I'm curious if there is a way to make multiple strokes using one brush stroke, that can later be edited individually? 

For example, I am working on logo where I'm using 6 different colors as if they are all going in the same direction painted by a brush (Please see attached image). Is there any way to make all 6 colors using one brush? For this, I made each curve individually, adjusting each one as needed. Looking for a more efficient way to work in this style. 

Thanks!

Karma

[Gabe]

Hi @Lobsang Karma,

Welcome to the forums. 

You cannot really create multiple curves with just one brush stroke. You would have to manually adjust them. You can create a brush and paint with it, ( let's say 6 coloured dots and use it as a preset) but you will not be able to edit the colour individually later on. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[firstdefence]

You could create a coloured image brush, the problem with this is it would be whatever colour background is at the time you export the png i.e. white, the gap in-between the colours would also be white. It could be a way to create funky line overlaps buy drawing lines on operate layers and using blend modes to alter where they overlap each other.

Brush PNG

Using the Lighten Blend Mode

[Lobsang Karma]

Thank you team!

[Aammppaa]

@firstdefence There is no need to export with a background colour, it can be transparent.

 

Affinity 4 Parallel Strokes Brush.afdesign

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Aammppaa said:

firstdefence There is no need to export with a background colour, it can be transparent.

Great tip! Works pretty well with a transparent png as a new Textured Image Brush! 

  

[firstdefence]

8 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

@firstdefence There is no need to export with a background colour, it can be transparent.

 

Affinity 4 Parallel Strokes Brush.afdesign

Hi @Aammppaa thanks for that, I did try that but it wouldn't do it for some reason I think I had a brain blink so went for a walk, I'll make another doc to see if it works in there...

Ok I made a new document and used a transparent background, I created the rainbow brush but I wanted the rounded ends like Lobsang was using so I made a pill shape instead of a square so I could move the head and tail offset in to get the rounded ends... Success! 
BUT... when I move the dashed red line on the tail side I get what I can only describe as nipples  "leave it R C-R, remember, I've just had an expanded stroke"  but if I apply 1% Opacity Variance they disappear from the preview display, unfortunately when I draw a line the nipples appear as they did in the preview display.

To make the Pill I used a rounded rectangle set the Height to 200px and the width to 800px and then upped the corners to 50%
Its odd that it only happens on 3 of them and the I get a notch effect on the green.

Made a short gif to show what happens.

Still there when actually drawing with the brush.

[Alfred]

13 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I made a pill shape instead of a square

Do you really need a pill shape? Why not just use a circle?

 

[firstdefence]

Just now, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Do you really need a pill shape? Why not just use a circle?

 

That doesn't work you just get a row of circles, you need the pill shape to have a head so the brush stroke starts with a rounded end, a middle that can be repeated or stretched and a tail that finishes with a rounded end

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

That doesn't work you just get a row of circles

That depends on the spacing, surely? If you use a square instead of a rectangle you don’t get a row of squares!

Edit: Thinking about it, I suppose you do need a body between the head and the tail if you want the stroke to have smooth sides, but you should be able to get away with a very short one.

[firstdefence]

6 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

That depends on the spacing, surely? If you use a square instead of a rectangle you don’t get a row of squares!

Actually you do, you just don't see the join on a circle you see the arc's if you try to Create a head and a tail you end up with a square ended line. Using a pill shape accommodates the moving of the head and tail lines. 

 

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Using a pill shape accommodates the moving of the head and tail lines.

Quite so. I was editing my message when you posted.

 

[firstdefence]

I think I may have found a bug on the brushes, I created a row of circles to show you and just out of curiosity moved the tail line and it produced the same effect as the pill shape brush. Its always on the lower half too.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I think I may have found a bug on the brushes

I think you may well have! I originally suggested using a circle instead of a pill shape because I hoped it wouldn’t have that glitch.

BTW, what’s that brush width of “547.851 px” all about? 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

I think I may have found a bug on the brushes...

It is even glitchier than you might think. Check out what happens if you move or rotate any of the nodes in the afdesign file in this  7 color.zip attachment. (It includes a one brush *.afbrushes file you can import as a new category if you want.) In particular, note the weird things that happen to the ends as either an end node is rotated or the middle node is modified.

[sheriffderek]

I've been tasked with something like this as well.

I thought I might use multiple strokes, but - haven't found something that will allow me to draw many lines and magically have them be adjacent.

One of my students is trying to emulate this coffee ad. Just droppin this example here in case it stirs up any ideas on this. It seems like it would be complicated math - and that it would need some controls for how many and how thick to calculate it.

Do you have any advice on what terms I could use to search for this? Maybe I can use illustrator for this part of the project. "Adjacent stroke" was all I could think to type.

[sfriedberg]

I don't have any better suggestions for doing this in Affinity Designer, but I can think of several ways to do it in CorelDRAW.  A common go-to technique there is to draw a single central stroke, then expand it with multiple contours (which work robustly in CD) to get the parallel (actually "offset") lines, break apart the contour group geometry, then stroke selected lines with the desired color and width.

[G13RL]

@shérifderek

You can create a brush for this.
Draw a rectangle without an outline and fill it with one of the desired colors. Make it 4 mm high (for example).
Copy and paste it under itself, change the height to 8 mm and change its color. Do the same for all the colors by adapting the height.
Select the whole, export in PNG (in "Area", choose "Selection Only").
Then in the "Brushes" tab of the Studio, click on the "hamburger" at the top right next to the close button, click on "New Textured Image Brush. Choose the Png you have just created, the brush is then added to the category you have chosen (or created).
Select the stroke to which the brush is to be applied, in the studio, select the "Brushes" tab, select the category in which you have placed your new brush, click on it (it will be at the bottom of the drop-down list).
To make the colors appear on the stroke, set the stroke color to "None". Set the line thickness.

[NotMyFault]

If you want to get a pure vector result, i suggest 2 different approaches (with Designer or Photo)

(1) appearance panel (designer)

• use a basic round brush, set width to taste, use vector tool like pen or pencil to draw line
• add multiple strokes with help of appearance panel to add multiple strokes.  
• you may try gradients to get non symmetrical colors 
• 

(2) expand stroke (designer and photo)

• draw curve
• duplicate n times (once per color)
• duplicate two more times. Move one curve away, combine both to create a closed curve covering one half (from center of original curve. We need this later to mask
• change stroke width e.g. 4, 8, 12, …
• expand stroke 
• set stroke colors to taste
• nest all colored strokes to closed curve, so that only one half is visible to achieve non-symmetric curves

this approach can be extended further, using geometry>subtract to create independent closed curves, if you want to do more than coloring, e.g. changing curvature of selected parts.

[NotMyFault]

You can find some assets which help to speed up drawing multiple gapped coloured lines in one curve.

It correctly renders curves which overlap / cross themselves: Parts painted later will stay above parts painted earlier, but the transparent gap lets lower parts correctly shine through.

 

 

[JimmyJack]

@sheriffderek, if you want to go the brush route here's a tip:

Create the original brush with a simple black to white gradient.
Then, when applied to a stroke, add a Posterize adjustment in order to quantize the grey into steps corresponding to the number of lines (* more on this below). In this case 5. Now you can use a Gradient Map and have full control over the color of each individual line..... as opposed to having to make a new brush with each color change. 

* Yes, I did try to make the original brush segments specific solid grey values in order to use the Gradient Map directly, but the colors, for some reason were not exact when mapped. Close but not exact. Anyway it's easier to just do a gradient and use the # of lines rather than trying to figure out the percentages of grey you'd need (beyond simple divisions that is).

[NotMyFault]

53 minutes ago, JimmyJack said:

* Yes, I did try to make the original brush segments specific solid grey values in order to use the Gradient Map directly, but the colors, for some reason were not exact when mapped.

Well, this is exactly where my secret sauce can step in to avoid this issue. I use a procedural texture filter to create the gradient fill 100% exact wrt to positions of color stripes and color values, including the transparency gap.

 

[JimmyJack]

28 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Well, this is exactly where my secret sauce can step in to avoid this issue. I use a procedural texture filter to create the gradient fill 100% exact wrt to positions of color stripes and color values, including the transparency gap.

 

Care to share the sauce? Sounds delicious 🍽️ .

For clarity though, the simple gradient worked perfectly... Granted the stripes are evenly spaced.
What didn't was using absolute values of 0%,25%, 50%, 75% % 100% for the brush segments. (I didn't try 0-255 values, just %s)

[G13RL]

If you want to use a gradient, @NotMyFault's magic sauce (recipe) avoids having to position exactly the different stops of the gradient, which is already painful for some lines but would become frankly unmanageable for a large number.
In my simple example (few lines and equal spacing), I assumed that the total spacing was equal to a rectangle.
For this type of brush, I would instead use rectangles directly with the chosen colors, as in the first column.

[JimmyJack]

Hi @G13RL,

Okay, two mentions of @NotMyFault's special sauce!! I really wish someone would post a link.
I’m interested to see it. What are the input perimeters?. How does it work with uneven sections or gaps?

Until then I guess I’m a little perplexed regarding the diagram above.

Why do the many gradient stops need to be so precise? Any haphazard placement in the gaps will work fine.

But more to the point… (and this is still assuming equal sections)
Why enter multiple things (whether it’s individual values or many gradient stops) at all, when typing one number will do the job? 73 sections…. type 73 done.