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Rotating object horizontally with Ctrl J plus rotation


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G'day from Australia.

I have Atffinity Designer for Windows. I am very much a beginner.

I want to select an2137980217_AFFINITYDESIGNERROTATING.thumb.jpg.ddd29336e5892d591cf757ad74c04682.jpg object, then Ctrl J, then drag the object horizontally, then rotate. Now I want to Ctrl J, with the object rotating and moving along a horizontal line. At the moment I can't see how to do this.

Here is a screen dump of what I want to do.

Hopefully some of the experts out there can assist me with this challenge.

Thank you and seeya.

Paul.

 

 

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Hi @paulfromaustralia ,

What you have in Example 1 is expected. Power duplicate will take the adjustments you made for one object and will copy it from instance to instance, not from the original instance to all the duplicates. In example 1, when you power duplicate the first time, you get the "step 2 ". When you power duplicate again, it will take whatever adjustments you made initially, and duplicate from step2 to step 3, not from the original to step 3.

Thanks,

Gabe.  

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I’m not on my laptop at the moment, so I can’t test this in Affinity Designer on Windows, but in Affinity Photo on iPad I see exactly the errant behaviour that the OP describes. If I draw a square, duplicate it and move the duplicate horizontally, further duplicates are in a straight line; if I rotate the duplicate (either before or after moving it) with the rotation anchor in the central position, subsequent duplicates follow a circular arc.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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18 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

I’m not on my laptop at the moment, so I can’t test this in Affinity Designer on Windows, but in Affinity Photo on iPad I see exactly the errant behaviour that the OP describes. If I draw a square, duplicate it and move the duplicate horizontally, further duplicates are in a straight line; if I rotate the duplicate (either before or after moving it) I get subsequent duplicates following a circular arc.

I get the same thing on my Mac using Affinity Designer. At first I thought that the power duplicate was following an arc because the rotation center of the first object was outside it, at the center of the arc, but that isn't it.

AFAIK, as long as the first duplicate is only moved horizontally & rotated around its center, then power duplicate should keep creating new duplicates along that line, while rotating each one by the rotation increment of the first. Since that does not happen, I agree that this is errant behavior.

EDIT: from what I can tell from the Transform panel, the first duplicate's Y coordinate is the same as the original & only its X coordinate increases, but in the other duplicates either or both the X & Y coordinates change in an unpredictable way.

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
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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And should not Ctrl + J be applied until after Step 2?
The first copy of the object plus the required transform / shift is executed after Ctrl + Drag.
Unfortunately, I can not try.

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I created the pattern below by first drawing the rectangle & line shown in red; selecting both; duplicating & rotating them together; & then power duplicating a few times. I expected that at least the lines would have some rotational point of commonality but I do not see any evidence of that.

662161633_powerdup.png.63f49e1b6347f1841cb76bba136c15b7.png

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
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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49 minutes ago, R C-R said:

AFAIK, as long as the first duplicate is only moved horizontally & rotated around its center, then power duplicate should keep creating new duplicates along that line, while rotating each one by the rotation increment of the first. Since that does not happen, I agree that this is errant behavior.

3

This is an expected and correct behaviour. Power duplicate works on local coordinates, not global. So:

  • Create a cube
  • Duplicate
  • move it +100 on X and rotate it 45°
  • Duplicate ( this second duplicate will take the local position and rotation of the second cube, and will move it +100 on it's local x and rotate 45°. You will have now a 90° angle between the first and the third cube.
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18 minutes ago, GabrielM said:

Create a cube

Did you mean to type ‘square’? :/

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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A non-automatic way to do this, until better: draw a shape, "Ctrl/Cmd + J", apply rotation without moving, "Ctrl/Cmd + J" again as many times as necessary.
Then select the ensemble and space horizontally.

Rotation horizontale.png

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19 minutes ago, reglico said:

A non-automatic way to do this, until better: draw a shape, "Ctrl/Cmd + J", apply rotation without moving, "Ctrl/Cmd + J" again as many times as necessary.
Then select the ensemble and space horizontally.

A very good suggestion, Régis, but the rotation sequence in your screenshot looks wrong. Your first square is followed by mirrored pairs of rotated squares (instead of each square being followed by another one rotated slightly more in the same direction).

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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You're right Alfred, I didn't pay attention to that! The result seemed "strange" to me but I was focused on moving in a straight line.

It appears that the shapes rotate alternately (one out of two) clockwise and counter-clockwise, this is a strange result, I expected the rotation to be done in the same way at each step.

I had already noticed this type of behavior by putting shapes in circles, for example flower petals: the "Ctrl + J" place the new shape alternately on one side or the other of the circle, a little like tightening a car wheel. I didn't check since the final result was correct but maybe it depends on whether the total of the shapes to place is an even or odd number? What doesn't matter on a circle is apparently a straight line problem.

Rotation horizontale_2.png

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1 hour ago, GabrielM said:

This is an expected and correct behaviour. Power duplicate works on local coordinates, not global. So:

  • Create a cube
  • Duplicate
  • move it +100 on X and rotate it 45°
  • Duplicate ( this second duplicate will take the local position and rotation of the second cube, and will move it +100 on it's local x and rotate 45°. You will have now a 90° angle between the first and the third cube.

But that does not seem to be what is happening. As I said, the first duplicate is fine, but the next one also moves on Y, & from then on both X & Y values change. If there are 'local coordinates' independent of the canvas' coordinate system, whatever they reference is not obvious.

It seems to be working like this: if only the X position of the first duplicate is moved, a straight line of duplicates is created (no change in their Y values). If only the rotation is changed (so no change in either X or Y), all the duplicates rotate about the same center. But if both rotation & X position is changed, then we get this weird arc with no apparent rotation center at all.

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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

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55 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

The “expected and correct” behaviour still seems unexpected and incorrect! :(

I agree. The 'local' rotation reference point is clear enough, but not the 'local' x or y one.

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

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1 hour ago, GabrielM said:

This is an expected and correct behaviour. Power duplicate works on local coordinates, not global.

Ah! I finally understand why Power Duplicate behaves as it does, however…

  1. The help file does not mention local (or global) coordinates
  2. This seems like a very odd design choice!

Can you suggest an efficient method, using Power Duplicate (or other tools in Affinity) to create a horizontal row of (45) squares, equally spaced, each rotated 8° from the last?

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2 hours ago, GabrielM said:

They will rotate around the centre axis. image.png.17b2c06f860552012ffdf183a3d810c6.png

Move that centre axis and you will have a different result :)

I bet you did not move the axis point to the end of that curve. 

Sorry, I missed this reply & am just seeing it now. I do not understand what you mean about them rotating around the center axis. What axis would that be? It certainly does not look like it is on an axis drawn through both the line & the center of the rectangle. I created the line using snapping to make sure it was at the midpoint of the lower edge of the rectangle & perpendicular to it, so if the rotation center had been shown in the screenshot it would have been on the line (which it was). However, the rotation is clearly not around that center -- if it was all the lines would intersect at that point.

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

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Apparently in this case the center of rotation of the shape itself does not have to be moved but care must be taken to select the center point in the "Transform" window of the studio.

Rotation horizontale_3.png

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Right. Have a look at the example below. The green line is the local axis. Power duplicate will apply the original transformation to every "child" using its local axis. Is it not intended to use the global axis. If it was designed to use global coordinates rather than local, you could not create any "ratio" shapes. See the video below at 2:00

power.png

Edit : Local axis parameters cannot be accessed / modified manually. They are only used by power duplicate. The transform panel works on global axis, where y is always up and x is always right. 

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14 minutes ago, reglico said:

Apparently in this case the center of rotation of the shape itself does not have to be moved but care must be taken to select the center point in the "Transform" window of the studio.

It did not make any difference in my tests if the center anchor was selected in the Transform panel or if one of the others was, or if 'show rotation center' was enabled (which normally overrides the anchor references in the Transform panel).

Either way, what seems wrong here is not the rotation but the combination of a rotation (presumably around the 'local' center of rotation, whatever that might be) and a translation only along the x direction (locally defined or not). Either one alone produces the result I expect -- either rotation or translation in one direction -- but the two together create the arc around some point that has nothing to do with the local values of the objects.

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
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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4 minutes ago, GabrielM said:

The green line is the local axis. Power duplicate will apply the original transformation to every "child" using its local axis. 

OK, I guess I see what you mean about the "child's" local axis of rotation but I think this is not the most desirable or intuitive way for it to work, if for no other reason than it unnecessarily complicates creating a straight line of rotated duplicates. If we want to power duplicate along a curve (like the arc Alfred mentioned) we can do that by changing the rotation center, & doing so is more intuitive as well.

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

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It's just how it's been designed from day 1 and I don't believe it's going to be changed. You cannot move an object on a global axis and rotate it on a local axis at the same time. You can either do all the transformations in global or in local, not a mixture. 

I'm not aware of any ( 2d ) software that can do this kind of transformation. 

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