Strokes should not auto smooth as default

[Paekke]

Hello all.. I'v spend most of my life drawing and painting, finetuning the flow of my strokes and the pressure. As much as I LOVE :wub:  Affinity Designer, I hate the brushstrokes just as much, if not more. When I draw or paint, I know how much pressure I should put on my tool, and I WILL end up being satisfied with the result. In Affinity Designer however, there's this annoying :angry:  autocorrect/smoothing function that makes it impossible to get what you want. I really wish that this behaivour would be an option, and not something we should be forced to adapt to. Why?.. Well I just explained why.. I know how I want my strokes, my hand and brain works perfectly together, they are a good team, who would have thought that? :P  and then this bully Affinity Dersigner shows up and cleans out everything, leaving a mess :( . Stroke width is screwed up, and the flow of the stroke too. Please, Please, PLEASE CHANGE THIS. This should only be an option to turn on for those who haven't learned to draw, or those who's using a mouse.

 

Sorry for sounding cocky, in the last part.

 

Now just to be clear here, I'm talking about the Vector Brush

[specworkfan]

The vector brushes are pretty poor when you sketch in high speed. The location and shape of the strokes gets wonky. Illustrator is much better for this. 

 

I would assume the smoothing is being simplified for purposes of showing the stroke live on the screen. Illustrator uses a hack of sorts to reference the general path of your stroke. Affinity Designer doesn't have an intermediate step, so it really struggles when you go fast. It will probably drift towards needing the Illustrator way if they calculate too many points of the stroke. 

 

Even if it drew the vector strokes exactly as they appeared on paper in real time, you would almost always need extra refinement. I can live with the wonkiness for now. Annoying, but not as annoying as the UI in all the other programs.

 

 

Hello all.. I'v spend most of my life drawing and painting, finetuning the flow of my strokes and the pressure. As much as I LOVE :wub:  Affinity Designer, I hate the brushstrokes just as much, if not more. When I draw or paint, I know how much pressure I should put on my tool, and I WILL end up being satisfied with the result. In Affinity Designer however, there's this annoying :angry:  autocorrect/smoothing function that makes it impossible to get what you want. I really wish that this behaivour would be an option, and not something we should be forced to adapt to. Why?.. Well I just explained why.. I know how I want my strokes, my hand and brain works perfectly together, they are a good team, who would have thought that? :P  and then this bully Affinity Dersigner shows up and cleans out everything, leaving a mess :( . Stroke width is screwed up, and the flow of the stroke too. Please, Please, PLEASE CHANGE THIS. This should only be an option to turn on for those who haven't learned to draw, or those who's using a mouse.

 

Sorry for sounding cocky, in the last part.

 

Now just to be clear here, I'm talking about the Vector Brush

[Paekke]

The vector brushes are pretty poor when you sketch in high speed. The location and shape of the strokes gets wonky. Illustrator is much better for this. 

 

I would assume the smoothing is being simplified for purposes of showing the stroke live on the screen. Illustrator uses a hack of sorts to reference the general path of your stroke. Affinity Designer doesn't have an intermediate step, so it really struggles when you go fast. It will probably drift towards needing the Illustrator way if they calculate too many points of the stroke. 

 

Even if it drew the vector strokes exactly as they appeared on paper in real time, you would almost always need extra refinement. I can live with the wonkiness for now. Annoying, but not as annoying as the UI in all the other programs.

What annoys me is the live preview of the stroke is normal, no struggles, no changes in the flow of the curve or the width. But as soon as I move my pen away, Affinity changes it. Most times big changes appears, but ever time it will change it one way or the other.

Now it is worth mentioning that it is when the strokes are long, but we should be able to make other than fur strokes.

 

Now I don't agree in the part of extra refinement is almost always needed. I draw like I draw on paper, I do however use ⌘Z  ;)

[MattP]

I've mentioned this before but it's worth re-iterating (the forum's search doesn't always produce great results for me!) that the only difference between what you see while you're dragging and what you get when you let go is simply that pressure data has been smoothed to produce a minimal set of points that 'generally' captured what you intended. The only reason for this is that if you don't smooth the pressure input you'll find that your 'pressure' curve editor is a mess of thousands of points and you have no hope of being able to manage it nicely... It works well for some people and terribly for others. Clearly you are in the latter camp! ;) I've said earlier that I intend to add the ability to allow the user to decide how close to the original pressure input they would like to maintain. I think this will resolve the problem :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[specworkfan]

Illustrator seems to account for the speed of the stroke. If you slowly draw a long line with a lot of jitter (intentionally), it will smooth it out to a straight line by using fewer points. If you do it fast, it will use more points and will be less straight. I'm not sure the solution is linear. It is probably one of those things that will take some refinement.

 

If you would like me to demonstrate on video, I can show you the variance. It's probably too loose now. I am working with the program and it is no problem, but it would be nice that the program would work for me in this respect.

 

 

I've mentioned this before but it's worth re-iterating (the forum's search doesn't always produce great results for me!) that the only difference between what you see while you're dragging and what you get when you let go is simply that pressure data has been smoothed to produce a minimal set of points that 'generally' captured what you intended. The only reason for this is that if you don't smooth the pressure input you'll find that your 'pressure' curve editor is a mess of thousands of points and you have no hope of being able to manage it nicely... It works well for some people and terribly for others. Clearly you are in the latter camp! ;) I've said earlier that I intend to add the ability to allow the user to decide how close to the original pressure input they would like to maintain. I think this will resolve the problem :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[specworkfan]

The best solution I have found is in the Preview app of all things. Not only does in let you draw with pressure sensitivity from the new force trackpad, it lets you decide if you want to smooth the line or to keep your line like how you put it down.

 

1) Open Preview

 

2) Select the toolbox to the right of image rotate. "Show Markup Toolbar"

 

3) Use the Sketch Tool to sketch something squiggly (pressure only works on the draw tool)

4) A toolbar like below pops up with a preview of the line you drew. You can select the actual line, or click the next button for auto smoothing.  It could be more advanced in affinity with more levels of smoothing, but I think this UI is very intuitive.

 

[ronnyb]

I love how this and pressure sensitivity (force touch) is being addressed at the OS level. Add the iPad to this, and the possibility of the iPad Pro, and things start to get really exciting...

 

Wacom better start innovating fast, or they will become the next Blackberry, lol...

 

The best solution I have found is in the Preview app of all things. Not only does in let you draw with pressure sensitivity from the new force trackpad, it lets you decide if you want to smooth the line or to keep your line like how you put it down.

 

1) Open Preview

 

2) Select the toolbox to the right of image rotate. "Show Markup Toolbar"

 

3) Use the Sketch Tool to sketch something squiggly (pressure only works on the draw tool)

4) A toolbar like below pops up with a preview of the line you drew. You can select the actual line, or click the next button for auto smoothing.  It could be more advanced in affinity with more levels of smoothing, but I think this UI is very intuitive.

 

[RafaMaggessi]

Hi, i'm having the same problem i think. I set the brush and the controller to: Pressure, and even tried the controler: Brush Defaults... but i draw a line with my cintiq and it preview exactly the line i want, and when i let go it becames finner or changes in a way that i never know what to expect. Do you have a tutorial on how to customize the pressure so it is more acurate? Like in the ilustrator i set the brush and chose the variation, and in the affinity i think it was the same but it's not working! And this is a big thing guys!!! Please help! tks

[SrPx]

Quote

Wacom better start innovating fast, or they will become the next Blackberry, lol...

I would like to, but can't agree with that with all what a desktop brings in flexibility for work... plus, annoyed what many users are reporting of what happens to performance with recent iOS updates to their first gen iPad Pro 12'9 (is not just the iphones... and in graphic works, wow, does it hurt... seen a ton of videos of complaints...).... Wacom is king, and I'm afraid will keep being for very long in the professional field... And Surface... geez, what a horrible jitter in the pen.... it was my hope of a full desktop functionality in a portable device.... Also, non of the portable solutions seems to love a size over the 13-16 inches....yay for large illustrations and complex compositions... Or just the comfort of working in a big enough space...