Crashing issues with vector art

[JoeyB]

I’m having issues of constant crashing on IOS. This is making me lose progress every time it crashes. The program crashes so often , probably after 5-10 seconds of work but sometimes up to a few minutes. Not sure what’s happening. I tried to upload my file but the forum kept failing upon download . Please help. I’m new to vector so maybe I’m doing something wrong. 

 

Running 9.7” iPad Pro

 

Thank you,

Joseph

[JoeyB]

Download link.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/slz4q35lvv025vh/vo mural fenced yard.afdesign?dl=0

[Sean P]

Hi JoeyB,

Thanks for the files! Whilst it is an awesome drawing the issues you are getting seem to be stemming from un-optimised vector objects which is having a large strain on the device

You have that have an incredibly large amount of objects, each seems to have far too many nodes. For example this object I picked at random has 1,742 nodes. Areas like those lines can be done with a Curve with as few as 8 nodes, and a stroke width and colour set instead of using a fill.

If you times that 1,742 by the amount of curves in your document which seems to be about 9,000 (I don't have an exact amount, but from what I could tell), that gives you around 15,000,000 nodes! Which is A LOT and is more than likely causing you problems especially on an iPad Pro with 2gb of RAM.

Now I'm not sure how you've created your document, but at a guess I would say you've been using the boolean operations a lot which can cause messy geometry. On top of that it looks like you've also tried to paint in areas using a vector curves which isn't generally how vector art is created. Unfortunately I cannot guide you hear, but I would advise looking at some of the sample documents that come with Designer iPad. For example have a look at Jonathan Ball's Rainbow Rabbit, and how few nodes he uses on objects and how he uses the fills inside of a curve. 

EDIT: I'll move this to Questions as you might be able to get some help from other users who will be able to better guide you into transitioning from Raster to Vector art!

[lepr]

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[gdenby]

Hi, JoeyB,

I upgraded my iMac from 8 Gb to 32 when I started doing geometric operations in the vicinity of 15,000 curves, but those usually had less than 10 nodes per curve. The app wouldn't crash, but it would hang, and render the machine almost unusable. More RAM helped, but some operations are evidently computationally intense, and from what little I understand, seems to hog all the resources of several of the CPUs cores.

I downloaded your file, and took a peek at it. I can only guess at how you are working at this. I saw one curve that appeared to be a pen or pencil line scribbled above another shape to paint over it. But in other areas I saw many many shapes that I guess were vector strokes that were expanded, as mentioned by Sean P.   As it happens, Affinity's expand stroke command tends to make shapes w. immense numbers of nodes, and many users hope that is improved. Affinity also has a smoothing routine than can reduce the number of nodes, tho' like other apps, that sometimes distorts the shape. Following, one of the images strokes before and after the smoothing routine.

I 'spose you are using an iPencil for expressive quickness. Its great for making dynamic lines, and the fact that Affinity has come up w. a way to make vector  art from that is a 1st in my experience. But it is not usual to make hundreds of strokes to fill an area. I think you may want to re-work your method.

Doing a diagnostic, here is a sample of one area's outline mode view.

A portion with a dark arc composed of many strokes.

The immense number of nodes of those shapes. I tried simplifying them and adding them, but crashed the app 3 times trying different methods. 

If I just reduced the opacity, I could view what was underneath and do a standard  vector trace. Just took 10 nodes.

Vector originated as anything but spontaneous. It was all about precision and simplicity. Maybe try something a bit more like old fashioned cartooning. Start putting you figures together from loose ellipses and "rubber balloons." Those can be added together, and refined, and then smaller items added on top or within those.

I'm sure it will be as easy as Pi.

[JoeyB]

Owenr- yes. That is what I did. I was having troubles exporting with SVG and EPS formats. I needed to know that I can export this file without rasterizing issues as I am designing this to be printed as a large scale mural. The “vector” brushes do not export as vector . They raterize upon export. Also anything transparent rasterizes when exporting via EPS. SVG can not export CMYK colors so that’s out. I ended up switching to RGB colors just to get an export that didn’t raterize parts of the design. I’m sure I’m doing this all wrong. What I’m confused on is if this is a vector program with vector brushes why do they rasterize upon export? Seems like it shouldn’t be called a vector brush then. 

As for having too many nodes, since the brushes don’t actually make a clean, crisp , pointed line at the end , and Affinity doesn’t offer an eraser or a brush that makes crisp clean pointed lines like say the technical pen in procreate , I have to use more lines to cut the line back to create the crisp line I’m looking for. Also if I fill the shapes with the fill tool upon export the color is lost when I go to open it in other programs to print. I understand vector is different than normal drawing programs such as procreate but affinity works different from other vector programs I’ve used. I’m sure I just need to learn more but it’s hard to learn when no one I know has even heard of affinity designer. So when I explain what’s going on they just look at me like a deer in headlights and tell me to get Illustrator. 

 

[lepr]

.

[JoeyB]

21 minutes ago, owenr said:

It's OK to export something to SVG or EPS to test the export, but keep the original Affinity objects instead of removing them and re-importing the exported files.

 

Yeah I think that’s where my major issue came. The crashing started happening after I did that. I brought it into illustrator to test it, did some edits , then exported it asEPS brought it back into affinity desktop converted it to an Affinity file then back on the iPad. After that it was crash city. I think I’m going to start over and try to minimize my nodes. 

 

But what do I do about rasterized vector elements upon export ? I can’t have any rastered items at all. If transparent items raterize then isn’t that worthless to have as an option when it comes to anything that needs to be exported for print ? 

[Sean P]

14 hours ago, JoeyB said:

They raterize upon export. Also anything transparent rasterizes when exporting via EPS. SVG can not export CMYK colors so that’s out. I ended up switching to RGB colors just to get an export that didn’t raterize parts of the design. I’m sure I’m doing this all wrong. What I’m confused on is if this is a vector program with vector brushes why do they rasterize upon export? Seems like it shouldn’t be called a vector brush then. 

As for having too many nodes, since the brushes don’t actually make a clean, crisp , pointed line at the end , and Affinity doesn’t offer an eraser or a brush that makes crisp clean pointed lines like say the technical pen in procreate , I have to use more lines to cut the line back to create the crisp line I’m looking for. Also if I fill the shapes with the fill tool upon export the color is lost when I go to open it in other programs to print. I understand vector is different than normal drawing programs such as procreate but affinity works different from other vector programs I’ve used. I’m sure I just need to learn more but it’s hard to learn when no one I know has even heard of affinity designer. So when I explain what’s going on they just look at me like a deer in headlights and tell me to get Illustrator. 

Vector Brushes are useful for users who want to paint an image that can be later exported as an image - they just give the user a bit more control over re-positioning and tweaking the brush strokes, than you would normally have if you used raster brushes. The name is not correct, they're brush strokes that are applied to a vector line. 

As far as I can tell Procreate contains no vector tools, so the brush tools are not quite comparable as you've mentioned. Currently there is no actual vector eraser in Affinity, however it is worth making a post in Feature Requests if you require it!

What I think you want to look at is using the Pen and Pencil Tools in Affinity. The Pencil tool allows you to draw a basic vector line that can also incorporate the pressure (which can be later tweaked on the stroke tab to give you that fine tapered end) from the Apple Pencil as well. It can then be edited using the node tool to refine it. This should give you crisp controllable lines you desire. Alternatively you can use the Pen Tool which works by drawing a curve on a node by node basis, tweaking it as you go. These are generally the same as vector tools in other apps.

13 hours ago, JoeyB said:

But what do I do about rasterized vector elements upon export ? I can’t have any rastered items at all. If transparent items raterize then isn’t that worthless to have as an option when it comes to anything that needs to be exported for print ? 

The EPS format doesn't actually support transparency at all, however when an EPS file is exported from Adobe Illustrator a copy of the AI is embedded inside, so when this is read back into Illustrator it looks like a fully compatible file - this seems to catch many users out! You might find PDF/X-4 will be the best format for you (although be aware that Acrobat has a maximum of 200" x 200" that can be displayed), as it will support transparency along with CMYK colours. There are options on the Export screen that allow you to control what rasterization happens - you can choose from Nothing, Unsupported Properties or Everything.