afDesigner: What is this??

[Friksel]

Hi everybody,

I just stumbled upon this and I cannot understand what this is and what this is for. I can't find it in the Designer help. It's this structure:

I created an empty layer and moved an object on top of the layericon to crop it. I wasn't expect this to do anything, 'cause there isn't anything inside the layer to crop. But for some reason it DID add a crop/clip-layer to it. And it's giving strange results I don't get (look at the video in the attachment). Suddenly the icon of the layer changed into a folder icon and the childmask isn't masking the layer, but the layer(s?) under it. And to make it even more weird, when moving the layer underneith it this layer is making the first layer again.... strange

It doesn't really make sense to me so far. This way it looks like we can mask layers underneath it, but is it really meant to work like this? Can we rely on this to be a feature, or did I perhaps hit some bug here?

I am intrigued.

Anybody knows how this feature is called, what's it for, when could we use this and is there some information about it somewhere in the help or elsewhere? And why did the icon change into a folder/group-icon?

 

[firstdefence]

You have created a Mask, if you remove the fill from the shape it will now show as transparent. If you add a stroke it will display as a line around the shape.

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Layers/LayerMasks.html

[Friksel]

14 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

You have created a Mask, if you remove the fill from the shape it will now show as transparent. If you add a stroke it will display as a line around the shape.

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Layers/LayerMasks.html

Thanks for your reaction @firstdefence. I know about masks and clips and how they work, but this looks like something different. As you can see in the screenrecording. In the doc, found on the link you provide, it says about Masks:

Quote

A layer mask is used to reveal a portion of a layer while the rest of the layer remains hidden. This means that you can use a mask layer to 'delete' areas of a layer that you don't want.

And that's exactly my confusion here: this isn't masking the layer itself (only), it is masking the layer underneath it. And even stranger... the layer underneath it is masking the layer with the mask... that is strange to me. Next to this it's very strange to me that an EMPTY layer can be masked... What are we masking here?

[Dan C]

Hi Frikel

1 hour ago, Friksel said:

Next to this it's very strange to me that an EMPTY layer can be masked... What are we masking here?

This is what's causing the issue, as you're clipping and masking an empty layer simultaneously, Affinity uses the bounding box of the ellipses as the only shape in the layer, then masks the shape to this, which causes this odd behaviour.

1 hour ago, Friksel said:

the layer underneath it is masking the layer with the mask

This is expected behaviour as all layers have a 'passthrough' blend mode as standard, so the mask passes through to objects below.

We recommend never clipping and masking an empty layer, if you populate the new layer with any shape or curve before clipping and masking another shape/curve to it, you'll find that Affinity behaves as expected! 

[Friksel]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

We recommend never clipping and masking an empty layer, if you populate the new layer with any shape or curve before clipping and masking another shape/curve to it, you'll find that Affinity behaves as expected! 

Thanks for your response @Dan C. Although I still have to get my head around the passthrough blending mode as in the order seems to be in reverse in my head somehow, I understand your point. Today I was mainly testing what all kinds of grouping, masking and clipping doest to the svg output, 'cause I use the svg outputs to program interactives with and want to know exactly what action is causing what svg output to control with javascript. That's the reason I tested out and found this strange situation, which I normally would never try. And I wasn't sure if this is some feature I didn't know about or maybe some situation that shouldn't be used. Guess it's the last one.

Have to tell you btw, although I'm very critial on Affinity Designer and there are some things I really think need a lot of attention by your developers to go to a professional level, especially its svg output which I use everyday and could need some improvements, and the 'convert to curves' methods, I am very enthousiastic about Designer. I am using it now with the 'continues' method on in the export persona while designing and developing at the same time and it's marvalous and makes developing so fast in combination with webpack and svgo to even compress and strip the svg output on the go after each change. So just wanting to tell you guys at Affinity I'm not only critical on the software and that I'm critical, just BECAUSE I'm using it on a dayly basis because I chose this software over Adobe's. If the SVG output will be improved and the convert to curves methods are fixed this software is just excelent! Just saying