Affinity Designer: How do I export everything inside of a slice?

[Popuri]

Hello! I'm a game designer, and I generally use Affinity Designer as my main method of texturing; however I've noticed that sometimes I either need to reimport an image, or I need to bring a new image in entirely to help with the texturing process of a 3D Model. To make this process seamless; I automatically export using slices! However whenever I make new slices; I'm unable to export everything in the new slice. 

For example this: 


Will become just this:

 

This is because I'm using the bottom image to slice out the exact measurements of the image that I need, but it's only exporting the select; not the selection with the background. How do I change that?

Thank you very much for reading this, and I hope you have a nice day!

[firstdefence]

Maybe I'm getting this all wrong but can you not create slices for each Layer in Exports Layer Panel and export each slice based on that layer.

The top image will be cropped using the bottom framework to wrap around a 3D model?

[Gabe]

Hi @Popuri

8 hours ago, Popuri said:

However whenever I make new slices; I'm unable to export everything in the new slice. 

Is that a slice from the "background"? Slice from a layer? Any chance you can send us a screen recording of your workflow? 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Popuri]

9 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Maybe I'm getting this all wrong but can you not create slices for each Layer in Exports Layer Panel and export each slice based on that layer.

The top image will be cropped using the bottom framework to wrap around a 3D model?

Well to my understanding; if I create slices for each layer; it'll export each layer individually; meaning I'd have to manually combine them, and their sizing would all be different so there wouldn't be the precision that I need? I could be wrong though!
 

8 hours ago, GabrielM said:

Hi @Popuri

Is that a slice from the "background"? Slice from a layer? Any chance you can send us a screen recording of your workflow? 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

The slice is from the "background". (The slice made upon creating the document by opening a .png)
https://streamable.com/1gf1c
That's the simplified gist of my workflow.

In text my workflow is the following:
1. Open the .png of the "UV" (This is how I know where to texture.)
2. Go to the Export Persona, and select where to export to, and then I choose to continually export that way I can reload my texture in Realtime using my 3D Modeling Program.
3. I go to my 3D Modelling Program, and refresh the texture inside of the program every time I make a change.

That's pretty much it, and it works great! However the issue comes whenever I want to swap out the "UV", or if I resize something to not fit to the borders of the page. Using the example above as a good workflow; here's another video of what happens if I try to resize the image inside of Affinity Designer, or choose the "UV" (The "UV" in this case is called Example in the layers panel) to dictate where my slice should go.

https://streamable.com/rx5zk

So to give you a rundown here of what went wrong, and what I wanted to happen...
What went wrong was that upon scaling the images; the slice generated upon document creation didn't scale along with the image I was scaling. Meaning that the textures weren't going where they were supposed to.

If I tried to correct this by making a new slice; it would only export the background; not everything above the background. This is an issue because then only the "UV" is being exported. None of the colors, or textures.

Hopefully that clarified the issue, and you'll know a solution!

TL;DR: I need a way to make a slice that will export everything visible inside of that slice.

[Gabe]

That slice you made 

Is just a layer slice of the layer called background. It would never export the full layer stack, as it's just a "Slice from Layer". 

To create a "global" slice, you have to use the slice tool

Also, when you rescale your artwork, check the file size with file explorer and see if it actually resizes it. If it does, it might be something to do with the way your UV stretches? 

[Popuri]

35 minutes ago, GabrielM said:

That slice you made 

Is just a layer slice of the layer called background. It would never export the full layer stack, as it's just a "Slice from Layer". 

To create a "global" slice, you have to use the slice tool

Also, when you rescale your artwork, check the file size with file explorer and see if it actually resizes it. If it does, it might be something to do with the way your UV stretches? 

Am I able to make the global slice automatically snap to the background layer? I'd prefer not to have to do it manually just because the way with which UVs work; is that they kind of need to be pixel perfect; otherwise stuff will go wrong. (I was previously selecting the layer, and then just hitting create slice, but that doesn't create the global slice for me; just the layer slice.) 

[Gabe]

You can snap to the corners of your canvas 

But, creating a slice in the first place would be a manual process. You can then have continuous export, but the actual creation of the slice is manual.  

[Popuri]

10 minutes ago, GabrielM said:

You can snap to the corners of your canvas 

But, creating a slice in the first place would be a manual process. You can then have continuous export, but the actual creation of the slice is manual.  

The canvas isn't the size of my UVs though, and the slice will need to fit to the four corners of the UVs. Why isn't there a way to make the slice generated based off of the layer global?  Sort of like when you export with the option, "selection with background" selected.

[Gabe]

I'm afraid no. Unless, you make a slice, take a note of the Transform values, create a new "global" slice and use the same values.