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Better Stroke Width Control [Designer]


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Please add better stroke width control. I attempted to use Affinity Designer for complex character lineart with the pressure graph tool. Unfortunately, it works only in simple cases. When many points are added it gets incredibly fiddly to change things or to even understand which point I have to move for editing. Not to mention the pressure graph often bugging out completely in complex situations either with points merging for no reason or point not moving at all and me having to close it down and turn it back up. The current solution is simply not good enough for many complex cases.

Moho Pro 12 (previously called Anime Studio Pro) has a great tool for this, simply called "line width tool". Here you can see it in action: 

 

Even Illustrator's version of this would be good to have: 

Just do something, please. Threads about his have been around for ages. In 2015 it was mentioned as being worked on yet it never landed. Only silence. No mentions of this improvement on the roadmap. This is such a fundamental missing feature that keeps me away from using Designer.

Previous threads: 

1. 

 

2. 

 

 

 

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Same here, agree that for drawing Designer is just not good enough. If you want OK pressure control, you need to draw sloooow strokes, resulting in wobbly lines with way too many points. If you want smooth lines, you need do draw quickly, but then the pressure is sampled/processed by Affinity app at too low a rate, resulting in very ugly lines. Draw too quickly, and the curve is ignored completely, and you end up with a straight line with constant width (tested on i5 and i7 with ssd drives and 16gb ram, so it's not a hardware issue). Comparing this to Illustrator or Clip studio only shows how much Affinity  is lagging behind in this regard (pun intended ;)

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  • 4 months later...

Serif is the modern Manuel. You are Basil.

 

 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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Unfortunately, I had to go back to Illustrator. I tried, I really tried to make the pressure graph work but it just doesn't have the fine control I need. I spent more time to get a worse result which is not acceptable. I'll check back occasionally to see if this gets improved because I really would like to stop paying Adobe.

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That's actually not a bad solution. (keeping track until stuff gets to be more of your liking, while you use other tools)

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...
On 5/1/2019 at 5:50 PM, PanthenEye said:

Unfortunately, I had to go back to Illustrator. I tried, I really tried to make the pressure graph work but it just doesn't have the fine control I need. I spent more time to get a worse result which is not acceptable. I'll check back occasionally to see if this gets improved because I really would like to stop paying Adobe.

If all your options are going back to  that... while I'd recommend staying in Affinity, if you really need that feature so bad.. I probably should not say this here, but... CSP (clip studio), besides the react to pressure is perfect, (and there's no jitter/random wobbling in several directions) just creating a vector layer, provides you with a similar tool ('correct line', in the vertical toolbar, and need to look  at the subtool, once the tool is selected, and properties, as usual, for advanced usage)... It allows many if not all of the tricks inkers been doing with Illustrator for years. And more. But of course, is a raster app with vector layers !...not a full blow vector application like Affinity Designer... So, might not be of use at all for your purpose, unless your output needed is raster.... as I can imagine you need to export for actually use the vectors for squash/stretch and other kind of animation effects, vectorial manipulation, as vectors. But all the functionality mentioned of AI is actually in there... a 'correct line' tool (with many options (paint over just rotating your Wacom disk (well, as I have that for change brush size in all apps) will produce shrinking-thickening of the lines to set the weight as u want it at each segment, redrawing a line extreme, or doing so by connecting the start with the last  extreme tip, push-pull modifying... etc. besides that you can directly modify the nodes, and do many vector operations)). But as a raster software, the vector layers are just a way there to make faster the production of the inks, resolution independent as u work, but then export as raster...

So, is a really nice tool, but for a very specific usage (raster export).

It's not the path (pun intended) for the needed input of your vector animation software (I guess...unless you animate frame by frame, old raster style). I only have the Pro, not the Ex version (which have no limits also in its animation module, but I believe it does neither export vectors, tho I might be wrong). For just raster illustration.. .could work. For me is great, as am all about raster . The tool more likely to become a permanent illustration tool for me would be Photo, not Designer... (though the latter is being for me extremely useful for all the usual graphic design).

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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6 hours ago, SrPx said:

If all your options are going back to  that... while I'd recommend staying in Affinity, if you really need that feature so bad.. I probably should not say this here, but... CSP (clip studio), besides the react to pressure is perfect, (and there's no jitter/random wobbling in several directions) just creating a vector layer, provides you with a similar tool ('correct line', in the vertical toolbar, and need to look  at the subtool, once the tool is selected, and properties, as usual, for advanced usage)... It allows many if not all of the tricks inkers been doing with Illustrator for years. And more. But of course, is a raster app with vector layers !...not a full blow vector application like Affinity Designer... So, might not be of use at all for your purpose, unless your output needed is raster.... as I can imagine you need to export for actually use the vectors for squash/stretch and other kind of animation effects, vectorial manipulation, as vectors. But all the functionality mentioned of AI is actually in there... a 'correct line' tool (with many options (paint over just rotating your Wacom disk (well, as I have that for change brush size in all apps) will produce shrinking-thickening of the lines to set the weight as u want it at each segment, redrawing a line extreme, or doing so by connecting the start with the last  extreme tip, push-pull modifying... etc. besides that you can directly modify the nodes, and do many vector operations)). But as a raster software, the vector layers are just a way there to make faster the production of the inks, resolution independent as u work, but then export as raster...

So, is a really nice tool, but for a very specific usage (raster export).

It's not the path (pun intended) for the needed input of your vector animation software (I guess...unless you animate frame by frame, old raster style). I only have the Pro, not the Ex version (which have no limits also in its animation module, but I believe it does neither export vectors, tho I might be wrong). For just raster illustration.. .could work. For me is great, as am all about raster . The tool more likely to become a permanent illustration tool for me would be Photo, not Designer... (though the latter is being for me extremely useful for all the usual graphic design).

I do own CSP but as you've already mentioned, only the line-art is vector based. All the coloring layers are still raster. There are some unorthodox ways of working around that but I don't like the workflow for that. I'd prefer a fully non-destructive vector based workflow. Affinity Designer is really close, I especially like how the clipping masks are so effortless but line width tools are too basic for my use cases. I'll check back next year.

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  • 2 months later...

I've tried the 1.8.3 version, but the freehand drawing performance in AD is still abysmall. The lag and the resulting butchering of the stroke I make with my pen into the stroke on the canvas is so bad it's simply unusable. In 1.8.4 it simply crashes when I put one stroke down...

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On 5/1/2019 at 5:50 PM, PanthenEye said:

Unfortunately, I had to go back to Illustrator. I tried, I really tried to make the pressure graph work but it just doesn't have the fine control I need. I spent more time to get a worse result which is not acceptable.

It is like steering a car with a calculator.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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