Designer: Brush strokes, set style every single time?

[Thomahawk]

Creating path with path tool, apply a brush stroke to it, two problems:

1. apply a brush style, I still get a straight line, but thicker eventually. I have to change over to the contur palette and set a pressure line. This should not be so.  A brush stroke as a setting should instantly create a brush stroke inlcuding pressure curve

2. after having done 1. I go and do a new path. Do I get the same setting I just made? No, I have to do all of 1. over again for each path. This should also not be. Change of tool settings should be repeated on the next use of the tool.

I looked in preferences if this behaviour has to be set, but nothing there about that.

 

[gdenby]

Hi, Thomahawk,

The pen tool does not respond to pressure or velocity. The stroke must be changed from the dialogue. The pencil tool will respond to pressure and velocity w. basic brushes, and a textured brush when applied will pick up on that. The vector brush will respond to pressure/velocity/brush defaults. 

[Thomahawk]

Right. When using drawing tablet.

But I am talking about the path tool. Setting points with the mouse.

Creating path with path tool, apply a brush stroke to it, two problems:

1. apply a brush style, I still get a straight line, but thicker eventually. I have to change over to the contur palette and set a pressure line. This should not be so.  A brush stroke as a setting should instantly create a brush stroke inlcuding pressure curve

2. after having done 1. I go and do a new path. Do I get the same setting I just made? No, I have to do all of 1. over again for each path. This should also not be. Change of tool settings should be repeated on the next use of the tool.

I looked in preferences if this behaviour has to be set, but nothing there about that.

[gdenby]

One can get line width and opacity changes w. just a mouse using the pencil and vector brush, and choosing the control variable to velocity/negative velocity. It IS, indeed, very clumsy, and using a tablet is immensely better.

As above, the pen tool (I suppose that is what you are calling the "path tool", no path tool in Designer) does not respond to mouse velocity, and obviously there is no pressure from the mouse clicks. 

I'm uncertain where your problem is happening. See attached. Shapes made w. the parametric shape tools, and given a line pressure change. More lines made w the pen tool, also showing the pressure change. Variations made to the pressure profile, and repeated over several lines. Another change in the pressure profile, applied to a few strokes, and then strokes w. variable brushes assigned.

[walt.farrell]

My question (after some experimenting based on @Thomahawk's observations) is:

When I create a path with the Pen tool, and then apply a stroke with a brush that looks like

why does the applied stroke have a constant width? I would have expected the brush's pressure curve to apply. Instead, it seems that only the Stroke pressure curve from the Pen tool's Context toolbar applies. That seems to make brush selection for those strokes pretty useless except for the image brushes.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

why does the applied stroke have a constant width?

Because there was no pressure variation made when you used the Pen Tool (because it does not respond to pressure, just clicks). It cannot apply what is not there to begin with.

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Because there was no pressure variation made when you used the Pen Tool (because it does not respond to pressure, just clicks). It cannot apply what is not there to begin with.

True, of course. (But it made sense to me when I asked, for some reason. Must try to get back into that mindset and figure out why.)

(On the other hand, I can't even get Velocity to have an effect, so I'm not sure what's going on.)

[firstdefence]

11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

My question (after some experimenting based on @Thomahawk's observations) is:

When I create a path with the Pen tool, and then apply a stroke with a brush that looks like

why does the applied stroke have a constant width? I would have expected the brush's pressure curve to apply. Instead, it seems that only the Stroke pressure curve from the Pen tool's Context toolbar applies. That seems to make brush selection for those strokes pretty useless except for the image brushes.

I think the generated image is the brushes potential not what will happen but what could happen with settings and tools appropriate to the task i.e. a pen and tablet.

Instead of making settings post using the Pen Tool, why not configure the Pen Tool prior to creating curves, so set the line width adjust the Pressure Profile and start to create a curve, it becomes less confusing and more intuitive if you do it this way.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

(On the other hand, I can't even get Velocity to have an effect, so I'm not sure what's going on.)

If you mean the Pen Tool, it is for basically the same reason: the tool only responds to clicks, & to how far you drag out node handles, but not how fast or slow you click or drag.

When I use a mouse with the paint brush tools, I find that the response to velocity changes is minimal at best. It might be different with a tablet & stylus but I don't have one so I don't know about that.

[Thomahawk]

On 12/15/2018 at 10:26 PM, walt.farrell said:

My question (after some experimenting based on @Thomahawk's observations) is:

When I create a path with the Pen tool, and then apply a stroke with a brush that looks like

why does the applied stroke have a constant width? I would have expected the brush's pressure curve to apply. Instead, it seems that only the Stroke pressure curve from the Pen tool's Context toolbar applies. That seems to make brush selection for those strokes pretty useless except for the image brushes.

Right. I already discussed this with their support. Of course there is no pressure curve present from handling with the mouse. But brush styles must apply a standard pressure curve automatically to curves who do not have one. Without that, brush styles are pretty confusing. You can not have a list of line/brush styles who are not universally applyable just on one click, it must instantly deliver what the style preview promises. In the end it is about having easy-of-use and a conformity for handling paths in general.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Thomahawk said:

But brush styles must apply a standard pressure curve automatically to curves who do not have one.

Nothing drawn with the Pen Tool has any pressure variation when drawn (because it just creates nodes that are joined by stroke segments). Thus, it does have a pressure curve, one that is flat & uniform from end to end.

[walt.farrell]

We're not talking about when the curve is drawn, but when it is subsequently stroked with a brush that has a pressure curve defined. Couldn't (shouldn't) the brush's pressure curve be applied?

If I were defining a simple line stroke for the curve via the Context toolbar I could set a stroke pressure profile.

When I choose instead to use a brush that already has one, why should I need to try to redefine the same profile when the brush I selected already has it?

[MEB]

Hi Thomahawk, walt,
What these brush previews show is that they have a brush size variance set in brush properties and NOT that the stroke to which you applied them will look visually like them). So the differences in width's variance of these brushes will be more or less accentuated depending on the value set in the Size Variance slider - but - for this to happen the drawn stroke must have a pressure profile no matter how it was created.

[MEB]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

We're not talking about when the curve is drawn, but when it is subsequently stroked with a brush that has a pressure curve defined. Couldn't (shouldn't) the brush's pressure curve be applied?

If I were defining a simple line stroke for the curve via the Context toolbar I could set a stroke pressure profile.

When I choose instead to use a brush that already has one, why should I need to try to redefine the same profile when the brush I selected already has it?

What you are asking/requesting is a different thing: you want some kind of preset functionality that applies a specific pressure curve to an existing stroke.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

If I were defining a simple line stroke for the curve via the Context toolbar I could set a stroke pressure profile.

If you draw a curve with the Pen Tool & then click on the pressure profile in the Context toolbar dropdown, you will see that it already has a pressure profile set. If you have not previously set a custom profile, it should look like this:

The profile was set when you drew the curve; in this instance it is just flat & uniform from end to end because that is the default profile. If you previously applied a custom profile to another curve, you will get that profile instead because the profile, like the stroke thickness, is a "sticky" setting that is retained until you change it.

[Thomahawk]

However. It is definitely so that even when once setting brush and pressure curve, next time I make a line, I have to do this all over again. The only setting that would repeat is line thickness and endings. This is simply wrong.

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, Thomahawk said:

However. It is definitely so that even when once setting brush and pressure curve, next time I make a line, I have to do this all over again. The only setting that would repeat is line thickness and endings. This is simply wrong.

All I can tell you is it does not work like that for me, unless maybe I have used the "Synchronize defaults from selection" feature, as explained here.

[Thomahawk]

.... and then 20 minutes later, suddenly it works and now every line I make has the set pressure brush. What has changed? What I did different? Nothing. Affinity Designer just is still worlds away from what I expect it to be.

[R C-R]

16 minutes ago, Thomahawk said:

.... and then 20 minutes later, suddenly it works and now every line I make has the set pressure brush. What has changed? What I did different? Nothing. Affinity Designer just is still worlds away from what I expect it to be.

It sounds like something in the per user support files for your copy of the app may have been corrupted. The usual fix for that is a reset.

[TheLunarTick]

On 12/28/2018 at 5:13 PM, Thomahawk said:

However. It is definitely so that even when once setting brush and pressure curve, next time I make a line, I have to do this all over again. The only setting that would repeat is line thickness and endings. This is simply wrong.

I wish you could share how you fixed this. I am using the pencil tool. I set the stroke to the way I need it but after I draw a new line it takes on the “New” setting of the new stroke. I wish I could manage the stroke consistency as I draw. Just a check box or something to lock in stroke curves.

[Wise Ollie]

I think what I am trying to do is along the same lines. In illustrator it insanely basic you just click the line you have drawn this then sets the style (stroke and colour) for the next vector brush line you want to do, I am trying to do this but every time I click vector brush I have the settings from the last line I drew. Say I draw a blue  line, then change colour and stroke draw a new red line, then want to continue the old blue line. In illustrator I would just click the blue line and this would set my brush to continue with that style, on Designer I find I am having to either try to match the stroke and colour the same then draw or having to raw then paste on the style from before. There MUST be a way I can just set the vector brush to the style I was previously using then draw with it, what am I missing?

[Bryan Rieger]

Bump. Same question. Sometimes it works, but most times it doesn’t and I have to reapply the brush/stroke properties that I want.