Will gradient mesh come out in 2019?

[revo]

Hello, 

I am a very longtime Serif software user. Over the years I have had the following products. 

• Serif Drawplus 4
• Serif Drawplus 6
• Serif Drawplus 7
• Serif Drawplus 8
• Serif Drawplus X2
• Serif Drawplus X4
• Serif Drawplus X8 
• Serif Webplus 10

I still use Serif Drawplus X8 almost exclusively, though I own a more recent version of CorelDraw. I prefer Drawplus overall. 

I would like to move to Affinity Designer soon, however, for the past 5 YEARS I have seen threads again and again with an employee claiming that gradient mesh is on the road map. 

I absolutely cannot switch to any product that does not offer gradient mesh as I use it in almost every project I create. There is no better way to produce a photo realistic nose on a face in my opinion. I simply will not buy a program without it while I can use Drawplus, CorelDraw, or even Inkscape and find the tool there. 

I have been waiting, for five years, to see an announcement that Affinity Designer has gradient mesh. I am almost done waiting. I need to know, definitively, will it come out this calendar year? 

If not, I will permanently move to CorelDraw. 

I would very much prefer to stick with you. 

Can you please give me more information than a vague statement that it is on a roadmap?

Roadmaps typically finish out in less than half a decade.

Is this actually going to occur? If you decided not to do it, that is fine. I am okay with moving to another product but I am tired of waiting for something this board was told in 2016 would eventually come out. Please have the courtesy to tell a life long supporter of your products if this is worth waiting for or not. 

Thank you. 

[Leigh]

Unfortunately, we have no new updates on when/if this feature will be added to the app, sorry. I can only suggest that you continue to use DrawPlus/CoralDraw if it has features that Affinity Designer is currently lacking for you. If this changes. i'm sure the developers will announce it on this forum.

[revo]

That is unfortunate to hear. 

More unfortunate is that not a single actual employee gave enough of a crap to respond in the past 100 days. 

I was sad about leaving the Serif community, but it is clearly spiraling the drain anyway. 

I am hopeful that the open source community will be able to purchase the DrawPlus code base someday as that was a good product. 

Affinity Designer without mesh after five years of promises seems to be a totally lost cause. I am done waiting.  Corel gets my money now. 

[revo]

The answer, for those interested, is a definitive no. Serif has abandoned any plan to include gradient  mesh in Serif Affinity. I was hopeful, but, a roadmap in 2014/2015 claimed that they would include gradient mesh, and we are in 2020 now and it is not there. Gradient mesh is not mathematically difficult in any manner. It relies on drawing percentages between defined points on a grid, which, is super, duper, incredibly elementary. There is no reason we should be waiting on this. I thought the reason was that they were testing it with Adobe Illustrator and perfecting it so any imported mesh appeared identical but, it appears instead somebody just got drunk and posted it on their roadmap, because there is zero, I repeat, zero point zero zero zero zero zero progress on gradient mesh in six years. Oh well. I bought CorelDraw three years ago and have never used it, but, I guess now I'll spend money on the latest upgrade and learn. I was hoping to stay with Serif. Thanks anyway.