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Vector export line caps not smooth


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Hi everyone,

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to use line pressure on strokes and have it output cleanly.
When working on it in affinity, the line caps are nice and smooth even with line pressure, however when exporting as pdf, svg, or eps, I noticed the line caps become blocky. The line caps and join are both set to rounded, thus why it looks great in program, but something seems to happen during the export (selection with no background - also tried different presents export/web/print/etc).
Looking around through the image, it seems like this occurs specifically on lines where I had used the line pressure feature. I think it's a fantastic function but I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong that results in this problem. 

Are there any ideas how to resolve this?

Thanks!

affinityproblem.jpg

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You don´t have to export to check the discrepancy in the output: just call for ->Layers->Expand Stroke.

Fun thing is the larger the shapes/canvas the more accurate the export.

In Inkscape we can adjust accuracy for SVG-output.

 

Cheers 

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25 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

You don´t have to export to check the discrepancy in the output: just call for ->Layers->Expand Stroke.

Fun thing is the larger the shapes/canvas the more accurate the export.

In Inkscape we can adjust accuracy for SVG-output.

 

Cheers 

So that helps at least, to check if things are going wrong.

It's was a letter size 300 DPI PSD brought into affinity so it's decently large.

Does that imply that even though I have a shape in affinity, it can't actually output it properly and I have to use a separate program to adjust accuracy at the end?

Expandstroke.jpg

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I've continued to test things to no avail and haven't found a proper solution yet. 

At someone else's suggestion, I tried downgrading to 1.7.0 and 1.6.5 but the problem persists.

I've also tried doubling / tripling the size of the document and then exporting, and while the results were improved, there were still the odd artefact lying around. Besides manually correcting individual nodes after expanding stroke and losing the flexibility to adjust the stroke, it doesn't seem like it there's a fix for this.

Is anyone else able to weigh in?

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It appears the .svg export routine generates all sharp points. Bring the .svg export back into Designer, and, in node mode, select the nodes at the ends, and change the nodes to smooth.

Re-export.

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16 minutes ago, gdenby said:

It appears the .svg export routine generates all sharp points. Bring the .svg export back into Designer, and, in node mode, select the nodes at the ends, and change the nodes to smooth.

Re-export.

That definitely helped a smidge, but they're kind of bow shaped at the ends now. Not as point, but not circular either. I tried switching them to smooth, and smoothing the path afterwards as well. 

snip_20190713082246.png

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The issue is you are using styled strokes, there's no such thing in pdf/svg/eps so they have to be converted to curves on export. The convert to curves function in AD is not really fit for purpose.

It's great that you are keen to find a solution, but unless you want to manually trace all your strokes there's no way to get perfect output right now.

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The malfunctioning expanding of strokes is a long-standing issue that unfortunately saw no improvements in 1.7. It’s a critical flaw keeping a lot of us at bay for now. The only workaround is to resort to 3rd party apps like Inkscape to do the conversion.

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3 hours ago, ProjectOxide said:

Unfortunately it doesn't work. 

Would anyone know if Illustrator has a similar issue with varied line widths and their caps?

I've never actually used varied strokes when I had Illustrator, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this issue you are having is unique to Affinity.

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6 hours ago, PixelPest said:

Mmmh - that is strange; I tested before suggesting.

DynamicStrokeSVGexportTest.jpg.1b8d66104149c54863075c1891842950.jpg

Mandala.svg

But did you really get in there to check the result ;)?
Over 40 THOUSAND nodes O.o. All sharp.

1891513135_ScreenShot2019-07-15at11_05_33AM.thumb.png.c1a3a666eaa866ab16a497575e2281d4.png

On 7/14/2019 at 9:06 AM, ProjectOxide said:

Unfortunately it doesn't work. 

Would anyone know if Illustrator has a similar issue with varied line widths and their caps?

Nowhere near as bad. The caps are a non issue in both AI and InkS as both retain curves rather than converting everything into straight line segments.

I took a quick look on a test pressure curve in all three programs.
2048555689_ScreenShot2019-07-15at2_45_54PM.png.ca9b96b1ad87d813bb15f47be804d038.png

Affinity 5,583 nodes all sharp
Inkscape 108 nodes. curves with bez handles
Illustrator 78 nodes. curves with bez handles
(and, fyi, there's at least one really good plugin for Ai that cleans up extra points very well. It does much more than that, but it costs more than Affinity itself.)

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2 hours ago, JimmyJack said:

But did you really get in there to check the result ;)?

And did you read my post? :35_thinking:

I can tell already by the file size that there´s something wrong with it.

BTW it´s almost 80k nodes. Just for the record.

80knodes.jpg.2b94ba2fcaaae9340662c4aedfaca42d.jpg

Oh - and I'm getting tired of how long we've been put off regarding more robust svg output.

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16 hours ago, PixelPest said:

And did you read my post? :35_thinking:

I can tell already by the file size that there´s something wrong with it.

BTW it´s almost 80k nodes. Just for the record.

80knodes.jpg.2b94ba2fcaaae9340662c4aedfaca42d.jpg

Oh - and I'm getting tired of how long we've been put off regarding more robust svg output.

For reference, here's the project file that I've been trying to resolve: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xPrw4KfYjAr1DW-Z6eAhS9OrwqOJjZ9B/view

I've tried the suggestions thus far to no avail.

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On 7/14/2019 at 7:31 AM, dr_who said:

The malfunctioning expanding of strokes is a long-standing issue that unfortunately saw no improvements in 1.7. It’s a critical flaw keeping a lot of us at bay for now. The only workaround is to resort to 3rd party apps like Inkscape to do the conversion.

Would you be able to share how to do the workaround in Inkscape? I tried installing it briefly but couldn't figure out how to bring the vector work into it since copy pasting rasterizes it and it doesn't like the affinity files either, but at the same time I can't export to anything without ruining the caps.

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19 hours ago, JimmyJack said:

But did you really get in there to check the result ;)?
Over 40 THOUSAND nodes O.o. All sharp.

1891513135_ScreenShot2019-07-15at11_05_33AM.thumb.png.c1a3a666eaa866ab16a497575e2281d4.png

Nowhere near as bad. The caps are a non issue in both AI and InkS as both retain curves rather than converting everything into straight line segments.

I took a quick look on a test pressure curve in all three programs.
2048555689_ScreenShot2019-07-15at2_45_54PM.png.ca9b96b1ad87d813bb15f47be804d038.png

Affinity 5,583 nodes all sharp
Inkscape 108 nodes. curves with bez handles
Illustrator 78 nodes. curves with bez handles
(and, fyi, there's at least one really good plugin for Ai that cleans up extra points very well. It does much more than that, but it costs more than Affinity itself.)

Thanks for the effort to confirm it. Would you happen to know the name of that plug in? I seem to be in a position where i'll be doing increasingly more vector work in the future so it could be worth the investment in affinity is unable to handle this properly.

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Well, my workflow was: export to svg in AD > open the svg file in Inkscape, do the conversion from paths to shapes (can’t recall the name of the function off the top of my head but it should be relatively easy to find), save the file > open the file in AD and carry on.

But then again, my paths were relatively simple with no width variations and such. They did have rounded corners and caps, though, which seemed to survive the svg exporting just fine.

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If Inkscape supports variable width strokes, maybe export to svg without the width variations and add them in Inkscape using a high-res png as a reference in the background...?

Admittedly these workarounds are getting ridiculous but such is the state of affairs currently regarding this area :(

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25 minutes ago, BofG said:

You won't get variable width strokes in svg, it's not supported.

I would suggest outputting as a png from AD at a large size, then using the trace function in InkScape. 

That’s one option but to me, even when tracing a high-res image, the results always seem more or less wonky...

Depends highly on what’s being traced, though, and is definitely worth a shot.

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19 minutes ago, dr_who said:

Admittedly these workarounds are getting ridiculous but such is the state of affairs currently regarding this area :(

This is so true, imagine spending many hours on a drawing using complex strokes and then only finding out at the end that it's trapped in Designer, with no way to get it out as a vector. Maybe there should be a warning message when a stroke style is first applied.... :)

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5 minutes ago, BofG said:

This is so true, imagine spending many hours on a drawing using complex strokes and then only finding out at the end that it's trapped in Designer, with no way to get it out as a vector. Maybe there should be a warning message when a stroke style is first applied.... :)

Couldn’t agree more! I really feel for the OP. Imagine you’re on a tight deadline, having worked hard the whole day and when you’re finally about to output the deliverable pdf you’re faced with this issue... Yeah, wouldn’t make me laugh either.

I love this app to death which is why this thing is really killing me. But you’re right, having a feature at your disposal that is only going to betray you in the end is bordering something I don’t even want to say out loud.

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