Painting Similar to Adobe Animate/Flash in AD?

[DDesignDude]

Is there any way to paint fills rather than strokes like I can in Adobe Animate?

I'm making the switch from doing vector art in Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash) to Affinity Designer.

 

As well, I'm wondering if I can do some of these same features in AD:

• Paintbrush strokes convert to fills as they are painted and combine with already existing art
• Paint Bucket tool fills areas bounded by fills or strokes. Not just strokes.
• Eraser Tool erases strokes and fills; carving out unwanted details.
• Paint within a selection or within the coloured area you begin painting on top off

 

Animate/Flash is unique compared to most vector editors. See this video example of some of the features if needed.

Adobe Animate/Flash Vector Painting Features

In a way, it behaves more like a raster image editing program since you can paint like you would in ms paint but still have it in vector form.

Thank you for any assistance!  

[Dan C]

Hi DigitalDesignDude,

Welcome to the forums

12 hours ago, DigitalDesignDude said:

I'm making the switch from doing vector art in Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash) to Affinity Designer.

I'm glad to hear it!

12 hours ago, DigitalDesignDude said:

Is there any way to paint fills rather than strokes like I can in Adobe Animate?

Unfortunately Affinity Designer doesn't currently support this, the Vector Paint Brush tool will always paint strokes.

12 hours ago, DigitalDesignDude said:

• Paintbrush strokes convert to fills as they are painted and combine with already existing art

I'm sorry, I'm not certain what you mean by this - could you expand or provide an example for me?

13 hours ago, DigitalDesignDude said:

• Paint Bucket tool fills areas bounded by fills or strokes. Not just strokes.

Affinity Designers Paint Bucket Tool is Pixel based only at this time, so you can set fills for any curves drawn in the Colour Studio, but we don't support 'Live Paint Bucket' type features.

13 hours ago, DigitalDesignDude said:

•  Eraser Tool erases strokes and fills; carving out unwanted details.

Again, Designers Erase Tool is pixel based, meaning it will erase both stroke and fill, however it will no longer be a full vector design.

13 hours ago, DigitalDesignDude said:

•  Paint within a selection or within the coloured area you begin painting on top off

Using the Vector Brush Tool you can Clip layers inside one another, meaning you'll only see the strokes that fit inside the parent object -

From your video;

Paint Behind

As each Vector Brush stroke is it's own object in the layers panel, you can move newly painted strokes to the bottom of the stack, meaning they appear 'behind' your current design.

Tweak Paths

This can be done using the Node tool in Affinity.

______________________________

I recommend trying out the free 10 day trial from the link below, if you don't already have Affinity Designer

https://affinity.serif.com/designer/trial

I hope this helps!

[DDesignDude]

Thanks for the reply and the Welcome! 

 

On 9/23/2019 at 7:15 AM, Dan C said:

On 9/22/2019 at 5:53 PM, DigitalDesignDude said:

• Paintbrush strokes convert to fills as they are painted and combine with already existing art

I'm sorry, I'm not certain what you mean by this - could you expand or provide an example for me?

Certainly, I was hoping the paintbrush or another tool could paint fills and then merge or overwrite existing fills on the same layer. Like I did so when I was closing a gap in my video. I didn't have to manually combine or join paint strokes.

ln AD I think the "Add" function is so far the only way to achieve this but it's not automatic. Meaning it will slow down my workflow.

 

Also since the paintbrush only draws strokes I would have to expand the stroke every time (Layer>Expand Stroke) then Combine fills with the "Add" function. A slower process, but I guess that's the only option. I mainly work with fills so that I can animate fills changing shape in older versions of Flash. 

I'm hoping to create my characters in AD because it's a more modern program and works with touch controls and my stylus. 

 

On 9/23/2019 at 7:15 AM, Dan C said:

On 9/22/2019 at 5:53 PM, DigitalDesignDude said:

•  Paint within a selection or within the coloured area you begin painting on top off

Using the Vector Brush Tool you can Clip layers inside one another, meaning you'll only see the strokes that fit inside the parent object -

That's like using a mask, isn't it? It's not exactly what I'm looking for but probably as close as it can get in AD. Ideally, the red paint strokes would be contained within a fill. Not the empty space inside the black circle. See gif below:

 

 

On 9/23/2019 at 7:15 AM, Dan C said:

Paint Behind

As each Vector Brush stroke is it's own object in the layers panel, you can move newly painted strokes to the bottom of the stack, meaning they appear 'behind' your current design.

True, but this could be done in any program with layers. I take it there's no mode to paint new art under new art instead of on top. Moving layers after making brush strokes every time is also unideal even with a shortcut. This isn't an important feature to me but thought I would check to get a better idea of what AD can and can't do.

 

It's unfortunate the other features (aside from Path tweaks) are not available or are pixel-based. I hope someday it could be updated to be vector.

 

Thank you again for your reply Dan C. I'll think I'll play around more with my AD trial and see if compromises could be made for now.

 

 

[Dan C]

On 9/25/2019 at 12:13 AM, DigitalDesignDude said:

Certainly, I was hoping the paintbrush or another tool could paint fills and then merge or overwrite existing fills on the same layer. Like I did so when I was closing a gap in my video. I didn't have to manually combine or join paint strokes.

The Add function is certainly the closest function to this, you could set a custom keyboard shortcut to speed up this process, but I do understand this is not as quick as automatic.

On 9/25/2019 at 12:13 AM, DigitalDesignDude said:

That's like using a mask, isn't it? It's not exactly what I'm looking for but probably as close as it can get in AD. Ideally, the red paint strokes would be contained within a fill. Not the empty space inside the black circle. See gif below:

Essentially so, there is a way of replicating this in AD, but it does require a few extra steps -

On 9/25/2019 at 12:13 AM, DigitalDesignDude said:

I take it there's no mode to paint new art under new art instead of on top.

 

There's an option on the toolbar called 'Insert Behind Selection' which will ensure the next object drawn will be behind the last selected object - however this isn't a 'sticky' option and you'll need to reselect it between each new object/stroke.

On 9/25/2019 at 12:13 AM, DigitalDesignDude said:

It's unfortunate the other features (aside from Path tweaks) are not available or are pixel-based. I hope someday it could be updated to be vector.

We certainly hope to improve these in the future to increase the vector compatibility between certain tools!

No problem at all, happy to help

[DDesignDude]

Sorry for the late reply. Just wanted to say thanks for your effort in giving me some alternative solutions. 

I'm glad to hear Affinity hopes to keep building on the vector compatibility between certain tools. I look forward to seeing it continue to grow and accommodate different workflows. Either way, I was very happy to have purchased my copy of Affinity designer the other day.   

[kaenes]

You can assign some shortcut to "convert to curves" - I use ctrl+enter . It is easy and fast way to convert any stroke to closed path.

In next step just select option "insert inside selection", and then you are able to paint inside another shape.

 

[Mark Oehlschlager]

On 9/23/2019 at 4:15 AM, Dan C said:

On 9/22/2019 at 2:53 PM, DigitalDesignDude said:

• Paintbrush strokes convert to fills as they are painted and combine with already existing art

I'm sorry, I'm not certain what you mean by this - could you expand or provide an example for me?

 

@Dan C

I think the original poster is referring to Adobe's Blob Brush tool, which allows one to paint a stroke, overlapping itself even, and then immediately resolve as a unified vector shape once the user stops "painting". It's a pretty cool feature.

[Sara72]

5 hours ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

 

@Dan C

I think the original poster is referring to Adobe's Blob Brush tool, which allows one to paint a stroke, overlapping itself even, and then immediately resolves the marks as a unified vector shape once the user stops "painting". It's a pretty cool feature.

Blob Brush alternative for Affinity Designer

[Mark Oehlschlager]

@summersara

Yes. Thanks. The Blob Brush just saves the extra steps of expanding and unifying.

[zorryn]

Hi, to add on this workflow:

It is not just the blob brush for Affinity, but also the ability to directly grab the resulting edges of the resulting shape and pulling them (as bezier curves), simplifying them, smoothing them etc. But also UNDERCUTTING them. This is a major feature in Adobe Animate and afaik not available in Illustrator. When you grab such a edge and it intersects with itself or a neighboring shape, it subracts it automatically. Really handy to clean up outlines.

Here are some examples:

And my own example:

https://twitter.com/zorryn_art/status/961348483826573313

 

I would LOVE to see that feature in Affinity Designer

 

Thank you!

[zorryn]

Bump? Any Update on this?

[zorryn]

Again, any update since Designer2 is out? Can't find anything about this feature sadly... thanks!