Hi and a couple of questions

New user here. Just wanted to say hi ask a couple of questions.
I've settled on Xara after searching for an app that I can cartoon in and can output vectors (lucky to even come across it for the lack of attention it seems to get - saw it mentioned in a random forum post) Inkscape was way too unstable, Affinity was lacking too many basic functions and outputs terrible vectors with an insane amont of nodes, and Adobe's licensing model is unacceptable.
I really like the lines in this program, theres an elegance to the smoothing that's second to none, and the it feels surprisingly nimble and stable for software with such a legacy.

Anyway, I was wondering: Does anyone know if there's any plan to incorporate a tool where you can directly manipulate line width like Illustrators line width tool or Inkscape's power stroke handles?
Alternatively, the ability to make custom stroke pressure profiles?

Thanks

no and no, sadly

they have been asked for many times, so far there no indication the company intends either of these - they could surprise us but on past form that is unlikely

personally I have no quibble with the vector output of affinity designer in comparison to xara designer

interesting you say you like the smoothing - I like the stabilising tool in affinity a lot - I do not like the way the freehand tool in xara 'wobbles' all the time as I draw... the better other apps get, the less I am inclined to put up with it... but we are all different :)

nimble it can be; stable, not always

anyhow, glad you like it.. I do cartooning as well, but not so often in xara these days...

Welcome to TalkGraphics.

There is an Option to Convert a line to a Shape.
You could tweak a specific stroke and adjust a given line for smoothing, point handle adjustments and colouring, shading and transparency.

You can also do wonders with Scatter Brushes.

Acorn

OK thanks, I thought that'd probably be the case.

Yeah Affinity was the other app where I really liked the lines. They both have a fluid but slightly organic quality to them I appreciate coming from a non-vector comicy background. But with Affinity a few too many basic things I tried to do ended up in workarounds and finding threads from years ago saying the functionality was on the roadmap.
The current $50 price tag on Xara photo & graphic didn't hurt either.

With Affinity's export - is it that you don't mind a ton of nodes, or is there a way I don't know about to get cleaner results? Perhaps It's mainly linework that suffers from that.

let me reply by asking another question - if you do the same thing in both programs and you export to vector, are you saying there are a lot less nodes in the xara export, and if so, what export file format are you using, and can you post an example?

I don't usually have an issue with nodes

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Welcome to TalkGraphics.

There is an Option to Convert a line to a Shape.
You could tweak a specific stroke and adjust a given line for smoothing, point handle adjustments and colouring, shading and transparency.

You can also do wonders with Scatter Brushes.

Acorn

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Thanks, yeah converting lines to shapes seems like something I'll need to do. I'll look into the scatter brush options more - I see there's the useful ability to alter the strength of the pressure profile effect (which would pretty much solve my problem with some of the default stroke pressure profiles) but I'm not sure how you'd turn that into a clean vector stroke in the end.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

let me reply by asking another question - if you do the same thing in both programs and you export to vector, are you saying there are a lot less nodes in the xara export, and if so, what export file format are you using, and can you post an example?

I don't usually have an issue with nodes

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Hmm. My trial of affinity has expired so I can't demonstrate. There was a thread about it which I now can't find where I think it was noted as a known issue which gave me the impression it was standard, but there's a similar one here which indicates it's actually not normal. I might look into it some more, Affinity is also very reasonably priced. I have other issues with it though.

The AD beta has fixes for the way too many nodes thing. Works decently...but some shapes can still get more nodes than Xara applications create.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mwenz

The AD beta has fixes for the way too many nodes thing. Works decently...but some shapes can still get more nodes than Xara applications create.

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Thanks, good to know. Will prob revisit AD at some point

Thanks Mike - once the asset is out of the vector app and into Harmony I dont really have to worry about nodes, most of the manipulation thereafter is using animation tools; but even then, 'too few nodes' is more likely to be an issue than 'too many', although there is a limit of course :)

Hi, as Acorn said in post #3, you can tweak the smoothing of shape by selecting the shape, then using the shape tool, select all (or just some) of the nodes and adjust the smoothing using the slider in the Infobar.

Unfortunately you can't smooth more than one selected shape at a time - something that has long been on my 'Dear Xara, please finish developing your tools' list.

Here's an example...

Attachment 126258

ps. I didn't sit and count the nodes! I imported the shapes into Inkscape, which shows you the number of nodes. ;)

as I recall, using that tweak will usually alter the shape of your shape [:)] as nodes are removed, a reason I never really used it, but it depends what you are doing....

again from memory - you can smooth a line using the tweak, but you only get one go immediately after you draw it whilst still selected; after that you would need to convert to shape first, as stated..
not always what you want to do

You're right, although I think by selecting nodes you can still go back and change the smoothing. Things can definitely go out of shape quite quickly, and you do have to use the slider rather judiciously. Not that easy since there's no numerical input option and whilst they've provided a 0-100% scale, it's only about 30px long on the screen. Like you said, it all depends on what you're doing. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jonopen

You're right, although I think by selecting nodes you can still go back and change the smoothing.

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I checked - yes you are right - I think what I was thinking of is that you cannot compound this operation, you can only do it once for a given selection of nodes - but you can carry on with a different selection...