The smart mode button is next to pen mode: So far, we’ve been using the Pen Mode, which means we can create both sharp and smooth points. If you want to change a node from being smooth to sharp, i.e., removing its control points, you can option-click ⌥- click on a node. When you hover over a node that’s part of a closed curve, you’ll see a little slash appear beneath the pen icon. You can also create a curve with all sharp nodes, and change those to smooth nodes with the pen tool. When you’re drawing your curve, click and drag on your nodes instead of simply clicking (which we’ve been doing up until now.) That circle tells you that you’re about to close the curve.įortunately, you can create a smooth curve with your pen tool. When you hover over that node, a little circle will appear beneath the pen. To close a curve, click on the first node you created. As you click around, the red square follows you. The node with the red square is where the next line will be drawn from. While there’s nothing curvy about this shape, it’s still known as a “curve” in the vector art world. To create a curve, simply select the pen tool and start clicking around your document.
That “x” tells you that you’re about to create a new curve. Move the cursor to your document, and you’ll see the pen icon with a little “x” below it. (I strongly recommend learning the keystrokes for any graphic design program you use regularly: it can make a huge difference in your productivity.) To start using the pen tool, either select the icon from the toolbar or press P. Use the pen tool to create curves and to transform sharp nodes into smooth nodes. In the animation below, a user creates several points and Affinity Designer draws curves between them using smart nodes. They’re represented by a circle with a dot in them. Smart nodes are simply smooth nodes where Affinity Designer controls how they look instead of you. Here’s an example of a sharp node (on top) and a smooth node (on bottom).Īs you can see, the control points of a smooth node are joined by a single straight line. Since those curves don’t join in a smooth swoop, but rather at an angle, the node is a sharp node.Įssentially, any time the two control points aren’t joined by a straight line, you have a sharp node. The node on the bottom is a sharp node, even though it has two control points that create two curves. The nodes themselves are shown as squares. Sharp nodes are either the end of a line or have a sharp angle. In Affinity Designer, there are three kinds of nodes: There’s a ton of math involved, but you don’t need to know the equations to create the curves you want.
AFFINITY DESIGNER TOOL SOFTWARE
How exactly does the software draw the curve? Wikipedia has a great animation: For example, if we move the control point attached to the start point, we can get something like this: The farther away the point is, the more the curve bends. The curve bends toward the control point. You change the shape of the curve by moving the control points. There are no control points here, since we don’t need any. the control point for the starting pointįor a straight line, you only need the start and end points, like this:.The basic idea is that you can describe any curve using four points in space: Understanding Bezier Curvesīézier curves are used in vector art programs like Affinity Designer and Adobe Illustrator to model smooth curves. In Affinity Designer, the pen and node tools are the way to do that. As with any vector art program, you need to be comfortable with creating and manipulating Bézier curves.
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