Affinity Designer and Photo ?

gnoop

Does anyone use Affinity products for texture work? I have never tried anything Mac but now feel intrigued.
With especially Affinity Designer . it seems like an only vector based and resolution independent tool that would support 16 bit depth layers + having brushes similar to old good skeletal one from Creative house Expression.

I have no Mac so can't try it . Wonder if anybody did?

For a quite a while I am trying to find a convenient software to compose textures from pre-built materials and details libraries , resolution independent, probably vector based.

Don't find all the recent development in texturing area i.e. Mary, both Substances, Quixel matching my tasks and taste so curious if anything more exist on Mac side.

thomasp

a bit late but i just stumbled over this thread.

yes, affinity photo and designer are cool. they both go hand in hand, they are pretty configurable down to the toolchest, designer is a joy to draw and adjust strokes in (as opposed to - say - inkscape) and they are really fast with a lot more instant previews than their competition.
it's also really quite complete, meaning at only version 1.4 for photo they have matched the adobe toolset already, are ahead in some ways and offer a blend between painting and photo-editing with a similar slant towards photo-editing that PS has. if you know PS you can jump right in.

the big one they are currently still lacking is batch processing/macros/actions. also they use their own fileformats (which generally save out a lot quicker and smaller than PSD). in order to work with PSD you have to im- and export which isn't quick. in my tests PSDs retained their original adjustment layers, masks and and folder structure.

both announced for windows btw. you can sign up for their beta program already.

gnoop

Thanks for the comment.   I did have a chance to try it too.   As usual their programs   have both advantages and disadvantages.    I love how quick  they work and especially save  16bit  hi res files.   In PS it's a torture.       Love their version of "smart objects"   being instantly updated in master file  without saving originals.    Prefer mesh deform tool in  Affinity Photo over PS ones including  puppet wrap.     Love its  multi dabs , nozzles   based brush engine.    Still no way to paint color/depth/roughness simultaneously.      Layers structure while somehow structured more elegantly  than Photoshop one  does not allow some complicated tricks PS does.    Thus it's not as non-destructive as PS can be currently with its clipping groups.    

One  feature that is very much missed is ability to put   center of transforms in a certain specific position, not only corners,  and then scale precisely  from it . 

Fuiosg

I'm anxiously awaiting that windows beta, feels like it's taking forever though. They announced it in March.

thomasp

gnoop said:

One  feature that is very much missed is ability to put   center of transforms in a certain specific position, not only corners,  and then scale precisely  from it . 

have you gone to their forums and asked for that? worth it from the looks of it. they do have a feature request section and dev staff do engage on the boards. they also maintain beta versions of their apps for existing customers where new features are being introduced.

@fuiosg
supposedly coming out 'before the summer'. but since it's a british company that might just translate to 'sorry love, not this year'...

gnoop

have you gone to their forums and asked for that? 

Did that request last year as other people too.  They  said it's something they want to do   and yet no update on that.        Would love to see similar feature  in Substance Designer  and 3d coat  too.  Asked many times through years on their forums.     

Not sure maybe someone have a patent on that  or it's very hard to do thing.    Beyond Photoshop I saw it only in vector soft Xara  working similar digits input only way  and one more image editor:  Photoline  where it's full scale UI feature.      Somehow not very reliable in Fusion  transform node too.  Nowhere else.  

Kraftwerk

Affinity Photo Beta is out wow this really is a super neat program.

thomasp

just a heads up: photo is out of beta now and can be purchased. special offer for the next two weeks or so (seems to be valid for both windows and the mac version that has been out for a while now).

if you have the beta installed and are upgrading to the commercial release - don't do like i just did and deinstall the beta right away -> save your preferences first! *grumble*

also, at some point during beta they made windows (7) aero a requirement. if you however are not running this you can circumvent the check by editing the shortcut and adding --no-dwm-warning to the target. works for both designer and photo but is unsupported by the devs. no issues here so far though.

Revel

I kinda interested on Affinity Photo, but is there any benefit of using this compare to Krita? Since most of my texturing task will be done in Substance Painter, Krita for me is only to create things that SP not able to do (like image editing, text, etc.)

Just wondering what do you like best in using Affinity Photo for texturing game asset?

thomasp

photo is simply an alternative to photoshop as mentioned in the older posts. unlike a focused paint program a la krita it offers the kind of blend between painting and photo editing toolset that photoshop has. compared to PS it's faster overall and works better for higher bit depths and does not require a subscription.
it's not game dev oriented as such.

Revel

Hmm.I see, thanks for the info Thomas

Fuiosg

Feel like a dope since I installed the Photo beta but never used it. Now I gotta decide if this can replace photoshop. Are there any areas where it's not fleshed out yet, or is it pretty much fine exporting and working with game textures?

Kraftwerk

Fuiosg said:

Feel like a dope since I installed the Photo beta but never used it. Now I gotta decide if this can replace photoshop. Are there any areas where it's not fleshed out yet, or is it pretty much fine exporting and working with game textures?

Beta should still work to test out, no idea how long it will last before it stops working, but should still work some time. For me this tool is a dream come true, since the beta this tool totally replaced Photoshop (CS3) for me and heck in some places its even WAY more nifty, no idea how it can hold up for a professional since i do this just as hobby mostly but since Adobes subscription model is a clear no go for me and newer PS versions are still expensive ill gladly throw my money at them as soon my paycheck arrives, also considering how hellah affordable this tool is.

Fuiosg

Kraftwerk said:

Beta should still work to test out, no idea how long it will last before it stops working, but should still work some time. 

Nah it's done, says expired when I click on it. Kind of annoying too since the Designer beta lasted far longer. But I'll probably end up buying it anyhow.