Paste vector graphics as freeform shapes

Saola Animate Support Questions
#1

Fantastic concept and proving really useful but I seem to be hit a few problems:

  • Pasting from Affinity Designer does not work. I think reading their forum, others have this problem but Affinity have not provided any support on this. If anybody at Atomi has Designer, it would be useful to know if this might one day be possible.

  • Some vectors are distorting when pasted to freeform but are fine as image imports. See mask.svg

  • Some vectors with multiple curves lose their layout when pasted to freeform but again are fine as image imports. See red.svg

Paste as freeform on top.
image

vectors.zip (1.8 KB)

The vectors have originally come from different places - but have all been exported from Affinity Designer as SVG and then the contents copied and pasted into Saola. I have tried different export settings and nothing works. I thought it might be Designer, but it has exported other SVGs from the same source and some more complex and worked perfectly.

#2

Hi mackavi,

  • In Affinity Designer, there’s the option Copy items as SVG in Edit > Preferences > General.
    This option must be checked so that its graphics can be copied as SVGs and pasted as freeform shapes into Saola Animate.
  • The path in mask.svg contains three subpaths, while a freeform in Saola Animate doesn’t support subpaths. You can convert subpaths in the graphic designer tool to separate paths to overcome this issue. In Affinity, this can be done from Layer > Geometry > Divide
    image
  • Some paths in red.svg have transformation but Saola Animate doesn’t support transformation when pasting as freeform shapes. In Affinity, you can select all, then Ungroup All in Layer or right-click menu to flatten all groups. After that, select Geometry > Merge Curves then Geometry > Divide to remove transformation and separate paths.

The paste vector graphics as freeform shapes feature also doesn’t support basic shapes such as circle, rect yet. We’ll keep improving this feature to make it work well with more types of graphics.

Regards

1 Like
#3

It’s always a delight to get such a comprehensive & knowledgeable answer that solves the problem, saves me time and teaches me new things. Thank you again.

Points two and three were exactly what I needed and have allowed me to move forward on two projects with the fabulous new SVG features in v3.

I’d already checked the option in point one but it seems the problem has revolved itself by upgrading to v1.9 this morning.