affinity designer tutorial for beginners

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. 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.

Affinity designer tutorial for beginners