what's missing from your vector drawing tools? I'm

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bump for interest
post on /ic/ as well OP

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Maybe there are plugins for these, but whatever.

- AI doesn't have an easy, direct way of making an isometric grid. The free vector app Gravit Designer has it and you can customize the grid in various ways.

- Transformation tools in AI let you move + copy object in fixed distance from each other, but you can't have an increase of the distance in a non-linear way. Would be nice if it was possible to put in various functions for the increase of the distance.

- Regarding resizing it's almost the opposite - you can have an increase of percentage from the previous object, but you can't use a fixed value. And you can't use a custom function either.

- Would be nice to have a customizable non-linear increase in stroke width using AI Blend Tool.

- AI Width Tool lets you set custom width for various points of the stroke, but only approximately by dragging the width points, you can't enter a specific value of width and a specific distance.

- It would be nice if to be able to control the depth of different same stroke overlaps in AI. It becomes visible once you use "Apply gradient along / across stroke". The only control you have is by the order in which overlaps are drawn.

- Would be nice to have a free tool in AI that lets you manually remove unneeded points without fucking up the shape. I'm currently using one of the Astute Graphics Plugins tools to do this.

- This may be crazy hard, but I've thought about a tool that traces a raster image in a gradient mesh (Illustrator's Mesh Tool). Lots of folks out there spend hours recreating low-res photographs as gradient meshes so they don't look like shit on print.

- Maybe a thing for AI that finds the 'visual center' of the object instead of the geometric one.

- More precise customization for AI Spiral Tool

Get crackin.

>>309583
Faster way to smooth lines and curves out without bending their whole shape.

>>309607

> This may be crazy hard, but I've thought about a tool that traces a raster image in a gradient mesh (Illustrator's Mesh Tool). Lots of folks out there spend hours recreating low-res photographs as gradient meshes so they don't look like shit on print.

interesting. Do you have an example of raster image and traced gradient mesh that I could use?


>>309597
good man! now on /ic/ too

>>309620
so basically contain the bending around the rougher edges only?

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>>309694
something i had to do in university. the orginal image is pretty low res, but it werks.

https://mega.nz/#!Nh8mgYxJ!wCUExUyMPwPcip-N3IRnv5WdGA5HHNqvL_Md3fAVEiE

i tend to use masks so i don't have to make that precise meshes arund the edges.

>>309696

thanks for the example! that does look interesting indeed.

Ideally, how should this tool behave?

If I understood correctly, it should auto-trace a grid mesh and select gradient colors based on the original image. I can also see a coarseness-like slider in there because the grid can get quite heavy if you want to capture all color details in the original image.

>>309698
>If I understood correctly, it should auto-trace a grid mesh and select gradient colors based on the original image. I can also see a coarseness-like slider in there because the grid can get quite heavy if you want to capture all color details in the original image.

Yes, that seems right.

Maybe there could be an optional adjustable algorithm that tries to average-out edges of shapes in blurry low quality images to make them look sharper. That's usually one of the aims of people who trace photographs.

>>309700

Good discussion anon.
Any place I can reach you in case I manage to get this going?

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>>309701

The Projectionist#2676 on Discord.

btw this basketball-american has great examples of gradient mesh tracing

https://www.youtube.com/user/frankwyte81

>>309702
>>309704

Thanks for the link, awesome channel!

Will contact you when/if I have something worth showing.

to be honest i'd like a command line interface and some CAD like functions. I actually do a lot of my drawing in Rhino then export to illustrator to work on. Maybe its more that i haven't used illustrator enough, but i find the command line so much faster and more flexible than using shortcuts.

>>309583
Better quality drawing tools

Illustrator has the best drawing tools right now, but even then, they feel way too stiff and computer-ey, like I'm telling the program to draw a line, rather than drawing a line myself

I want toonboom style lines, where I feel like I'm drawing in a raster program

>>309583
Noise Generation.

Specifially like C4D's noise generation as its really good.

>>309712
What kind of functionality would you want to have in the CLI? This might already exist.

>>309718
Something like Bezier-backed brushes that you can use like raster brushes, but can also edit after drawing?
Just curious, why not use Toonboom Animate directly?

>>309724
So basically the 2d vector equivalent of noise like this? http://i.imgur.com/BMHAZxu.jpg

Batch file saving would fucking rule.

Like some kind of plugin where I can have a single Illustrator file open, and then save it as several file types with one click.

Instead, I'm stuck hitting Save As like 30 fucking times when packaging up logo files for a client.

>>309750
That makes sense. Any preferred file types that you typically use?

>>309765
AI, EPS, SVG, PNG.

>>309750
>Instead, I'm stuck hitting Save As like 30 fucking times when packaging up logo files for a client.

Why not just record a quick action script?

>>309765
Guy who requested that, here.

Ai, EPS, PDF, PNG, JPG.

I've had this idea for while now, and in my opinion it should have been a feature a long ass time ago. Like some kind of menu item under Export that brings up a panel, a text box for what you want to enter as the file name, and a simple checklist for the various file types you want to save as. I don't know why Adobe takes pleasure in making the simplest shit as tedious as possible.

>>309793
I did exactly that, but the script runs through almost instantaneously. There's an extra half second or so required to save some file types, and the script got all fucked up when it outpaced the save. That and I had no control over the file name.

>>309694
Yeah, maybe like a click and drag on a path and it just smooths any roughness slightly.

A way to remove the -01-01, -01-02, -01-03 every time I re export with artboards.

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typical CAD tools for Illustrator like offset path*, measurement, etc.
numeric access for FUCKING EVERYTHING. I can't stand having to use my mouse to do something like the Width Tool.
Joining open paths discards the handle information and always does a linear join (see pic)

*i'm aware Offset path exists but using it (and many other similar functions) is shit because what you apply is what you get. It's destructive and you can't change your mind afterwards. Sure, you could use a graphic style from the Appearance panel, but then you can't edit or even snap to the shapes until you Expand.

>>309836
adding to this, I've listed a few of my greatest irks in Illustrator a long time ago and I've only got really vague notes but here's my list anyway:

#1 PlacingSVGs
#2 Stars and n-gons center pointlies
#3 Envelope Distort flyingaround
#4 Symbols instances for recoloring etc
#5 Multipage PDF importing
#6 Offset paths zero-crossing and scriptaccess
#7 Rotation/Scale/Mirror center is forgotten when you Enterit
#8 Magic Wand/Select-menu is missingthings
#10 No direct access tohandles
#11 0° Constrain Angle favoured overothers
#12 Width tool toolimited
#13 Free Distort breaks boundingbox
#14 Bounding box only allows reset, notreapply
#15 Transform pattern only is misleading
#16 Set all anchor points to corner/smooth notpossible
#17 Rotation center is forgotten when you Enterit
#18 Recolor menu has no undo and probably needs aredesign
#19 Keyboard increment has upper and lowerlimit
#20 Minimum corner rounding at1px
#21 Default behavior of text stroke isstupid
#22 Join smooth paths always defaults tocorner
#23 Stroke align problems with gradients etc
#24 Handle Snap to grid broken sinceCC
#25 Maximum corner roundness creates double points to innershape
#26 Stroke align problems with gradients etc
#27 Skew/Rotate attributes are not kept, ever. even with smbols. primitives only
#29 Simplify, Offset path, Recolor etc. lock the screen in place. can’t zoom or usehand
#30 multiple anchor points show coordinates of whole object. Key Anchor is neverimplied
#31 command-A doesn’t work with one letter textboxes
#32 making a gradient from n amount of swatches is a pain in theass
#33 Select same / object—choices arelimited
#33 Shift-constraint is always 45° whenrotating even if set to anything else in settings
#34 Roger Johansson UI bugs
#35 Roger Johansson crash on complex svgs
#37 scale anchor point breaks compound path fill rule
#38 Many dialogs could be panelized.
lot of these lack context but w/e

>>309732
yes!

All of those are based of black and white values

>>309750

like this

https://cdn.tutsplus.com/cg/authors/chris-tate/Realistic_Water_18.jpg

>>309712
Mainly just the ability to call every single tool its various options through the CLI. It is mainly a workflow thing, as i've spent so long working with autocad and rhino that i find it so much easier. Rhino also has a nice thing where it remembers the last 20 or so commands used so you can just right click and select. Doesn't sound amazing, but it really speeds up work.

>>309856
Yeah, something like that would be a game changer. Fuck, even if it didn't come with a GUI like that and I just had to manually set the filetypes/filename in the source code or something, I'd use the shit out of it.

>>309847
OP here. Yep, I see what you mean. Sounds relatively straight-forward. Any way I can notify you if I have something running?

>>309884
While I'm also a fan of CLIs, that might be too much work since AI has a lot of tools.

>>309856
>>309900
>>309802
Cool! Any way I can keep you guys posted?

>>309837
Thanks for the list. I'll have to spend some time going through it.

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Regarding that gradient mesh trace thing, Photoshop has this Filter called Surface Blur which blurs insides of somewhat large color spots while preserving edges, so to a noticeable extent you can get rid of large portion of noise and artifacts.. That kind of thing mite be very useful in this scenario, but should be entirely optional and adjustable.

>>309928
>..keep you guys posted?
I'm the guy who originally mentioned it, and I'm here all the time. If you drop a thread with updates, I'll definitely see it at some point. Can't speak for the others though.

Good luck to you, man. If this works, you'll be my fucking hero.

OP here.

>>309985
will do!

>>309929
thanks for the reference anon. I was wondering about good methods of getting gradient patches.