Lebanon du FouOwns Affont·
Hi,
I'd like to be able to apply layer effects to the characters that I design in Affinity and then place them in the glyph cells, and for Affont/Affinity to converts the layer effects to outlines on export. It's something I have been struggling with - applying layer effects in Affinity 3, then getting them into FontLab. That would be a great addition to Affont/Affinity 3 if it was possible...
Emmanuel from AffontTeamTeamHi,
Thanks for the suggestion!
Affont reads the shapes themselves: fills, gradients and strokes (strokes are turned into outlines automatically when you send). Layer effects aren’t read as such.
Whether an effect can become an outline depends on the effect. An outline or a colour overlay has a vector equivalent, but glows, blurs, soft shadows and bevels are made of pixels by nature, so a font can only carry them as an image.
That’s what the new bitmap letters in Affont 1.1.2 are for. To keep your layer effects:
Each letter arrives in Affont as a bitmap letter, with its effects, and goes into the font as an image (OpenType-SVG), so it looks exactly as it does in Affinity.
If you need real outlines, build the look with shapes and strokes instead of effects (for example, a stroke instead of the Outline effect): Affont converts strokes to outlines when you send.
Could you try it with today’s update (1.1.2) and let me know if that’s what you were after? If it isn’t, please send me a screenshot of what you had in mind, or of the workflow you described in your post, so I can see exactly what you need.