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Very cool! Nice job. I noticed this: "Radi makes creating vector graphics easier with its unique autosmoothed shapes. When you apply smoothing to a corner poin

Very cool! Nice job. I noticed this: "Radi makes creating vector graphics easier with its unique autosmoothed shapes. When you apply smoothing to a corner point, all your control points lie precisely on the shape's outline. There are no separate "handles" or "tangent points" to be tweaked outside of the actual shape." Just wanted to point out that, to me, that sounds like an anti-feature. Maybe it's a nice alternative tool for quick, smooth shapes, but I've watched many an illustrator tweak the hell out of those things to get exactly the right curves and sharp angels. I also remember reading a story about how Microsoft spent weeks observing video of expert Adobe suite users with various Pen-tools to get the feel of the handles juuust right for an easy transition to Expression suite products. This is a cool side project and letting HN hammer on it is a great start, but you're going to need some artists to hammer on it before you've got something really special.

pavlov 16y ago
Just wanted to point out that, to me, that sounds like an anti-feature. Maybe it's a nice alternative tool for quick, smooth shapes, but I've watched many an illustrator tweak the hell out of those things to get exactly the right curves and sharp angles. Right. I know that illustrators love their Bézier handles, but I'm not 100% convinced that everybody else loves them all that much. I used to do graphics for a living, and I never felt very comfortable with Béziers (although that was also because my style was pretty much opposite to sharp vector designs). The Radi curve engine does support Béziers, but implementing the UI for managing the control points seemed like a complete drag (what a terrible pun). So I figured that maybe I should try doing what Apple does so well: market the "anti-feature" as something new and unique. No handles -> less UI complexity -> ??? -> profit! I was also inspired by 3D modelling applications, where a lot of work is done with subdivision surfaces which are controlled by automatic control points, essentially similar to the curves in Radi. I know there was an older generation of modelling apps with free-floating handles, and I get the impression that modellers are happy to be rid of those (but maybe I'm wrong about this one).

pavlov 16y ago

Just wanted to point out that, to me, that sounds like an anti-feature. Maybe it's a nice alternative tool for quick, smooth shapes, but I've watched many an illustrator tweak the hell out of those things to get exactly the right curves and sharp angles. Right. I know that illustrators love their Bézier handles, but I'm not 100% convinced that everybody else loves them all that much. I used to do graphics for a living, and I never felt very comfortable with Béziers (although that was also because my style was pretty much opposite to sharp vector designs). The Radi curve engine does support Béziers, but implementing the UI for managing the control points seemed like a complete drag (what a terrible pun). So I figured that maybe I should try doing what Apple does so well: market the "anti-feature" as something new and unique. No handles -> less UI complexity -> ??? -> profit! I was also inspired by 3D modelling applications, where a lot of work is done with subdivision surfaces which are controlled by automatic control points, essentially similar to the curves in Radi. I know there was an older generation of modelling apps with free-floating handles, and I get the impression that modellers are happy to be rid of those (but maybe I'm wrong about this one).