Creating a Solid Brush

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When drawing with the Brush tool on a vector layer, you can use either solid vector brushes or textured vector brushes. By default, your brush will be a solid vector brush. A solid vector brush creates a vector shape and simply fills it with the selected colour, making lightweight, simple crisp strokes.

A solid vector brush's tip can be shaped like a circle, a diamond or a square, and can be configured to have a specific size, aspect ratio and angle. Also, solid vector brushes can be automatically smoothed by Harmony as you draw.

If you are drawing on a bitmap layer, you can only use textured brushes. You can create a textured brush that makes solid looking strokes, but they can not be automatically smoothed by Harmony, nor can they tweaked with vector tools such as the Contour Editor.

  1. In the Tools toolbar, select the Brush or Eraser tool.
  1. In the Tool Properties view, click the arrow button to open the Brush/Eraser Properties dialog.

Edit Brush To Add Texture

The Brush Properties dialog opens.

Brush Preset Window

  1. In the Brush Type dropdown list, select Solid Vector.
  1. In the brush tip list, select either Circle, Diamond or Square.
  1. Use the Maximum Size slider to set the maximum size of your brush tip.
    2. NOTE When drawing with a mouse, your brush is always at its maximum size. When drawing with a pressure-sensitive pen tablet, your brush's size will range between its minimum and maximum size, depending on the amount of pressure you put on the pen when drawing.
  1. If you are using a pressure-sensitive pen tablet, use the Minimum Size slider to set the size of your brush when using your pen with very little pressure. The minimum size is set to a percentage of your brush tip's maximum size, which is 25% by default. If you don't want the pressure on your pen to affect the brush size, set this parameter to 100%.
  1. If you want your brush to keep the same size relative to the camera frame when the camera zooms in on or zooms out of the scene, check the Proportional to Camera option.
  1. If you want your brush tip to have uneven dimensions, use the Roundness slider to shrink the brush tip vertically all the while preserving its horizontal size.
  1. If you want your brush tip to be at an angle, use the Angle slider to rotate your brush tip.

  1. If you want your brush tip to stretch when you tilt your pen, use the Pen Tilt Sensitivity slider to set how much the tip should stretch. The tip will stretch by the percentage you set, in the direction in which you tilt the pen.

    NOTE This option only works if your tablet and your pen support tilt sensitivity.

  1. If you want your brush tip to rotate when you rotate your pen, check the Use Pen Rotation check box.

    NOTE This option only works if your tablet and your pen support pen rotation.
  1. Click on the Smoothing tab.

  1. Use the Centerline Smoothing slider to set the amount of smoothing Harmony should perform on your stroke's direction, curves and corners. A higher setting will prevent your line from being shaky, but is liable to reduce your drawing precision and to round sharp corners into curves.
  1. Use the Contour Smoothing slider to set the amount of smoothing Harmony should perform on your stroke's contour. A higher setting will round sharp corners and reduce the amount of control points for the resulting vector shape.
  1. Either close or set aside the Brush Properties dialog.
  1. In the Drawing view, start drawing to test your brush settings.
NOTE To learn more about the Brush tool options, see Brush Tool Properties.