Creating a Pencil

T-LAY-001-001

You can configure a pencil's size, how much Harmony should automatically smooth your pencil lines when drawing, the shape of the tips and corners of your pencil line as well as its texture.

  1. In the Tools toolbar, select the Pencil tool or press Alt + /.
  1. In the Tool Properties view, click on the arrow button next to the stroke preview area to open the Pencil Properties dialog.

Stroke Preview

The Pencil Properties dialog opens.

  1. Use the Maximum Size slider to set the maximum size of your pencil line.
  1. If you are using a pressure-sensitive pen tablet, use the Minimum Size slider to set the size of your pencil when using your pen with very little pressure. The minimum size is set to a percentage of your pencil's maximum size, which is 20% by default. If you don't want the pressure on your pen to affect the pencil size, set this parameter to 100%.
  1. If you want your pencil 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. Use the Centerline Smoothing slider to set the amount of smoothing Harmony should perform on your pencil stroke's centreline. 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. If you are using a pressure-sensitive tablet, use the Contour Smoothing slider to set the amount of smoothing Harmony should perform on your pencil stroke's contour. A higher setting will smoothen the variations in your pencil line's thickness and reduce its amount of control points, but may affect the precision of the variations in line thickness.

    NOTE This parameter is only useful if you are drawing with a pressure-sensitive tablet, as it only affects the control points for the thickness of your pencil line. When drawing with a mouse, the pencil line has a uniform thickness, and hence its contour only has control points at its extremiities.
  1. Click on the Shape pop-up buttons to select whether you want the Start and End of your pencil lines to be Round or Flat, and whether you want the points and corners where pencil lines Join to be Round, Mitre-shaped or Beveled.

Pencil Line Style

  1. Click on the Texture tab.

  1. If you want your pencil line to have a texture, select the desired pencil line texture from the pencil line texture library. Otherwise, select None. For more information on pencil line textures, see About Pencil Line Textures.
  1. Either close or set aside the Pencil Properties dialog.
  1. In the Drawing view, start drawing to test your pencil settings.