Brush Tool Properties

The Preview area lets you see a preview of the stroke your drawing tool will make.

The arrow button right of the preview area opens the Brush Properties dialog.

While the Tool Properties view only gives you access to a few of the brush properties, a list of brush presets and other drawing options, the Brush Properties dialog gives you access to all the available options for your brush's tip and texture. For more information on the Brush Properties dialog, see the Brush Properties Dialog section below.

Defines the maximum width of brush strokes.

If the tool is used with a pressure sensitive pen tablet, the width of the stroke will vary between its maximum size and minimum size depending on the amount of pressure used. If used with a mouse, the width of the stroke will always be its maximum size.

Allows you to set the opacity for each instance of the brush tip that gets printed into your canvas. Contrary to the Opacity parameter, the flow parameter has a cumulative effect. This means that a lower flow will make your brush strokes more transparent towards its extremities and more opaque in its center. Your stroke's flow will also accumulate if you draw over it. By default, your brush's flow varies with the amount of pressure you put on your tablet pen.

By default, Harmony has preloaded brush presets. You can also create your own brush presets by configuring your brush, then saving its properties into a new preset. It is also possible to export and import brush presets.

Creates a new preset based on the current tool properties.

Deletes the currently selected preset.

When enabled, your brush strokes will appear behind the existing artwork.

When enabled, your brush strokes will only repaint existing artwork and will not add colour to empty areas. If you repaint semi-transparent artwork, your artwork will not become more opaque than it already is.

As you draw in the Line Art layer, the Automatically Create Colour Art option instantly creates the corresponding strokes in the Colour Art layer.

By default, when drawing on a vector layer, each new stroke is created as a separate drawing object, which can be edited independently from other parts of the artwork. When enabled, the Auto-Flatten option automatically merges strokes into existing artwork.

In the Colour view, it is possible to make some of the colours in your palettes protected from change. When enabled, the Respect Protected Colour option will prevent the brush tool from drawing over areas filled with a protected colour.

Allows you to select between one of the following brush types:

• Solid Vector Brush: Creates vector shapes filled with a solid colour. Makes artwork lightweight, scalable and easy to tweak. Since this kind of brush can only create solid colour shapes, solid vector brushes have a limited set of options including size, roundness, angle, centerline smoothing and contour smoothing.
• Textured Vector Brush: Creates vector shapes filled with a texture. This gives you access to bitmap brush tips, paper textures, transparency and several other options.

This is where you select the shape of the brush tip. By default it is round. Note that some tips are designed to have semitransparent areas, even when the maximum brush opacity is set to 100%.

To create a custom brush tip, you must prepare the file ahead of time, either in Harmony or in a third-party software, such as Adobe Photoshop. Colour is not supported and transparency is not supported in the traditional sense. Black appears as 100% opaque, white appears as 100% transparent and all the shades of grey in between appear as varying degrees of semitransparency. A range of file formats are supported—.jpeg, .png, .tif, .psd, .tga to name a few. Alpha channels are disregarded on import. It is recommended that your file be between 100 x 100 pixels and 400 x 400 pixels.

You can also import brush tips that you exported from Harmony, so you can share them with colleagues.

The minimum and maximum sizes of your drawing tool produce the thick and thin effect on your stroke. This works with the pressure sensitivity of a pen tablet.

• Maximum Size: Defines the maximum width of the stroke.
• Minimum Size: Defines the minimum width of the stroke in relation to and as a percentage of the maximum size.

If you check this option, the size of the brush will be adjusted to the position of the camera on the z-axis. This means that if the camera is zoomed in on the scene, the brush will be proportionally smaller so that it appears the same size in the rendered image. Likewise, if the camera is zoomed out, the brush will be proportionally bigger.

The Roundness and Angle parameters allow you to change the shape and orientation of the tip.

• Roundness: The vertical scaling to apply to the tip. Reducing this setting squashes the tip vertically, allowing you to turn round or square tips into flat tips.
• Angle: The angle at which to rotate the brush tip, counterclockwise.

If your pen and tablet support tilt sensitivity, this option allows you to set whether your brush takes your pen's tilt angle into account, and how much.

When your pen is fully tilted, your brush tip will be stretched by the percentage you set in this parameter, in the angle in which you tilt it. For example, if you set the Pen Tilt Sensitivity to 50%, and you tilt your pen all the way up or down, your brush tip will be stretched vertically by 50%. With the same setting, if you tilt your pen all the way left or right, your brush tip will be stretched horizontally by 50%.

If enabled, and if your pen and tablet support tip rotation, your brush tip will rotate with the angle of your pen tip.

The hardness value corresponds to the softness of the brush tip's edges. The lower the value, the softer the tip edge. The higher the value, the sharper the tip edge. Be aware that some brush tips are not 100% opaque, so they will always appear somewhat soft, even at 100% hardness.

Defines the amount of space between each stamp of the brush. A value of 100% sets the stamp marks edge to edge, if there is no white space around the shape. The larger the value, the greater the space between marks. A really large value can make the brush stroke appear as a string of individual marks. Conversely, a small spacing value will give the appearance of a fluid brush stroke.

Spacing is only evident when making a continuous stroke.

You can create variation between the thick and thin of your brush stroke just by setting the Maximum and Minimum Size values. If you add randomness to the mix, pressure sensitivity from your drawing tablet will still be applied. Light pressure will create random values around the minimum, while heavy pressure will create random values closer to the maximum. The larger the percentage, the larger the range of random variation.

Sets the range for random rotation around the set Angle value. For example, if the Angle is set to 45° and the Random Angle set to 10°, the software will choose values between 40°–50° (plus or minus 5 degrees, equaling a total of 10 degrees).

Enabled by default. This option causes the contours of the brush strokes to blend with the surrounding colours, to create an illusion of smoothness otherwise not possible due to the picture resolution.

If antialiasing is disabled, the brush's texture will only render fully transparent or fully opaque pixels. Disabling this option can be useful if you need your outlines to be very crisp, if you want to make pixel art or if you need your brush strokes to render in solid colors with no variation, which makes them easier to repaint or process in third party software.

The Maximum and Minimum Flow parameters let you set the range for the rate at which paint flows from your brush. The analogy works better with a pen. The greater the flow, the more ink comes out, hence the more consistent the colour and texture of the line. If the flow is light, then the colour and texture of the line may look spotty. This feature works with the pressure sensitivity of a pen tablet.

• Maximum Flow: Sets the maximum rate at which colour and texture are applied as you create a fluid stroke.
• Minimum Flow: Sets the minimum rate at which colour and texture are applied as you create a fluid stroke. It is defined as a percentage of the Maximum Flow value. If the Minimum Flow value is set to 100%, then tablet pressure sensitivity will no longer be applicable. The flow will be set to the constant rate of the Maximum Flow value.

The Maximum and Minimum Opacity parameters are where you set the opacity range for a brush mark. This works with the pressure sensitivity of a pen tablet.

• Maximum Opacity: Sets the transparency limit of the brush mark when the pressure is heavy.
• Minimum Opacity: Sets the transparency limit of the brush mark when the pressure is very light. It is defined as a percentage of the Maximum Opacity value. If the Minimum Opacity value is set to 100%, then tablet pressure sensitivity will no longer be applicable. The opacity will be set to the constant rate of the Maximum Opacity value.

Th Randomness parameter lets you set the range for the randomness of the flow and opacity. This works with the pressure sensitivity of a pen tablet.

You can create variation in the flow of your brush stroke just by setting the Maximum and Minimum Flow values. If you add randomness to the mix, pressure sensitivity from your drawing tablet will still be applied. Light pressure will create random values around the minimum, while heavy pressure will create random values closer to the maximum. The larger the percentage, the larger the range of random variation.

This is the default blend mode. When the two brush tips are combined in this mode, they essentially cut each other out in overlapping areas, where one or both tips have an area of 100% transparency. The less opaque the brush tips are, the lighter their combination.

In this mode, the primary tip cuts out the shape of the dual tip. Where the tip shapes overlap, within the boundaries of the primary shape, the colour and opacity appear darker.

This option layers the texture on top of itself as you scribble overlapping lines in one continuous stroke. If this option is turned off, areas of overlapping lines from a single, continuous stroke will appear the same, in terms of darkness and texture, as non-overlapping areas.