Drawing with Textured Brushes
In Storyboard Pro, you can draw with a textured line. When drawing on vector layers, textured lines are a mixed bitmap image contained in a vector frame. This allows you to sketch as if you are drawing on paper. When drawing on bitmap layers, there is no vector frame. There is only one big rectangular canvas that you are drawing on.
To create your own texture brush, you must prepare your tiled texture file in a third-party software, such as Adobe Photoshop. If your image has transparency in it, it will be supported. The texture file must be either a .PSD or .TGA file.
How to draw with a textured brush
- In the Tools toolbar, select the Brush
tool or press Alt+B.
- In the Tool Properties view, select a brush and click the Arrow button to open the Brush Properties view.
- In the Texture section, do one of the following:
| ‣ | On a bitmap layer, select the Tip tab and then select a texture. |
| ‣ | On a vector layer, select the Paper Texture option. |
- Set the following parameters:
| ‣ | Hardness: The hardness value corresponds to the smoothness of the line edge. The lower the value, the more blurry and smooth the line edge will be. The higher the value, the sharper the line edge will be. |
| ‣ | (Vector layers) Maximum Opacity: This value corresponds to the transparency of the brush when the pressure is heavy. Values closer to 1 produce a more opaque line. |
| ‣ | (Vector layers) Minimum Opacity: This value corresponds to the transparency of the brush when the pressure is very light. Values closer to 0 produce a more transparent line. |
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| ‣ | Select Texture: Lets you use and select a texture for your brush. The thumbnail displays the texture currently in use. You can also browse for a texture file to import. Browsing for a texture file in a brush already using texture will replace the file currently in use, although it will not replace the texture in the lines already drawn. |
| ‣ | Texture Scale: Changes the size of the texture in the lines you draw. If you are using a plaid texture, the squares will be larger if you increase the value and smaller if you decrease it. |
- Select the panel and layer on which you want to draw.
- In the Stage view, start drawing.
How to create a texture brush
- In the Tools toolbar, select the Brush tool or press Alt+B.
- In the Texture section, do one of the following:
| ‣ | On a bitmap layer, select the Tip tab and then select a texture. |
| ‣ | On a vector layer, select the Paper Texture option. |
- In the Texture section, select the Select Texture option.
- Click the Add
button and browse for a bitmap texture file.
- In the Tool Properties view, click the New Brush
button to add a new brush to your list.
The colour of your texture will not be used. Instead, the dark and light areas will be used to determine the alpha in your texture. The current colour swatch will be used in conjunction with the pattern and alpha in your texture.
- In the Stage view, draw some lines and adjust the parameters to fit the style you are looking for.