Shape Brush

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Blue
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Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:55 am
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Shape Brush

Post by Blue »

The Freehand tool is nice.

However, I would like a "brush" tool that will work with tablet pressure sensitivity that creates shapes instead of lines with varying thickness. Basically I really love Flash's brush tool and would love to be able to have that tool in this software. Furthermore, Flash's brush tool is additive, so each overlapping stroke is added to the shape.

I read the thread below and perhaps this request is a lost cause, but as a new ASPRO owner, I'm holding out hope.
viewtopic.php?t=13496&highlight=fazek+tools

As this is my first post I'd also like to add that I'm enjoying the software so far and the manual's tutorials and this forum has helped get me up to speed quickly.
joelstoryboards.com - (WinXP SP3, ASP 6.1)
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

You may or may not know, but I have been mucking about with the Freehand tool lately and I think I may have a quick and easy way to do what you want. I could add an option to it so that, instead of adding a single point at each section of the curve, it could add a pair of points perpendicular to the line and spaced apart by the current width. When you lift up your pen at the end of the line, it could generate your closed shape using all of the points. It might also be possible to do a shape merge operation at the end, so it's additive like you want, but I don't know an easy way of doing that off the top of my head.
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Blue
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Post by Blue »

I'd be your best friend if you did that :D

I think you understand exactly what I'm interested in. The brush "line" thickness is actually a shape instead of a single line with varying stroke width.

I completely understand it could be very difficult...but it wouldn't be very useful (for me) without each brush stroke being able to combine with the last stroke.

As compensation for your time coding a tool such as that, maybe I could offer some of my time offering some of my services (character design, storyboarding...).
joelstoryboards.com - (WinXP SP3, ASP 6.1)
Rudiger
Posts: 786
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2005 2:25 am

Post by Rudiger »

Hmmmm, what might be possible is to implement a simplified shape merging algorithm that could do most of what you want. In "add" mode, any underlying shape would have points added to it to encompass the shape of the stroke. In "subtract" mode, any underlying shape would have points added to it to cut-out the shape of the stroke, ie eraser-mode. You could also make a special case when a stroke is completely enclosed by the underlying shape, to handle making holes in a shape in "subtract" mode. Any more than that would mean implementing a complete 2D boolean operations library in lua, which would be a monumental task.
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Blue
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Post by Blue »

Wow, that sounds great!

I need to make a correction to what I stated above. In Flash to combine shapes you actually have two commands you need to make, select all, then combine. However the eraser works as you would imagine. So your tool would actually work better, as I wouldn't need to spend time combining objects.

Obviously there is still a need for the original drawing tool, so if you are going to move forward with this they should probably be separate tools and not a replacement for it.

Also, I like your thinking on another post where you spoke about having variables that allow for not smoothing a curve on certain drawn angles so you can draw geometric shapes.
joelstoryboards.com - (WinXP SP3, ASP 6.1)
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