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— Stroke: In most cases, the Stroke tool is what people think of when they think of paint and is the tool of choice for most operations. It is a fully animatable and editable vector-based paint stroke. It can become slow if hundreds of strokes are used in an image; when creating a lot of paint strokes, it is better to use Multistroke. The Stroke type has a duration of the entire global
range. However, you can edit its duration at any time in the Keyframes Editor. When the painting is complete, choose the Select button in the Paint toolbar to avoid accidentally adding new strokes.
— Polyline Stroke: This provides the ability to create and manipulate a stroke in the same way that a Bézier path or polygon mask might be created. To add a Polyline Stroke, select the Polyline button and click in the viewer to add the first point. Continue clicking to add additional points to the polyline. This click append style is the default, but polyline strokes can also be created in draw append mode. Polylines can be tracked or connected to existing polylines like masks or animation paths. The Polyline Stroke has a default duration of the entire global range. However, you can edit its duration at any time in the Keyframes Editor.
— Circle: Creates a circular shape with animatable control over radius and center. The Circle type has a duration of the entire global range. However, you can edit its duration at any time in the Keyframes Editor.
— Rectangle: Creates a rectangular area. The Rectangle type has a duration of the entire global range. However, you can edit its duration at anytime in the Keyframes Editor.
— Copy Polyline: Allows you to create a closed Polyline area with animatable offset to clone elements from one area or image to the other. The Copy Polyline type has a duration of the entire global range. However, you can edit its duration at any time in the Keyframes Editor.
— Copy Circle/Rectangle: A circular or rectangular shape area with animatable offset to clone elements from one image to the other. The Copy Circle/Rectangle type has a duration of the entire global range. However, you can edit its duration at any time in the Keyframes Editor.
— Fill: Similar to the Wand mask tool. This tool fills similarly colored adjacent pixels with a fill color based on the selected color channel. The tool has a duration of the entire global range. However, you can edit its duration at any time in the Keyframes Editor
— Paint Group: Allows you to group multiple paint strokes with full control over center and size. Since Multistroke and Clone Multistroke styles cannot be tracked, grouping these paint stroke types and tracking the paint group is one common use of groups.
Editing Options Toolbar
Paint edit options are displayed in the viewer after a Polyline stroke is created.
Polyline-based paint strokes include a second toolbar in the viewer to select different editing options. The paint strokes that include this second toolbar are Polyline Stroke and Copy Polyline.
The Stroke style also displays this toolbar after the stroke is selected and the Make Editable button is clicked in the Inspector.
— Click Append: This is the default option when creating a polyline stroke. It works more like a Bézier pen drawing tool than a paintbrush tool. Clicking sets a control point and appends the next control point when you click again in a different location.
— Draw Append: This is a freehand drawing tool. It paints a stroke similar to drawing with a pencil on paper. You can create a new Polyline Stroke or Copy Polyline Stroke using the Draw tool, or you can extend a Stroke style after clicking the Make Editable button in the Inspector.
— Insert: Insert adds a new control point along the paint stroke spline.
— Modify: Modify allows you to safely move or smooth any exiting point along a spline without worrying about adding a new point accidentally.
— Done: Prevents any point along the spline from being moved or modified. Also, new points cannot be added. You can, however, move and rotate the entire spline.
— Closed: Closes an open polyline.
— Smooth: Changes the selected stroke or control point from a linear to a smooth curve.
— Linear: Changes the selected stroke or control point from a smooth curve to linear.
— Select All: Selects all the control points on the polyline.
— Keys: Shows or hides the control points along the polyline.
— Handles: Shows or hides the Bézier handles along the polyline.
— Shape: Places a reshape rectangle around the selected polyline control points. Using the reshape rectangle, you can deform groups of polyline control points or entire shapes much easier than modifying each point.
— Delete: Deletes the selected control point(s).
— Reduce: Opens a Freehand precision window that can be used to reduce the number of control points on a polyline. This can make the paint stroke easier to modify, especially if it has been created using the Draw tool.
— Publish: You can use the Publish menu to either publish control points or the path. Publishing is a form of parameter linking. It makes the selected item available for use by other controls, or to attach a control point to a tracker.
— Follow Points: Allows a selected point to follow the path of a published point. The point follows the published point using an offset position.
— Roto Assist: Enable the Roto Assist button when you begin painting with the Polyline Stroke tool. The polyline points snap to the closest edge as you click to add points to the shape. A cyan outline indicates the points that have snapped to an edge. There are three main Roto Assist options selectable through the drop-down menu:
— Multiple Points: When enabled, a single click on a high-contrast edge will add multiple points to define the entire edge, instead of having to add each point individually. This is a one time only click. The second click reverts to single point edge detection.
— Distance 8: Opens a dialog where you can set the pixel range within which searching for an edge will take place.
— Reset: Used for resetting the snap attribute of all snapped points. After resetting, the points will become unavailable for tracking.