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  • Published 3 Dec 2019

Advanced support of curves/lines as stroke for painting & sculpting

As of now you can create a curve or line as a stroke but the implementation is very limited (basically you can add/remove points, move them, that's it). I propose a more complete set of editing options:

  • being able to easily move the entire curve/line around instead of having to translate the view to place the curve where you want. Even better would be having it moving with the cursor when you have that stroke active and an option to behave like that.
  • make it work as the other strokes, now you need to press the Draw curve or Enter to apply it. I mean, click the cursor on the mesh to apply it
  • make it possible to edit the weight of every single vertex/control point, visually and numerically. Checking the source code there's a weight number but it isn't used. The weight could define the thickness of the line or even go deeper with the brush options in the sculpting, allowing to create complex patterns that now are done by hand but could be more precise with these options. other data for the point could be color, line pattern, etc.
  • other editing options could be make perpendicular segments, move numerically, rotation by angle, etc
  • import from external files those other information (colors, etc)
  • using not only a single line/curve but a group of it to draw or sculpt. That could be manually grouped together or have modifiers like having parallel lines and so on.
  • another totally different approach would be to place lines/curves that follow the mesh instead of being a 2D element that is being projected to the geometry when you apply the stroke. Adding points on the mesh would have the point placed in 3D over the surface, so you can plan something that follows for example a crease or other part of the object and when you are done fine-tuning the curve/line you apply it. This method makes less sense as something you could reuse multiple times because depends on 3D placement. If the brush is not applied 2D wise maybe the software could place the view in front of the 3D line/curve, starting from the first point, and manually move to simulate what the user would do, but of course here it'd be more precise than done by hand.

Some of the features i listed are basically things that are already implemented for Grease Pencil strokes, so maybe those elements themselves could be used as another Stroke option for painting and sculpting instead re-creating the same features for a curve/line stroke. The elements are projected onto the surface of the mesh with their settings: for painting basically the group of strokes is converted to a 2D texture brush and applied, for sculpting maybe not all the options make sense to be considered as a brush. For example the stroke could be considered as a texture or use the values of every control point as brush size, etc. Maybe there could be different approaches to use Grease Pencil strokes for painting/sculpting.

Last thing, being able to script the editing and application of the stroke would allow even for procedural ways to draw and sculpt patterns (even more so with the 3D curve/line idea).

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Development Status: Open

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saviour
3 Dec 2019

1 Comment

ethan42

it would be very useful to have the option to attach curve to geometry so that when you move the viewport around or zoom in or out the curve would not move all over the place. maybe could even have a button to toggle any curve to attach to whatever surface is below it . or detach if the curve is already attached to some geometry.