Line quality question

[David_Fine]

I am using a lovely charcoal style brush for my line. I think it came with TVPaint, but maybe not. Anyway, it gives me a nice strong black line, but it's rough, like charcoal. The only thing is, when I want a thinner line, the line loses it's blackness and becomes more grey coloured. In the attached picture, you can see that lines 1, 2, and 3 are nice and black, but as they get thinner, 4 and especially 5, are rather grey. 5A is actually line 1 copied and reduced in size. In that case, the line is nice and black, as I want it, but it still retains the charcoal feel of the line, particularly if you zoom in.

So how can I make this brush retain it's blackness for a thin with this style? Is there a setting to adjust which might achieve this, or a different brush anyone knows of which would be similar in quality, but blacker (or whatever colour it is)? Essentially like the 5A line I get by shrinking line 1.

Thanks!

Lines.jpg (31.66 KiB) Viewed 23668 times

[slowtiger]

I think it would be nice if decreased pen pressure could increase the step value, as a real charcoal line will have gaps when drawn lightly.

Anyway, in a case like this I just switch tools.

[furushil]

how can I make this brush retain it's blackness

It looks like the Opacity is linked to your pen pressure. Try to set it to "none", this should help.

[ZigOtto]

hi David,
your Size + Opacity tool settings are both connected to Pressure,
so it's normal when small size (light pressure) stroke, you get a transparency with it.
to change this behaviour, as Furushil mentioned it in its post, change your tool's Opacity
connection to None, and it should stay black (100% opaque) even in the thiner strokes.

... or, at least, if you keep it connected to Pressure, change the connection profile
to make it increase way faster, something like this :

opacityprofile.png (4.68 KiB) Viewed 23657 times

[David_Fine]

I did try changing the pressure to none, but it still looks the same. I am attaching the brush here, in case anyone can have a look and see if there is a setting or adjustment which might make it blacker. Otherwise, as suggested, another tool. Does anyone have a brush which would look similar, but more black? I suppose I could try remaking this brush with more black bits in it, but I have never made a brush like this, so I need to learn how to do that! Probably a good thing to figure out.

[David_Fine]

Actually, making an animated brush is super easy (as I'm sure you all know) so I did it. I simply used the existing brush to stamp a sequence and then made each instance of the brush more black. I then made that sequence into a brush and it made my line nice and black while still maintaining the rough characteristic of the charcoal. Hurrah for me!

[ZigOtto]

Actually, making an animated brush is super easy (as I'm sure you all know) so I did it. I simply used the existing brush to stamp a sequence and then made each instance of the brush more black. I then made that sequence into a brush and it made my line nice and black while still maintaining the rough characteristic of the charcoal. Hurrah for me!

you got it !

in fact, the original custombrush had some (level of) transparency, ... enough to make it look more grey than black,
by increasing its opacity, I made a clone version, but more "black"
here's a sample to show the original charcoal vs the modified one :

charcoal-modified.png (92.78 KiB) Viewed 23613 times

at top of this sample, is a couple of strokes drawn with the original custombrush,
down is exactly the same couple of strokes, but using the modified version,
it looks definitively more black, but also "harder", I mean less smooth,
a "sharky" charcoal ...

[David_Fine]

Thanks for that, ZigOtto. Can I ask, how did you increase the opacity because while I can see that the original brush did have some transparency, the opacity setting was at 100% already.

[slowtiger]

If it's an AnimBrush, the images the brush consists of can be transparent. I use this often.

[ZigOtto]

Thanks for that, ZigOtto. Can I ask, how did you increase the opacity because while I can see that the original brush did have some transparency, the opacity setting was at 100% already.

sure you can ask
I modified the CB source, (the base's material), not the CB settings :
- I loaded the original Charcoal animbrush in a new project (12 frames),
- I modified (increased) its opacity by applying some FXs on it,
(you have several ways for that : FX_Color/Curve/Alpha, FX_Color/Histogram/Alpha, or FX_Keying/Alpha Control,
I used the third one, because it have more settings allowing us to get faster the desired result),
- I grabbed this modified sequence as animbrush, and save it again in a custom button,
- I copied the custombrush settings from the original to the new one.


that lead me to a new request :
why not to have a CB Alpha setting to influence the opacity in both sens (increase/decrease) ?
actually, we can only decrease it, (from 100% = origin, to 0% = transparent).
it could be a powerful addition when connecting this alpha setting to Pressure, or Tilt, or Fade, ...

[Peter Wassink]

why not to have a CB Alpha setting to influence the opacity in both sens (increase/decrease) ?
actually, we can only decrease it, (from 100% = origin, to 0% = transparent).

you mean that tvpaint would make transparent pixels less transparent?
but then at maximized transparency you'd always end up with a opaque square wouldn't you?
i mean the transparent pixels outside of the confines of the desired brushshape would also become opque.
unless you'd exclude 100%transparent pixels, make those immune for this inversed opacity request.
i like it.

[David_Fine]

I modified the CB source, (the base's material), not the CB settings :
- I loaded the original Charcoal animbrush in a new project (12 frames)

I get it. So that's similar to what I did, which was to manipulate the individual brushes which make up the anim brush, but I did it by manually stamping each successive brush element on a frame and then picking up that brush. How do I load a brush directly into a layer so that it just appears there as 12 frames (or whatever it may be), all ready to modify and then make into a new brush?

[ZigOtto]

... How do I load a brush directly into a layer so that it just appears there as 12 frames (or whatever it may be), all ready to modify and then make into a new brush?

when your animbrush is saved as a deep file, or as a sequence of frames (png32 format f.i.),
you can load it as any other image file, but choose the "Layer" tab of the "Import Footage" panel,
and keep the "Stretch to project Size" option "Off", ... that's it !

[David_Fine]

Not sure how I save my anim brush as a deep file. I only know how to save a panel of brushes, as a .tvpx file. Are you referring to saving a layer with the individual brush frames stamped on them? I was wondering if it is possible to load an existing brush as a sequence of images so that they can be edited and then grabbed again as a new brush.

[ZigOtto]

why not to have a CB Alpha setting to influence the opacity in both sens (increase/decrease) ?
actually, we can only decrease it, (from 100% = origin, to 0% = transparent).

you mean that tvpaint would make transparent pixels less transparent?
but then at maximized transparency you'd always end up with a opaque square wouldn't you?
i mean the transparent pixels outside of the confines of the desired brushshape would also become opaque.
...

not exactly my idea, I meant just a variant factor (multiplyer/diviser) operating on the current (existent) alpha value,
so f.i. a pixel with alpha = 12 could be divised/multiplied so to become 0 (with 0% pressure of the pen),
and to reach up to the max alpha value = 255 (with 100% = max pressure).
a pixel with alpha = 0 would stay fully transparent, because mathematically : 0 X n = 0 / n = 0
the "shape" should stay the same in that way, empty area surrounding the brush keeping its original transparency.