GUIDE TO CUSTOM BRUSHES

Kyle Runciman / November 2nd, 2012 Tutorial created in SketchBook Pro 6

1 Why Custom Brushes?

The brushes that ship with SketchBook Pro are great. You can do almost anything with them. However, you can create an immense library of Custom Brushes for different purposes. The only standard brushes I regularly use in my workflow are the Erasers, Flood Fill, Solid Paint Brush and the Airbrush. All of the Pencils and Pens I use are tweaked to my style. Ill include my trusty Brush Set for you to try out.

2 Brush Window UI Changes

Ill be using SBP 6 for this tutorial, but the workflows are fairly similar with versions 2009 and above, with the exception of a few added modifiers. (A lot of these brush customizing tools can be found in the mobile and tablet versions of SketchBook as well to tweak existing brushes.) The UI has changed significantly in SketchBook Pro 6, so Ill start by pointing out some crucial elements.

SBP 2011

SBP 6

The main difference, visually, is that the default window is now 2 columns wide. You can grab the bottom of the Editor to adjust how many brushes are exposed. Each column can be dragged up and down to get to even more brushes. Rather than stacking sets of 18 brushes underneath the Standard Set as in 2011, the Brush Sets have been moved to a Library to keep things cleaner. You can drag brushes from that Library to replace brushes you dont use in the main window. Hit the List icon in the top right (right image) to expose the Library. 2

3 Brush Library

This is where you find all the awesome new brushes that have been added and some old favourites. Its also where all of your custom sets will be stored. Theres a scroll bar on the right to navigate. The Marking Menu icon will apeear when you have a brush set active in the Library. That will be where you find the custom Brush/Set creation options. Start a new Brush Set. Within that set, start a New Brush.

4 Select Brush Type

When you select New Brush, a pop-up appears giving you a list of options to base your New Brush on. By default, Current Brush should be selected. I like to start with Standard. A Do-It-Yourself Brush icon will appear in your Brush Set. Double-click that to open the brush editor.

5 Custom Brush Editor

The Custom Brush Editor is much more thorough than the standard Brush Properties window, as can be seen below. Unless you are using a monster tablet, chances are you wont be able to see all of the Custom Brush tools all at once. The window is broken down into four collapsible sections; Radius & Opacity, Brush Color, Advance Properties and Texture. Ill go over these more in-depth later, but heres a quick rundown of each section. Radius & Opacity - Adjusts brush thickness, taper and transparency driven by pen pressure. These adjustments are based on the Brush Stamp. Brush Color This is a new one for SBP 6. Here you can randomize the color of your brush, per stroke. Adjustments for Hue, Saturation and Brightness are available. Advance Settings - More adjustments based on the Brush Stamp. Roundness/Aspect of the stamp, Rotation and Spacing of the stamp with sliders for Randomization, and Wetness for select brushes. Texture Here is where the custom stamping comes in. You can Capture a part of the active layer in your brush stamp. Brush Edges and Rotate to Stroke are also down there. Standard Brush Custom Brush

6 Brush Radius and Opacity

This is the meat and potatoes of any Custom Brush. The majority of my brushes are built using only this section. My work is heavy on linework, so a set of great pencils and tapered paintbrushes is crucial. Its pretty straight forward. Minimum and Maximum brush thickness. (This cant be reversed like it can be on mobile. If you move the Heavy Pressure slider below the Light Pressure value, the Light Pressure will follow it.) [Strokes 1-3, below] Size Randomize changes the size of the brush stamp within the stroke. [See stroke 4 below] Minimum and Maximum Opacity, or how opaque/transparent each stroke shows up. For example, I keep my main pencil at a maximum of 0.80 and my airbrush at a max of 0.30. [Stroke 5-8 below] Lastly is Opacity Randomize, which behaves in the same way as Size Randomize only varying the stamp Opacity/Transparency. [Stroke 9 below]

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7 Brush Color

Brush Color is a new addition to SBP 6, so this wont apply to earlier versions of SketchBook. There are three sliders, each controls color variance between strokes. (The Brush Properties stay the same during the stroke. Each stroke will be a different color/shade.) The effects of each are described below.

HUE RANDOMIZE The color value along the color circle is randomized. The Saturation and Brightness values remain the same.

SATURATION RANDOMIZE The vivid/dull values change horizontally along the color diamond The Hue and Brightness values remain the same. BRIGHTNESS RANDOMIZE The dark/light values change vertically along the color diamond The Hue and Brightness values remain the same.

7a Hue Randomize

This slider moves from 0 - 180 (if youre wondering why the numbers arent all the same between the three. [Oscillates 180 degrees to each side of the selected hue = 360 degree color circle]) The first batch of lines has the Hue slider set to 45. (45 is 25% strength) This is with the slider maxed out to 100. Youll notice the Saturation and Brightness of each stroke is consistent throughout.

7b Saturation Randomize

Saturation and Brightness sliders are a simple 0-100

Here, the slider is set to 25 (%)

And Maxed out at 100 (%)

7c Brightness Randomize

Pretty self explanatory at this point, right?

Set to 25

Maxed out at 100

8 Brush Advance Properties can get really creative with your brushes. This is where Advanced Brush Properties are where you
youll need to make tweaks and changes if youre dealing with a Custom Texture Stamp brush. Default Roundness for most brushes is 1.00. If youre looking for any sort of brush that requires rotation or simulated tilt, this is where you start. None of the Rotation tools below will have any affect without an aspect ratio (Roundness) below 1.00 (Stroke 1>> 1.00, Stroke 2>> 0.60, Stroke 3>> 0.30) Rotation Randomize alters the Rotation value for each stamp within a single stroke. This is more evident with roundness values below 0.50. (Stroke 5) Spacing is the distance between stamps in a single stroke. The default spacing of the Pencil is 1.2 The minimum spacing is 0.1, this will give you a very dense brush, and may impede performance. Maximum is 10.0 and will give you results similar to Stroke 9, below Space Randomize varies the amount of space between stamps in a stroke (More noticeable with a higher Spacing value, Stroke 10) Wetness is reserved for specific brushes, like markers. This slider will have different names depending on brush type. Paint Load for Synthetic Brushes and Strength for Smudge Brushes.

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Ill revisit this portion of the Editor after dealing with Custom Texture Brushes. 8

Texture 9 Brush the bottom of the Editor, youll find the Brush Texture section. Theres a few vital elements Down at
down here that are useful for more than just Texture Stamping, but the bread and butter lies in the Capture Button. This tool allows you to use part of a sketch or imported image as the base for a custom brush. *Right off the bat, it needs to be noted that the Capture tool only recognizes data on the ACTIVE LAYER. So if youre trying to get a complex image created with several layers, youll need to merge those layers first for this to work.* I tend to use these brushes to knock out repetetive details that would otherwise take a long time to do manually; wheels, tire treads, hoses and electronics, etc. Brush Edges is where you determine how crisp/soft a brush looks. Soft > Solid > Hard. Very useful for even basic Pens and Pencils. Personally, I use Solid for most of my linework tools, I find Hard can have some interesting behavior on brushes with taper. Rotate to Stroke, is a little checkbox with immense power. For any brush with a Rotation value above 0.0, this can be toggled on, so that the rRtation angle remains uniform based on your stroke. (Examples to follow.)

10 Brush Edges Brush Edges is a pulldown menu with three options; Soft, Solid and Hard. This function controls the

edge of the Brush Stamp, but has a general affect on the Brush stroke. Selecting Soft gives the Brush Stamp a gradient/fade around the edge, (as seen in the preview at the bottom left of the window.) Hard is a much more crisp stamp, almost right to the edge. There will be a little bit of a blur, always, but thats to help with anti-aliasing. Solid is the midway point between Soft and Hard. Heres what that looks like.

SOFT

SOLID

HARD

Below shows the same Brush with each selection of Brush Edges. (1 = Soft, 2 = Solid, 3 = Hard)

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9 Custom Texture allows you to grab elements from your canvas, be it a drawing, painting As mentioned earlier, Capture
When Capturing, make sure all the strokes/paint you want included in your brush stamp are on the ACTIVE LAYER. (Typically, Ill make a duplicate of all the layers and merge the duplicates, rather than mashing the original art, just for the sake of creating a brush. Once its captured, I throw away that Layer.)

or imported image, and create a brush based on that stamp. The process can be simple, Hit the Capture button, move the cursor over the area you wish to capture and tap your pen down.

There are 2 options for the Capture in a pulldown menu. (This menu is only accessible when the Capture button is activated.) Shape and Shape + Colors. Capturing Shape grabs the alpha channel of whatever is in the Capture target. Meaning that, if you are taking a small portion of a larger image, you will come up with a dark circle. (Depending on the color you have selected.) This option works best for grabbing line work, or a series of strokes. You can change the color of brushes Captured with Shape only tool. You cannot change color of Shape + Colors brushes. Shape + Colors is the option required for capturing multi-colored elements/images.

When Capturing, the Target circle will be the same size as the Maximum Radius set at the top of the Brush Editor. To adjust the Capture Target zone, use the Brush Puck or hold the B Key until the size of the target is appropriate. The Ellipse surrounding the paint strokes in the above image reflects the Roundness value set for the brush earlier. To Capture, simply tap your pen down. The captured image will appear in the brush editor preview. Hit Capture again, to make adjustments until you get what you were hoping for. 11

Texture: Shape 12 Brushby laying down some strokes using the brush that Ive been building since the start of this I started

tutorial. There is a bit of the Color Randomization happening so this group of paint strokes has several different colors. Using the Shape capture, all of that color is lost, and replaced with the color active in the Color Editor. From here, you can use this brush with any color. The alpha (black+white) channel of the shape is what was captured. The reason it appears to be squished is due to the Roundness value set earlier. If you bump that Roundness back up to 1.00, the stamp will appear like it does on the canvas. (ie, its capturing the information, and displaying it as you require, based on your brush settings. )

Shape + Colors 13 Brush Texture: the best example of this tool, but I wanted to build a brush up from start to finish *Admittedly, this isnt
using all editable options.* Here you can see the different colors in the group of paint strokes was captured in the stamp and can be seen in each stamp when you lay down a stroke. The beauty of this Shape + Colors tool is that you can draw and render one component, Capture it, and then lay down a stroke of the stamps in sequence. You can go back to the Advanced Properties to adjust Spacing and Rotation until its perfect.

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to Stroke 14 RotateStroke can ve a very handy tool for specific jobs. I use this a lot in my concept designs for Rotate to
quick detailed electronics, braided hoses, springs/suspension and materials like carbon fiber. For this example, I captured a few lines for a profile tire tread. Using an Ellipse, I put a stroke down without Rotate to Stroke. In the top image, below, you can see that the results arent ideal. Below, I turned on Rotate to Stroke, and fine tuned the Rotation value so that it hugs the circle as I had intended. From here, I would massage the Spacing value and Brush Size to have have the pattern loop perfectly.

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Brush 15 Brush Properties: IdentifyI Custom set the icon. Now that the brush is where I want it, name it and
Click the Edit button just under the brush preview to expose the Identify Custom Brush dialogue. Im terrible with keeping organized, but I find it really useful to rename my brushes as I build them. (This helps when customizing the Lagoon, as you can select brushes from a text list. If you dont, the list will just be a mess of Do-It-Yourself Brushs) For Texture Brushes, I tend to click the Use Texture as Icon option. It will show the Texture stamp as the icon in your Brush Library. If Im building a set of Pencils, Ill scroll down the list to find the Pencil_2B, Pencil_HB, etc icons for easy reference.

16 Save Click Save.

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17 Export an up-to-date version of my Brush Set exported. That way, I can just re-Import, if for some I always keep
reason I have to reset defaults, or jump to a different computer. You can Export the brush right from the Brush Editor. Click Export at the bottom of the Editor, and save to the directory of your choice when the Explorer/Finder window pops up. It will save as a .zip file, which contains the .xml data. To Export a Brush Set, go back into the Brush Library. Click on the Marking Menu in the right corner and drag down to Export Brush Set and save. To bring the Brush Set back in, hit the Marking Menu icon and drag down to Import Brush Set. Select the .zip file you saved, and all the brushes will appear in a New Brush Set in the Brush Library.

Thats it, I think. I talk alot.

K 15