French curves or other tool for tracing with raster brushes?

[Onager1286]

If I'm using a raster brush and I want to draw, say, a perfect circle or some other geometrically precise line... is there a way to trace it or something? I'm aware that vector brushes don't have this limitation, but they usually don't look as nice or realistic to me. Something like a French curves tool or an equivalent would be super helpful. Thanks! 

[firstdefence]

Welcome to the forum @Onager1286

What you are talking about are stencils, stencils are like temporary masks that you can either paint around or invert and paint in. You can see these working in an app called Artrage.

[Alfred]

21 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

What you are talking about are stencils

I think the OP is talking about stroking a vector path with a raster brush. We can’t do that in the Affinity apps, as far as I know.

[Onager1286]

Thank you both. Is it possible to make your own masks like that?

[firstdefence]

6 hours ago, Alfred said:

I think the OP is talking about stroking a vector path with a raster brush. We can’t do that in the Affinity apps, as far as I know.

I think you just described the vector brush in Affinity Designer 🤔

[firstdefence]

1 hour ago, Onager1286 said:

Thank you both. Is it possible to make your own masks like that?

Short answer: No but make that suggestion here as it would be a cool feature: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/52-feature-requests-suggestions/

In Affinity apps, I think masks would work in the reverse. You would paint a block or area with a raster brush and then create a mask to mask out or in any area of that block you didn't want. In such as artrage the stencil prevents the brush from painting in the area's covered by that stencil.

 

[Alfred]

13 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I think you just described the vector brush in Affinity Designer 🤔

You’re probably right! I was thinking about the (in)ability to stroke a ‘marching ants’ pixel selection, which isn’t the same thing.