Custom brushes

[jackamus]

In DP8 it was possible to create a brush that could be used to draw a pipe with lots of bends or like a piece of wire.

Attached is a file of what the paint brush would look like.

Can I do the same thing with AD?

Custom brush.afdesign

[jackamus]

Here is an example I did in DP8

Custom brush.afdesign

[Alfred]

To do the same thing in AD, save the brush pattern — in the unlikely event that you haven’t already done so! — as a PNG file with a transparent background, and then go to the Brushes Panel menu and choose to create a new Textured Image Brush or Textured Intensity Brush (depending on whether you want it to have its own natural colours or to act as an opacity map with whatever colour you apply when using it). Browse to the location of the saved file, highlight the file and import it, and then use it as you would any other brush.

[jackamus]

Thanks Alfred I'll give it a go.

[jackamus]

Hi Alfred,

Success! I have attached a file showing how I used the transparency effect in a custom brush.

There have been times when I wanted to 'Feather' the edge of an irregular shape. Using the transparency tool only give you 4 choices of Type and I needed away to create an irregular Type.

transparent example.afdesign

[jackamus]

Alfred.

Is there a way of finding the file that generated a particular brush? I need to back track and see what I have done.

[jackamus]

I have another problem that has come out of my brush experiments.

In the attached file 'A' is a freehand drawn stroke. 'B' is a stroke that was cut from an irregular shape. You will see that I can apply a pressure to 'A' but not to 'B'. Why is this?

 

Pressure problem.afdesign

[Alfred]

4 hours ago, jackamus said:

Alfred.

Is there a way of finding the file that generated a particular brush?

Not that I know of, Jack.

2 hours ago, jackamus said:

I have another problem that has come out of my brush experiments.

In the attached file 'A' is a freehand drawn stroke. 'B' is a stroke that was cut from an irregular shape. You will see that I can apply a pressure to 'A' but not to 'B'. Why is this?

I’m sure I’ve seen that effect before, but I’m afraid I can’t remember what the explanation was!

[firstdefence]

Take a look at the brush settings and you might have brush variance set to 100% which would allow you to adjust the brushes width with the pressure option in the Stroke Panel.

[jackamus]

Good advice - it did the trick and now I can use pressure to vary thickness.

Plastic tube.afdesign