Strips Panel

The Strips panel offers an alternate selection of Brush tips, which repeat over the length of a stroke.

Strips work best in the Paint Room for creating detail with normal map depth, in concert with per-pixel painting modes, or for actual displacement painting while using the micro-vertex method.

The ‘X’ means no strip will be applied along the trajectory.

Choosing a Strip shape does not override the alpha shapes in the Brushes panel.

For similar functionality in the Sculpt Room, use the “Curves” tool with a repeating Spline shape selected from the “Splines” panel. The Strips panel uses the same methods of adding folders and individual strips as the Brushes panel.

With the help of the “Strip” menu, you can select a shape of the strip to be applied along the drawing trajectory. This may be used to draw decorative edging or a chain.

As with Brushes, you can click on the “plus” icon to add a new alpha that will be used as custom strip.

Import the new strip alpha as TIFF file format instead of PSD.
Tif files let you import alphas with 16bits, Psd files are imported as 8bits. Tif let you paint better brush resolution with height values.

There are a number of ways that you can apply a strip:

You can simply brush them in with your pen manually, or you can create a spline curve and apply the strip to it.

Of course, using a spline is very nice for getting an accurate strip, so it is recommended you try it with a curve first.

If it doesn’t suit your needs, or you require something more “loose”, then you should try to brush it manually. It also helps to use the “Steady Stroke” feature when manually brushing a strip.

The image is a sample of how smooth and accurate using a spline curve to draw a strip can be.
Here you can see a very exemplary image, with the proper use of using a strip along a spline curve. The bandoleer around the person’s shoulders was painted with the strip.

In this illustration, the bandoleer was created with a standard Strip shape, totally within the Paint Room, using the micro-vertex method of painting.

Tutorial

Strips: by Javis Jones. This video show a brief on what strips are, and how to use them, as well as how to use them in combination with various types of brushes.