Stroke squares, circles or closed splines

[Ferdinand]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to introduce myself to this very helpful community. I've been using 3D Coat for a while now, mostly to UV map hardbody models I've done in Cinema4D. My plan was to do low poly models, then use normals to add additional detail like grooves and panels. Initially I used Quixel's NDO for this, but it runs at a snail's pace on my machine and I simply can't work like that. Yesterday I had a closer look at 3DC's Paint Room and it seems to have a lot of the functionality that NDO and Photoshop would offer.

However, for the life of me, I can't seem to get a brush stroke to follow a square or a closed spline path. All I get is a fill in the shape of the spline/rectangle. Mind you, I know about the Spline Paint Tool, but that doesn't offer the flexibility in terms of creating shapes (rounded rectangles, loading EPS files and the like) that the 'E' menu offers. There must be a way to do this. Can you help me find it? That'd be great.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[Javis]

Hi, and welcome.

There is a mode in the Stroke Mode panel allows you to do tha with EPS shapes easily. It's called Curve Stroke. ( http://www.3d-coat.com/manual/general/321-strokemodes/ )

It's the curve with the icon that is not closed, but you can "close" it, and still stroke the actual curve with the brush radius globally, or based on the curve size of each node in the curve. You can still load EPS files for this, too. It's a really great mode. Use it all the time. Hope this helps.

[Ferdinand]

Hi Javis,

Thanks for the warm welcome and for your suggestion. Curve Stroke was exactly what I was looking for! Thanks so much. 

3DC is quite intimidating at first, because it does so much and in its own way, but once you manage to familiarise yourself with what it can do, everything you need is there. I'm really pleased. 

 

Best, Ferdinand