Drawing Paint Strokes

Any given RotoPaint node can hold many paint strokes and shapes. You can apply paint strokes using any of the following tools (see also Drawing Shapes).

Tool	Hotkey	Function
Brush	N (toggles between Brush and Eraser)	Applies colors atop the current plate, or blends colors with the current plate. You can also clone from surrounding frames.
Eraser	N	Removes pixels from existing strokes and brings background back.
Clone	C (toggles between clone and Reveal)	Applies pixels from one region of the current plate to another region of the current plate.
Reveal	C	Applies pixels from a source plate to a destination plate in the corresponding place.
Blur	X (toggles between Blur, Sharpen and Smear)	Blurs the image in the area of the brush stroke.
Sharpen	X	Sharpens the image in the area of the brush stroke.
Smear	X	Smears the area of the smear brush stroke, stretching the selected pixels over their surrounding area.
Dodge	D (toggles between Dodge and Burn)	Brightens the background color on the area of the brush stroke to reflect the brush stroke. Using this tool on black produces no change. No part of the stroke area is darkened.
Burn	D	Darkens the background color on the area of the brush stroke to reflect the brush stroke. No part of the stroke area is lightened.

Icon

Tool

Hotkey

Function

Brush

N (toggles between Brush and Eraser)

Applies colors atop the current plate, or blends colors with the current plate. You can also clone from surrounding frames.

Eraser

Removes pixels from existing strokes and brings background back.

Clone

C (toggles between clone and Reveal)

Applies pixels from one region of the current plate to another region of the current plate.

Reveal

Applies pixels from a source plate to a destination plate in the corresponding place.

Blur

X (toggles between Blur, Sharpen and Smear)

Blurs the image in the area of the brush stroke.

Sharpen

Sharpens the image in the area of the brush stroke.

Smear

Smears the area of the smear brush stroke, stretching the selected pixels over their surrounding area.

Dodge

D (toggles between Dodge and Burn)

Brightens the background color on the area of the brush stroke to reflect the brush stroke. Using this tool on black produces no change. No part of the stroke area is darkened.

Burn

Darkens the background color on the area of the brush stroke to reflect the brush stroke. No part of the stroke area is lightened.

TIP: You can choose to have your RotoPaint always open with a particular tool selected. If you want to open it with the Brush tool selected, for example, do the following:
1. Create a file called menu.py in your plug-in path directory if one doesn’t already exist. For more information on plug-in path directories, see Loading Gizmos, NDK Plug-ins, and Python and TCL Scripts.
2. To select the Brush tool as your default tool, save the following in your menu.py:
nuke.knobDefault('RotoPaint.toolbox','brush')
3. Restart Nuke.

For more information on default tools, see Setting Default RotoPaint Tools and Settings.

TIP: If you are using a tablet, you can tie a new stroke’s opacity, size, or hardness to pen pressure by clicking the corresponding pressure alters checkbox in the RotoPaint tool settings. You can also later change which attribute the pressure alters for an existing stroke on the Stroke tab of the properties panel.

Separate Select tools in the RotoPaint toolbar let you select strokes/shapes once they’ve been drawn and after that you can make changes to them using the properties panel controls (see Selecting Existing Strokes/Shapes for Editing, and Editing Existing Stroke/Shape Attributes).

This section discusses the general steps for using each of these tools, and gives an overview on editing their attributes and timing.

Using the Brush tool

Using the Eraser Tool

Using the Clone Tool

Using the Reveal Tool

Using the Blur Tool

Using the Sharpen Tool

Using the Smear Tool

Using the Dodge Tool

Using the Burn Tool