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Drawing Shapes

Any given RotoPaint node can hold several shapes, and you can draw them using any of the following tools.

Icon	Tool	Hotkey	Function
	Bezier	V (toggles between Bezier, B-spline, Ellipse, and Rectangle)	Applies a Bezier shape. Bezier shapes are defined using control points and tangents.
	Cusped Bezier	V	Applies a Bezier shape with sharp corners and no tangents.
	B-Spline	V	Applies a B-spline shape. Unlike Bezier shapes, B-splines are created by only using control points. The position of the points in relation to each other determines what kind of splines the shape consists of.
	Ellipse	V	Applies an ellipse-shaped Bezier shape.
	Rectangle	V	Applies a rectangle-shaped Bezier shape.
	Cusped Rectangle	V	Applies a rectangle-shaped Bezier shape with sharp corners and no tangents. You can see the difference between rectangles and cusped rectangles if you move at least one of the control points.
	Open Spline	V	Lets you draw curves in a similar way to other shapes, except that they don't need form a closed shape.

Separate Select tools in the RotoPaint toolbar let you make changes to a stroke/shape once it’s been drawn (see Selecting Existing Strokes/Shapes for Editing).

TIP: You can choose to have your RotoPaint always open with a particular tool selected. If you want to open it with the Bezier 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 Bezier as your default tool, save the following in your menu.py:
nuke.knobDefault('RotoPaint.toolbox','bezier')
3. Restart Nuke.

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

TIP: If you begin drawing shapes and then decide you want to planar track these with the PlanarTracker node, you can do that easily by right-clicking on the shape in the stroke/shape list and selecting planar-track. This creates a new planar tracking layer for the shape and attaches the shape to it. For more information about PlanarTracker, see Tracking with PlanarTracker.

Using the Bezier and Cusped Bezier Tools

Using the B-Spline tool

Using the Ellipse, Rectangle, and Cusped Rectangle Tools

Using the Open Spline Tool