Vector drawing line thickness

Community Forums/Developer Stations/Vector drawing line thickness

QuickSilva(Posted 2008) [#1]
In the program Anime Studio (formally Moho I believe) it is possible to draw freehand lines and then go in afterwards and manually edit each line to change its thickness in a very quick and simple way. Although most vector drawing programs allow this to some extent Anime Studio seems to be really quick and easy to use.

My question is are there any other vector tools out there that can mimic this ability and ease of use? Really I`m after something free or quite cheap as Anime Studio is now about £100.

Jason.


CGV(Posted 2008) [#2]
Well, I use Paint Shop Pro 11 for my vector drawing and it allows very easy changing of line thickness, anit-aliasing, line-style, you name it, all of its settings can be changed after you've drawn the line.

I've also played around with Inkscape and it allows changing settings to an even greater extent than PSP. After you've drawn the line, hit Shift-Ctrl-F to bring up the settings dialog, select the 'Stroke Style' tab and make your changes.

So, that's one cheap solution and one free one for you.


QuickSilva(Posted 2008) [#3]
Do they both allow you to change the thickness of the lines at various points along the line itself?

For example, can I create a calligraphy style line? Most programs that I have tried so far only allow the complete line to be changed and not individual parts.

Thanks for any help,

Jason.


Garion(Posted 2008) [#4]
Creature house Expression 3 now owned by M$ is available for free and it allows calligraphic lines to be drawn.

Follow the link from the wiki article at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_House_Expression

There is also a Mac version

Cheers

Garion


QuickSilva(Posted 2008) [#5]
Cheers, I`ll check it out.

Jason.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#6]
Xara Extreme can do this too. Extremely quick. Can change line colour, thickness, dotted line, arrow heads... etc etc. Also Feather line thickness too.

It's not free, but great price. Plus, the demo can be used forever with no restrictions, as it's time based, so putting your computer date back after the 30 days expires, works. Cheeky, but i'm intending to buy when i get the cash together :o)


CGV(Posted 2008) [#7]
Do they both allow you to change the thickness of the lines at various points along the line itself?


Inkscape has a dedicated calligraphy tool and after you've drawn the line you can select the 'edit paths by node' tool (F2) and edit the line further, changing its thickness at various points and so on.

I highly recommend Inkscape for you. It does what you want, it's stable and it's free.