Your first shot
Create a project, open a canvas, place a stroke in scene space, and orbit the viewport to confirm it holds its position.
This procedure creates the containers work lives in, places one stroke, and demonstrates the single idea the rest of the application rests on: a stroke occupies a position in space.
Reference
- Tool
- Draw
- Menu
- File ▸ Import · Layer ▸ New Plane Layer (3D)
- Workspace
- Draw
Create a project and a shot
Create a project
On Home, tap + in the toolbar. A project holds shots and the edit that assembles them.
Create a shot — and choose 3D
Open the project. The Shots tab is shown. Tap + and the New Shot sheet appears.
Set Mode to 3D. The default is 2D, which is what you want for ordinary flat drawing — but this walkthrough is about depth, and a 2D shot does not have any. The mode cannot be changed later, so it is worth getting right at the outset.
Then choose a resolution from the presets, or select Custom and enter a width and height in pixels. Resolution is a property of the shot, not the project, so shots of different sizes can coexist in one project.
Open the canvas
Tap the shot. The canvas opens with the tool palette along one edge, the QuickStrip beside it, and the viewport in the centre.
Place a stroke
Select the Draw tool
Draw is the first tool in the palette. Set size and opacity on the QuickStrip — the two tall sliders next to the palette — and choose a colour from the swatch beneath them.
Draw
Draw a shape with some form to it; a straight line is a poor choice here because it is hard to recognise from another angle. Pressure and tilt both register.
Orbit the viewport
Place two fingers on the canvas and drag.
The camera moves around the stroke, and the stroke holds its position in space. Nothing was reprojected: the stroke has a location, and you are now viewing it from elsewhere.
Recovering a known view
View ▸ Camera ▸ Reset View returns to the starting view. The axis entries — Front (Z), Right (X), Top (Y) and their opposites — snap to a straight-on angle, which is the quickest way to confirm where something actually sits.
Confirm the stroke has depth
Orbit until the stroke is viewed edge-on. A stroke drawn on a plane very nearly disappears at that angle, which confirms it is a flat mark at a position rather than a picture pinned to the screen.
Draw a second stroke from the new angle and orbit again. The two strokes cross in space at an angle to one another. Neither moved.
Curve the surface
Open the Surface panel and apply curvature — a cylinder, for example. The grid bows.
Draw on the curved surface. The stroke follows the curve rather than resting on a flat plane in front of it. Orbit to confirm it holds the form.
Now flatten the surface again. The stroke that was drawn on the curve keeps its curvature.
Curvature is recorded per stroke
The grid is a tool, not a container. Each stroke stores the curvature it was drawn on, so a single layer can hold strokes of many curvatures at once, and re-bending the grid never disturbs existing work. Bend, draw, re-bend, and draw again; nothing already on the canvas shifts.
Undo
Two-finger tap undoes. Three-finger tap redoes. These are the most frequently used gestures in the application; see Gestures for the full set.
Stopping
There is nothing to do. The shot is saved as you work, and the red ✕ on the shot bar closes it without asking about unsaved changes, because there are none. The next time you launch the app it reopens this shot where you left it.
See also
The brush engine and every Brush Settings control.
The viewportNavigation, axis views, and what the viewport camera is.
The drawing surfaceCurvature types and the per-stroke curvature rule.
LayersPlane layers, screen-locked camera layers, and vector layers.
2D shotsThe other mode — a flat document, and what it drops.
SavingAutosave, the Save button, and the shot that reopens on launch.