Stroke Tool & Paint Paths

The Stroke Tool lays a paint stroke along a curve you place on the model. The curve — a paint path — stays editable for as long as it exists: move a point or pull a handle and the stroke is wiped and laid again, so a seam line, a stitch row or a trim band can be nudged until it sits right instead of being repainted. Pick it from the Painting tool row, where it sits under the Mask button. Sculpt mode has its own version that sculpts along the curve instead — see Sculpt Paths.

Laying a path

With the Stroke Tool picked, the Stroke Properties accordion opens in the sidebar. Click the model to place the first point; each further click adds a point, and the brush strokes along the curve between them. A plain click places a corner point; drag while you click to pull out that point’s handles and bend the curve as you go. To place points the curve flows smoothly through, use the Curvature Pen (press P until it is lit) — the path is drawn with the bezier pen, whose five pens sit in the corner of the view. Press Enter or Finish to stop adding points — the path stays editable. To start another path, press New Path; the next click on the model begins it.

The stroke is always laid with the brush, never as an eraser, blur or smudge. A path belongs to the mesh it was drawn on (Loaded or Generated) and to the kind of paint it lays (texture or vertex colours); switching to the other lets go of it, and it comes back when you switch back.

Editing points and handles

Click a point to select it, then drag it to slide it over the surface, or drag one of its handles to bend the curve through it. While you drag a point, Shift slows it down, Ctrl keeps it to one direction, and it snaps into line with other points straight across or straight down the screen (Alt turns the snap off). Alt+click a point to switch it between smooth and corner; Alt+drag a handle to break it. The Handles buttons in Stroke Properties set the selected point’s mode, with the alignment settings under them — see the bezier pen. The stroke is laid again live while you drag. Points whose handles you have never pulled keep smooth handles worked out from their neighbours, and these follow along when a neighbour moves; once you pull a point’s handles, they are yours. Clicking empty space lets go of the selected point.

Delete removes the selected point, and while you are still laying points Backspace takes back the last one. Every edit is an undo step: while the Stroke Tool is on, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y step through path edits, and once there are none left they fall through to ordinary undo. The stroke itself is not a separate paint step — undoing the path edit puts the stroke back as it was.

Per-point size and opacity

Every point carries its own brush size and opacity, and the stroke blends smoothly between one point’s values and the next. A new point takes the brush size the cursor ring shows at that moment and full opacity. Select a point and press [ / ] to shrink or grow its size, or Shift+[ / ] to lower or raise its opacity — or set them with Point Size and Point Opacity in the accordion. Sizes are stored in model units, not screen pixels, so the stroke comes out the same however the camera has moved between edits.

Stroke properties

The Stroke Properties accordion edits the active path. With no path active, its style settings are kept for the next path you lay.

Control	What it does	Range
New Path	The next click on the model starts a new path.
Delete Path	Delete this path and the layer holding its stroke.
Finish	Shown while laying points: stop adding points (the same as Enter). The path stays editable.
Use Current Brush	Re-lay the path with the brush and paint channels as they are now (see below).
Point Size	The brush radius at the selected point. Available when a point is selected.	0.01–50 cm
Point Opacity	The brush opacity at the selected point. Available when a point is selected.	0–1
Taper Start / Taper End	Thin the stroke to a point over this share of its length at the start or end.	0–1
Tip follows curve	Turn the brush tip along the curve, so a textured or oval tip stays aligned with the path — Rake Brush for the path’s stroke.
Closed loop	Join the last point to the first — a strap or ring round a limb.
Symmetry	Mirror the stroke across the model’s symmetry plane, as a brush stroke is.
Walk geodesically	Follow the shortest way across the surface between points — round a limb, into a fold — instead of the curve’s own shape snapped onto the surface.
Dash / Gap	Dashes and stitches: draw this many dabs, then skip that many, repeated along the path. A Gap of 0 gives a solid stroke.	1–50 / 0–50
Parallel Lines	Lay the stroke this many times side by side — double stitching, trim bands.	1–9
Line Spacing	How far apart the parallel lines are. Available when Parallel Lines is above 1.	0.01–20 cm

The Paths — Paint window

Window > Paths - Paint lists the paint paths on the mesh you are looking at, for the kind of paint you are laying. Click a path to edit it with the Stroke Tool (this switches to Paint and picks the tool if needed); the eye button shows or hides its curve on screen. The eye does not hide the paint — that is shown and hidden from the path’s layer in the Layers window. Right-click a path for:

Control	What it does
Rename...	Give the path a new name (double-clicking it does the same). Its layer is renamed to match.
Duplicate Path	Copy the path, with its brush. The copy is named after the original with “copy” added, and paints into a layer of its own.
Delete Path	Delete the path and the layer holding its stroke.

The buttons at the bottom of the window start a New Path and delete the selected one. Deleting asks for no confirmation, but while the Stroke Tool is on Ctrl+Z brings the path back.

Paths and layers

Each path paints into a layer of its own, named after the path, in every material the stroke reaches. On every edit that layer is emptied and the stroke laid into it again, so nothing of the old stroke is left behind and the rest of your painting is never touched. Vertexix puts your own layer selection back after each re-lay, so ordinary painting does not land in a path’s layer, where the next re-lay would wipe it.

Deleting a path’s layer from the Layers window deletes the path too: you are asked Delete the path too? and can choose Delete Both or Cancel.

Re-laying with the current brush

A path remembers the brush it was drawn with — its tip, settings and paint channel values — and always re-lays with that brush, whatever brush is selected when you edit it later. Every dab is also drawn from a fixed random seed, so scatter, jitter and textured tips land the same way on every re-lay and only the edited part of the stroke changes. To switch the path to the brush and paint channels you have now, select the path and press Use Current Brush; the stroke is laid again with them.

Keys

These apply while the Stroke Tool is on.

Key	What it does
Enter	Finish adding points. The path stays editable.
Esc	Stop adding points; pressed again, deselect the point; again, let go of the path (pick it again from the Paths — Paint window).
Backspace	While laying points, remove the last one.
Delete	Remove the selected point.
[ / ]	Shrink / grow the brush size at the selected point.
Shift+[ / ]	Lower / raise the opacity at the selected point.
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y	Step back and forward through path edits.