3.1.4.4.2- HOW TO DRAW CURVES

As you have seen, to draw straigth lines it's enough to click where you want a point to be. To draw a curve, you need to drag instead. This is: choose a convenient place for your point, do click and hold the mouse's button down. Now move the mouse, always holding button down. You'll get a curve. The more you move the mouse, the more pronounced the curve is. Play a little bit. When your curve looks OK, release mouse button. Done.

Notice that last point drawed is still selected and has 2 little red squares. They are called handlers. They control the curve. First one controls curve before the point. You can drag it and see how the curve is modified. Second one controls curve from this point. Just now, there is not curve after this point so it could seem to be useless, but as soon as you create next segment, it will do its work.

There is a third handler, a magent one, on previous point. This is how second one will look as soon as you create next point. Still, you can drag it to make the curve more or less pronounced, but now it's impossible to change the direction: its fixed.

Since both consecutive line points have influence over the intermediate segment, transitions would be always smooth. What if, after doing a curve, you want next segment to be straigth? Well, you could drag the second red handler until it's over the line point. This effectively reduces its influence to zero, i.e., no smoothing will be done. But there is a better method: Go to “Line point control” panel. You'll see three red (so checked) checkbuttons marked “«” (previous), “smooth” and “»” (next).

Uncheck “»”. Second handler is now missing. Notice that “smooth” checkbutton was unchecked automatically. So, next transition will not be smooth. Also, you can uncheck “«” and get previous transition unsmoothed. Not satisfied? Check “smooth” again to get both transitions smoothed. Check “«” or “»” if you want only given transition smoothed.

Again, you can edit line points after the curve is done. You can a) click on any point to select it, then drag it to new position, b) draw the handlers to get a more or less pronounced curve and transitions. If you can't see a handler, probably “«”, “smooth” and/or “»” are unchecked, so if you need the handler, check it again. You will get 2 red handlers on selected point, which you can drag on any direction independently, and 2 magent handlers, each in previous and next points to selected one, which can only be dragged in one direction.

You don't need to create a lot of points. With little practice, it's easy to draw anything clicking only on center and corners of curves. While maintaining shape, the less points you draw in a line, the better.

Now you can mold a line in any shape you want. Time to see Therion's line types.