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Practical way to draw guide lines

Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 6:15 pm
by rbrowngps
I am using Anime Studio Pro 10, and trying to draw useable guide lines (on a separate vector layer) to help me draw a character turn around.
I am drawing a straight line (using the add points tool and holding down shift), then selecting the points and clicking create shape.
This provides a straight line with a stroke of the width I have set, but when I go to another layer, the guide lines are very blurry, and guide lines with very small strokes are not even visible.

Is there a way to make the guide lines appear as they are drawn (not blurry) on all layers?
Is there a setting I am missing (I do not have any blur radius, motion blur or shadow options checked)?
Is there a better way?

Re: Practical way to draw guide lines

Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 6:53 pm
by Greenlaw
I'm not exactly sure what's happening in your scene but you could try disabling GPU Acceleration and/or Antialiasing from under the Display Quality panel in the lower right side of the workspace. On my computer, GPU Acceleration tends to create a number of display issues so I usually leave it off. If you want to fully disable it, you should also disable the option for it in the Preferences panel.

You might also want to use a heavier line weight that won't get too thin when you zoom out because, AFAIK, you can't fix a constant line weight for different zoom levels. (If there is a way, hopefully somebody will correct me on that shortly.)

Hope this helps.

G.

Re: Practical way to draw guide lines

Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 6:56 pm
by hayasidist
yeah -- turn off GPU to lose the "blurry" look.

or use the built-in grid? View / Grid Settings ... then select "square" with a spacing to suit your needs?

Re: Practical way to draw guide lines

Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 7:12 pm
by Greenlaw
Yes, the Grid works well too. You may want to disable Grid Snapping if it's on because it can sometimes be a hindrance when setting up artwork. About the only time I like having Grid Snapping enabled is with I'm setting up SB Dials for a character.

Sometimes I wish we had guides we could drag onto the screen like the ones in Photoshop.

G.

Re: Practical way to draw guide lines

Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:29 pm
by rbrowngps
Greenlaw wrote:I'm not exactly sure what's happening in your scene but you could try disabling GPU Acceleration and/or Antialiasing from under the Display Quality panel in the lower right side of the workspace. On my computer, GPU Acceleration tends to create a number of display issues so I usually leave it off. If you want to fully disable it, you should also disable the option for it in the Preferences panel.

You might also want to use a heavier line weight that won't get too thin when you zoom out because, AFAIK, you can't fix a constant line weight for different zoom levels. (If there is a way, hopefully somebody will correct me on that shortly.)

Hope this helps.

G.
Turning off the GPU acceleration solved the blurry line problem; thank you.
Additionally, I am finding that when I draw a guide line with a stroke width of less than 5 the lines disappear randomly when I zoom.
I will try using the grid. Hopefully this disappearing guide line phenomenon will be fixed in a future release of the software.