so if you've worked in digital art then maybe you're aware of something called
vectors, and NO they're not just transparent drawings, don't believe the
lies that deviantART tells you. A vector is an image without pixel dimensions.
It can literally be any size. It's most common in animation as well as in
super high resolution printing, graphic design, stuff like that. But clip
studio paint also has vector layers that are different from vector layers in any
other program that I've seen so far and they're GOOD. They're very good. So you
should probably learn how to use them if you use clip studio paint.
So I'm gonna show you how they work. What is a vector? A vector is basically a image
that does not have any size to it; it can be any size and it's not defined by
pixels, it's defined by paths and like little mathematical splines and things
like that. You don't need to know the details, just know that they don't
have a size, that they can be any size. In this respect clip studio paint vector
layers are not actually true vectors because you cannot export as an actual vector format
First up, see this button? Says new vector layer. Click it
Vector layers in CSP behave just like any other raster layer except they can't do fills.
That's about it. So say you want to do a sketch or some line art or
something like that. Do it in a vector layer. Later, you decide that you want to
make it into a print or high resolution image. well guess what? because you used
a vector layer you don't have to redraw anything! You can just scale it up and it
will look exactly the same without any quality loss. Same even applies to the transform tool.
And the fun doesn't stop there! There's also a host of other tools
for modifying vector layers. The object selection tool allow you to grab
individual strokes and move them around. This is very useful for those certain
strokes that come out otherwise perfect that are just slightly offset.
It's also very useful if you need to clean up certain strokes that you didn't mean to
draw. There are also vector eraser tools which erase the entirety of a stroke,
up to any intersection, so you can do stuff like this:
This makes doing hair stupidly easy.
You can also optionally set it up to look at only one layer or all layers.
also there's an entire tool category dedicated just to doing vector layers.
It's called the correct line group. you can use this to tweak individual control
points, nudge them with the pinch tool, simplify them which reduces the number
of nodes and makes them easier to edit, but the most common tool I use is called
the connect vector line, which allows you to turn two strokes into a single one
which is very useful when doing color.
there's also the redraw vector line and redraw a vector line width. First one does
what it sounds like and the second one allows you to redo a line's pressure
without modifying its path, which I actually use a lot for correcting my
line art thickness.
All the figure drawing tools also still work on vector layers, they just won't do fills.
They'll still create the vector paths. Anything that draws a line will make a path,
even if it's a transparent line so keep that in mind when you're using the brush tool, as well.
All in all vector layers are a huge asset for line art and you should use them.
one thing vector layer also work incredibly well with is the reference layer,
which is not actually a layer itself. It's actually a setting that you can enable for any layer
This is very useful for doing line art so to get started just click the vector layer and
click this lighthouse button to enable it as the reference layer. Now what we
can do is on any of our tools we can set it up to "Not exceed the line of the reference layer."
When it comes to vector layers you can also set this up to go up to the
center of the line rather than just the edge and this is where vector layers
really come into their own versus raster line art. This basically makes coloring a
helluva lot faster like...
faster than I could come up with a catchy line to
actually describe this...
*shi-*
by holding ctrl and clicking the layers you can set multiple layers as references as well
which is pretty useful. I also personally
set up my tools to only look at the reference layer and not actually care
about what's currently on the layer. This will work with the fill tool, the
selection tool, brush tools, and more. Personally I don't use reference layers
with brushes all that much I mostly used the selection and fill tools.
Sometimes, especially with really thin lineart, you'll get little gaps there are edges that
don't look very nice but you can overcome this by tweaking some of the
settings, a little bit of practice, or even just manually touching it up with
normal brushwork. Reference layers overall make everything a hell of a lot easier
In fact a lot of CSPs tools all revolve around efficiency and basically
just making things faster.
so yeah I hope this is useful. I know I use all this
stuff a hell of a lot so enjoy
so this was a short tutorial but it was
one I was meaning to get out for quite a while.
thank you to my patrons for the support, you are all wonderful people
if you want to help me make the tutorials like this, feel free to support me on patreon
no pressure.
just do note that it's 18-plus and it's for the exact same reasons that you're thinking of.
anyway, new animation coming soon probably within the next month
I'm not exceedingly active on YouTube so
if you want to see more of my stuff just follow me on Twitter or tumblr or wherever
okay bye