Freehand Drawing with Pencil, Brush, and Eraser

Use the Pencil, Brush, and Eraser tools to draw with a mouse, trackpad, or stylus. These tools share many of the same drawing controls, but create or modify artwork differently.

• Brush creates freehand paths with configurable tips and variable thickness.
• Pencil creates freehand paths with a consistent thickness.
• Eraser uses similar controls to the Brush, but removes from existing shapes rather than creating new ones.

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Brush tool

Use the Brush Tool to draw freehand with configurable tips and variable thickness. Each new Brush drawing creates a Brush Shape containing a spine. Unlike a standard path, a spine retains information about the brush stroke, including its width variation and smoothing.

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Brush spines

A Brush Shape can contain one or more spines. Select the Brush Shape to view its spines in the Brush Spines section of the Inspector. Each spine has its own Width and Smoothing. Changing the width preserves any width variation created while drawing.

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Flattening spines

Select Flatten to bake all spines into regular vector geometry.

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Drawing options

Use the options at the top of the panel to control how the Brush behaves while drawing.

• Pen Pressure varies the width of the brush based on pressure from a supported stylus.
• Speed varies the width of the brush based on how quickly you draw.
• Hide Bounding Box hides the selection bounding box while drawing.

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Brush Tip

Use Tip to choose the shape of the Brush. Rive includes a selection of predefined brush tips.

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Size and width

Use Size to set the maximum width of the Brush. Min Width sets the minimum width the Brush can reach when Pen Pressure or Speed is enabled. Increase the value for more consistent strokes, or decrease it for greater variation in width.

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Smoothing

Use Smoothing to reduce small variations in the path as you draw, creating smoother curves. Higher values produce smoother paths, while lower values more closely follow the movement of the pointer.

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Stabilize

Use Stabilize to smooth your drawing by adding distance between the pointer and the path as you draw. Higher values increase this distance, giving the path more time to smooth out changes in direction.

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Show Leash

Enable Show Leash to display the distance between the pointer and the path while drawing.

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Add to Selected

Enable Add to Selected to add each new stroke as a spine in the selected Brush Shape instead of creating a new Brush Shape. This lets you build up a single shape with multiple brush strokes.

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Pencil tool

Use the Pencil Tool to draw freehand paths with a consistent thickness. Pencil creates the same type of path and stroke as the Pen Tool, but lets you create the path by drawing freehand rather than placing vertices manually. The Pencil shares many of the same controls as the Brush, including Smoothing, Stabilize, Show Leash, Hide Bounding Box, and Add to Selected. It does not support brush tips, variable width, Pen Pressure, or Speed.

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Thickness

Use Thickness to set the width of the stroke.

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Eraser tool

Use the Eraser Tool to remove portions of existing shapes by drawing over them. Like the Brush Tool, the Eraser uses a spine, allowing it to use configurable tips and variable width. The Eraser shares many of the same controls as the Brush, including Tip, Size, Min Width, Smoothing, Stabilize, Hide Bounding Box, Pen Pressure, and Speed. It does not include Color, Show Leash, or Add to Selected.

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Simplify

Use Simplify to clean up the outline left behind when erasing flattened shapes. Higher values simplify the resulting path more aggressively. Simplify only affects flattened shapes, which are erased destructively. Brush shapes are erased non-destructively and aren’t affected by this setting.