Clip Studio Paint - Brush Engine Master Guide

To access the brush engine, make sure you have the brush you'd like to modify selected and go to Window > Sub Tool Detail or click the wrench icon at the bottom corner of the Tool Property palette.

Brush Size

The first menu in the Sub Tool Detail palette is the Brush Size menu. 

The Brush Size slider allows you to change the current brush size of your brush, as well as how your brush responds to pen pressure in regards to size. By clicking on the arrow button next to the slider, you can adjust how the brush reacts to your pen in the Brush Size Dynamics popup.

Here, you can modify how your brush reacts to your pen in four ways: Pen Pressure, Tilt, Velocity, and Random.

Pen Pressure controls how your brush size reacts to the pressure you use on your pen (pressing hard or pressing lightly against your tablet or screen surface). This feature is dependent on the type of tool you are using with your device, as not all styluses have this feature. 

When pen pressure is set to a minimum value of 0 and forms a straight upward line on the grid in the bottom corner, that means the pen will have a minimum size of 0 pixels at the lowest pressure (barely touching your pen to the screen/tablet at all) and a maximum size of whatever your current brush size is set to at the highest pressure (pressing very hard on your pen).

By adjusting the Minimum Value slider, you can set a cap on the minimum size allowed by the brush. This works well for making brushes that imitate traditional pens or have a more rounded shape.

By adjusting the curve grid at the bottom corner, you can further manipulate how the brush responds to pen pressure. The horizontal axis represents the level of pressure you apply, and the vertical axis represents the size of the brush. 

Tilt controls the size of your brush in relation to the angle you hold your pen at. This is another feature that is dependent on the tool you use with your device, as not all styluses (including my own) have this feature.

A good example of tilt in action can be found in Ron Chan's RC Side Pencil brush , which I highly consider checking out if you have tilt capability in your stylus and are interested in a realistic pencil brush.

Velocity controls the size of your brush in relation to how fast you move your pen. This is one of the best ways to imitate real ink pens.

Here you can see the difference between a line I drew very slowly and a line I drew quickly. The faster you move, the smaller the brush size becomes.

Random applies a randomizing affect to the size of your brush. This is good for making slightly textured or organic looking brushes.

Ink

The next menu is the Ink menu. This is where you can control the brush opacity, blendability, and blending mode. 

The first slider is the Opacity slider. This controls how opaque or transparent your brush is, and what factors control it.

By clicking on the button to the right, we can control the opacity with the same mechanics as the Brush Size menu. 

Since I've already explained these basic mechanics, I'll just show examples of each when they affect opacity:

The next setting we can adjust is the Blending Mode. This uses the same mechanic as Layer Modes (Multiply, Overlay, etc.) but instead of affecting the layer you're on, it affects how the ink of your brush reacts to itself and other brushes.

Like Layer Modes, the best way to figure out which ones work best for your needs is to play with them yourself and see how the effects work in action. Here's some swatches of each mode in order:

The next setting we have is the Color Mixing setting. This controls the blendability and mixing of the brush. There are two settings for Color Mixing, Blend and Running Color.

The difference between Blend and Running color is that Blend will mix colors together (blue + yellow = green) while Running color will simply push colors around.

Note that each of the settings under this category will behave somewhat differently depending on which of these options you choose.

Amount of Paint controls how intense the paint is when layered on top of other colors. The higher the value, the more it'll show up on top of other colors. This relies on there being colors laid beneath it on the same layer.

Density of Paint behaves similarly, but unlike Amount of Paint, it shows up the strongest when there are no colors beneath it, and is weakened by having colors beneath it on the same layer. You can essentially treat Density of Paint and Amount of Paint as opposites of one another and alter them based on how you want your paint to react with what's beneath it. 

For my personal painting brushes, I like to keep both Density and Amount of Paint set to 100.

Color Stretch controls the length in which blending will drag a color on the canvas. The lower the value, the shorter the distance that any colors will be dragged. 

If your brush is set to Running Color mixing, you can also adjust the Intensity of Blur. Automatic will adjust the blur density based on brush size (the bigger the brush, the more intense the blur) and Fixed Value allows you to set a custom value for how it blurs.

Finally, the Mix Rate of Sub Color setting allows you to incorporate your Sub color into the paint from your brush. 

If you find that CSP brushes feel too "blendy" for your taste, consider raising the Amount and Density of Paint values and lowering the Color Stretch value. Or if you want your current brush to be more "blendy" then do the opposite!

Anti-Aliasing

Anti-aliasing controls the hardness of the brush's edge, or more specifically the type of pixellation. 

When your brush is set to the hardest mode, the edges will be completely clean and artifact-free. This is the type of anti-aliasing used by pixel artists.

If you are working at a very high resolution, using a hard brush for your inking will make your lines appear the smoothest and cleanest when zoomed out or printed.

When your brush is set to the softest mode, the edges will be soft and have artifacting around them known as anti-aliasing. This is good for making very soft, traditional-looking brushes.

Brush Shape

The Brush Shape menu has one category, Brush Shape, and four subcategories, Brush tip, Spraying effect, Stroke, and Texture.

Under Brush Shape, you can register a brush shape to use for other sub tools.

This is an easy way to apply the same settings to multiple types of brushes, or to modify your lines using a Vector layer to match that brush style (see an example here).

Brush Tip

The Brush Tip subcategory is where you can change the appearance of your brush.

Setting the brush tip to Circle will give it the default round tip.

To use custom tips, set the tip to Material and click the open space to load in a tip from your list of materials. To learn how to upload and use a custom tip, check my thread on the subject.

If you load in multiple brush tips, CSP will cycle between them all back to back as you draw. The method of repeating tips can be changed under the Stroke subcategory.

The Thickness slider controls the width of your brush tip. The lower the value, the thinner the tip will be. You can also control in what direction the tip is skewed by toggling between Horizontal or Vertical. 

You can control how your pen affects the thickness of your tip by clicking the button to the right of the slider. Like the brush size and opacity, the same mechanics can be used to affect the brush thickness.

The Angle slider lets you control the angle that the tip is applied at. 

You can change how your pen affects the angle by clicking the button next to the Angle slider. This specific tool has its own unique group of settings to choose from.

A summary of each:

- Direction of pen changes the angle of the brush tip depending on how you hold your pen (relies on Tilt functionality)

- Rotation of pen axis changes the angle depending on how you rotate your pen (also relies on Tilt functionality)

- Direction of line changes the angle depending on what direction you draw a line in. 

- Random changes the angle at random intervals. You can use the Strength slider to adjust how intense the randomization is.

Finally, the Brush Density slider allows you to adjust the opacity of each individual brush tip. This has a similar effect to the Opacity slider, but there is a key difference: Clip Studio Paint brushes are made by repeating the brush tip over and over like a stamp, and this controls the opacity of each individual tip rather than of the entire brush. 

Brush Density can be controlled with the same mechanics as Brush Size and Opacity.

The Adjust brush density by gap setting preserves the density settings chosen above by automatically decreasing the density of the brush tips as the gaps between the tips get smaller (to prevent overlapping and thus darkening).

The Spraying Effect subcategory is used when you want to create a spray / airbrush style brush. Instead of applying brush tips in a row of stamps, this applies them randomly in little groups to make a spray effect. 

The Particle Size slider controls how big each brush tip or "particle" of the spray is. This can be controlled with the same mechanics as Brush Size and Opacity.

The Particle Density slider controls the density of particles in the spray. The more squares are filled, the more dense the spray is with particles. This can also be controlled with the same mechanics as Brush Size and Opacity.

The Spray Deviation slider controls how far the particles will stray from the center of the stroke. At the lowest setting, the particles are as far from the center as possible and form an "outer crust" edge. At the highest setting, the particles form a line in the center.

Direction of Particle controls the angle that each individual particle is rotated at. This works the same as Brush Angle (and has the same additional settings).

The Stroke subcategory controls how the brush tip is stamped down when you draw a line. 

Gap controls the spacing between brush tips. The more densely packed the tips are, the smoother the line appears. If you're using a semitransparent brush tip, make sure you check the Adjust brush density by gap box under the Brush Tip subcategory to preserve the density.

Continuous spraying allows color to build up the longer you hold your pen in one place.

Here is an example of the same brush being held down in one spot. The one on the left has continuous spraying unchecked and the one on the right has it checked.

Ribbon adds a significant gap between each brush tip to have a pattern effect. This is how most CSP "object" brushes (chains, lace, ivy, etc.) are made.

Repeat method controls how the brush tips are repeated. This is only noticeable if you use multiple brush tips in one brush, and controls how CSP cycles through them.

Mix brush tips with darken controls how tip opacity is affected by overlapping tips. This is the sample that CSP provides:

The Texture subcategory is where you can apply texture to your brush. 

Click on the button beside Texture to load in a texture from your materials. 

Texture density controls how intense the texture shows up.

- Reverse density inverts the texture's black and white values

- Emphasize density adds contrast to the texture to boost visibility. Only check this if you want your texture to be very intense.

Scale ratio controls the size of the texture in relation to your brush. The higher the value, the larger the texture. 

Rotation angle controls the angle that the texture is applied at. If your texture is not seamless, I recommend rotating your texture so the seam is less noticeable.

Method to apply texture functions similarly to Layer and Blending modes. The best way to decide which works for you is to try them out yourself, but here's a list of swatches:

They look different depending on all the other brush settings, so although they look very similar in these swatches they may look a bit different for yours!

Apply each plot tip applies the texture to every brush tip rather than to the stroke. This stacks the texture depending on how densely the tips are placed.

Border of Watercolor

This menu allows you to add an opaque edge to your brush strokes that resembles watercolors.

Border of watercolor controls the thickness of the opaque border. The higher the value, the thicker the border color will be.

Transparency effect controls the opacity of the opaque border. The higher the value, the more opaque it will be.

Luminosity effect controls the darkness of the opaque border. The higher the value, the darker it will be.

Process after drag will make the brush render the opaque border after a stroke is drawn, rather than at the same time. This is helpful if your computer is on the slow side or if it takes too long to render otherwise.

Blurring width controls the hardness or softness of the opaque border. The higher the value, the softer the border will be. Note that you can only use Blurring Width if you have Process after drag checked.

A comparison between an unblurred and a blurred opaque border:

Erase

The Erase menu is only applicable to Eraser tools or brushes with their Blending Mode set to Erase. 

Note that the Vector eraser and Refer all layers checkboxes will only become clickable if you have a vector layer active in your layers panel.

You can set your eraser tool or brush to function as a Vector eraser under this menu, and control what it erases. The buttons to the right of the checkboxes are for deciding how vector lines are erased.

This is the example of the different vector eraser functions given by CSP:

Erase all layer allows the eraser to work on all layers regardless of which layer is selected.

Correction

The Correction menu controls the settings for pen corrections, like stabilization and snapping to rulers.

Make Corner Pointed controls how sharp angles are drawn. For example, if you draw a square, it will extend the corners to make them more pointed and squarelike.

This is useful for inking brushes made for drawing backgrounds, or for angular art styles.

Stabilization smooths out brush strokes by slowing down the speed at which they're input. This can help get rid of any bumps or wiggles that come from drawing slowly or keep lines crisp and precise. The slider controls how intense the stabilization is - the higher the value, the slower the stabilization. 

Adjust by speed allows the stabilization to automatically adjust itself based on the speed you draw at - either by slowing down the slower you draw, or speeding up the faster you draw. The Stabilization mode buttons dicate which mode you use. This is useful if you want your lines to be smooth when you draw slowly (to prevent bumps and wiggles) but not when you draw quickly.

Post Correction makes adjustments to lines after you draw them. The higher the intensity, the more drastic the changes will be. For example, if you draw lines that CSP believes were meant to be straight lines, it will straighten them out. 

This function has several options. 

Adjust by Speed works the same as it does for stabilization, in that it relies on how fast you draw to decide how intense to correct your lines.

Adjust by Display Ratio makes corrections based on how zoomed in you are to your canvas. 

Bezier Curve makes your line adjust so that it can be manipulated by Bezier Curves. If you've never heard of these, they're the little nodes which you can manipulate lines with in many art programs that have Pen tools (like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator). In CSP, you can manipulate lines this way if they're drawn on a Vector layer.

Brush Stroke controls how long your brush tip follows your pen after you lift it from your screen/tablet. 

Able to snap dictates whether or not your pen will behave with rulers, guides, grids, etc. I recommend having all pencils and inking brushes set to this, while painting brushes may be better off without it depending on your style.

Vector Magnet causes lines on a vector layer to snap together and overlap depending on their proximity to each other. You can adjust that proximity limit with the square slider.

Starting and Ending

You can manipulate how your brush strokes start and end using this menu. 

The settings under this menu are somewhat of a culimnation of all our previous setting menus, but exclusively applied to the start and end of a line rather than the entire thing.

These are settings that I highly recommend playing around with to see the effects they give, since they can vary so wildly depending on your brush and what settings it already has.

For reference, though, this is what happened when I set my brush density to Fade:

Anti-overflow

Our final menu, Anti-overflow, specifically deals with the use of Reference Layers. If you don't know anything about Reference Layers, I highly recommend checking out my thread on them here before continuing to read, or else this section may not make much sense!

Note: Make sure you are on a regular raster layer and NOT a vector layer while using this menu, or the options may be greyed out!

Do not exceed line of reference layer ensures that any lines you draw will not go past lines drawn on a reference layer. This is handy for coloring in shapes when your lineart is drawn on a reference layer, since it guarantees no coloring outside the lines.

Fill up to vector path guarantees that your colors within the reference layer lines will go right up to the edge without going over, up to 1 px. This ensures that the color will extend behind lineart thicker than 1 px in width to prevent white gaps.

Color margin controls the margin of error when this brush refers to dividing colors in the reference layer. For example, if your lineart is multiple colors with only subtle differences between them, adjusting this value may change how your brush reacts to (or does not react to) those lines.

Area scaling automatically expands or shrinks the zone in which your lines can move inside or outside of reference layer lineart, depending on the value set by the slider. For example, setting the value to -5 would mean that your brush will stop making marks 5 px away from the reference line, while setting it to +5 would mean that your brush can draw 5 px outside of the line.

How to zoom controls the method that color is applied under the reference layer in regards to corners and edges. The options are Rectangle (filling up to square corners of pixels), Round (filling to round corners of pixels), and To Darkest Pixel (filling to the darkest part of the line).

Extras

A few extra tidbits of information to note:

- Clicking the eyeball button next to a setting means that it will show up and be adjustable under the Tool Property palette. By doing this, you can make a compact list of all the features you adjust the most often so you don't have to go through all those menus just to make quick changes to the brush.

 - If you want to make a brush that behaves similarly to a pre-existing one in your collection, I highly recommend making a duplicate of that brush and tweaking that rather than creating something new from scratch. With the amount of settings available in the brush engine, it could take a long time to get settings exactly like someone else's! 

- Experiment! Some of my favorite brushes are ones I made completely on accident just by fiddling with some settings. If you have any favorite brushes from the Clip Studio Asset Manager, try looking at their settings to see what kind of attributes you like best in a brush and then make some yourself!

I hope this guide was helpful! It was a doozy to write but hopefully this will help anybody who was uncertain about how to make their brushes behave the way they want them to.