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Draw stroke lines

Pen

You can draw lines or curves using the Pen tool. This is especially useful for sketching ideas for shapes quickly, like a 3D pen-and-paper.

Activate the tool

Point at the main menu, and click on the Pen Pen tool using your main hand's trigger button.

Draw lines

  1. Press and hold the main trigger button.
  2. Then move the main hand to draw the line as you move the cursor.

Control the brush size dynamically while drawing

You can control the thickness of the line by varying how much you press the main trigger button. Pressing it partially will make thinner lines, compared to pressing it fully.

Modify the max brush size

Push the joystick on the main controller right or left, to increase or decrease the brush size.

Draw annotations

Note: Annotations are not supported in Blender 4.3 and newer. Blender has removed the API to draw annotations from addons, and Grease Pencil doesn't work in VR (yet).

You can make notes in the scene by selecting the Annotation Annotation tool.

This is helpful for creating notes and lines without creating new objects in the scene or final render. Annotations will be draw in the current annotation layer.

Draw thick "pipes"

You can draw thick pipes by selecting the Pipe Pipe tool in the submenu for Pen. This is a convenient preset.

  1. Point at the main menu, and click on the Pen tool using your main hand's trigger button.
  2. Point at the submenu for Pen, and click on the Pipe tool.

Draw straight lines

You can optionally draw straight lines by selecting the Straight line Straight option in the submenu for Pen.

  1. Point at the main menu, and click on the Pen tool using your main hand's trigger button.
  2. Point at the submenu for Pen, and click on the Straight option.

To stop drawing straight lines, click on the Straight option again.

Extend existing strokes

You can add more points to an existing stroke, at either end of it, by selecting the Extend stroke Extend option in the submenu for Pen. This is useful if you want to continue drawing an existing stroke later.

  1. Select the stroke that you wish to extend (the Extend option is only available when a stroke is selected).
  2. Point at the main menu, and click on the Pen tool using your main hand's trigger button.
  3. Point at the submenu for Pen, and click on the Extend option.
  4. Move the cursor to either end of the selected stroke, and press and hold the main trigger button to start drawing from that end.
  5. Move your main hand to add more points to the stroke.

Freebird will extend from whichever end of the stroke is closest to your cursor, so you can add points to the beginning or the end of a stroke. The existing portion of the stroke keeps its original thickness, and the newly added points' thickness follows the trigger pressure, like when drawing a new stroke.

To stop extending strokes, click on the Extend option again.

Draw fixed thickness lines

You can draw lines with a constant thickness by selecting the Fixed thickness Fixed thickness option in the submenu for Pen. This is useful for drawing wires, pipes, and other lines that require a fixed radius.

  1. Point at the main menu, and click on the Pen tool using your main hand's trigger button.
  2. Point at the submenu for Pen, and click on the Fixed thickness option.
  3. Draw the line as usual (see Draw lines above).

When this is enabled, the line will keep the same thickness along its entire length, regardless of how much you press the main trigger button (i.e. the trigger pressure will not change the line's thickness). The thickness used is the max brush size.

Note: This is different from the Pipe preset — Pipe is a preset tool with its own bevel style, whereas Fixed thickness applies to your regular strokes and only affects how the thickness is controlled while drawing.

To draw lines with varying thickness again, click on the Fixed thickness option again.

See also