Lascaux Sketch
From 2drawWiki
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Lascaux Sketch is one of the most powerful drawing applets available on 2draw.net. Due to its numerous features, this page serves to describe most of the functionality you will find. This is intended more as a manual than a tutorial.
Contents |
[edit] How do you pronounce "Lascaux"?
Lah-scoh.
[edit] What does Lascaux mean?
The name comes from the caves of Lascaux, located in France. These particular caves are full of very elaborate cave paintings drawn with techniques we don't understand completely. Read more about it on the Offical Lascaux Cave site.
[edit] Basics of Lascaux Sketch
All of these notes currently apply to Lascuax Sketch version 0.672 alpha. There may be discrepancies with the current version on 2draw.
[edit] Layout of Lascaux Sketch
Lascaux Sketch is made up of several sections, each of which are designated a certain set of functions and tools called toolbars/toolboxes.
[edit] General Toolbar
Starting at the top center of the applet is a thin bar starting with "Submit". These buttons are for basic operations such as submitting your image to 2draw (
), undoing (
) and redoing (
) actions in your history, zooming (
, 
, 
& 
) while editing your image, "floating" the applet (
) as a stand-alone window, and the information button (
) which gives you some information about your image and about Lascaux's version and the like.
[edit] Drawing Canvas & Zooming
 The center area shows the image you are working on bordered by a grey field on which nothing can be drawn. This is where you actually draw your image. Below the center area is a line with an arrow on it which describes how far you are zoomed on your image (the perpendicular line below and near the left of the horizontal line being 100%) and a snap checkbox which will restrict zooming to even values (100% increments above 100% and 10% increments below the 100% mark). You can zoom by click dragging your mouse left and right on the horizontal line, right to zoom in and left to zoom out. This is usually more convenient than using the Zoom In and Out buttons at the top of the applet. In version 0.73 of Lascaux Sketch, the snap checkbox is disabled by default due to the new 'smooth' zoom feature. Smooth zoom smooths out the pixels when zoomed in (this option may be slow on older computers). |
[edit] The Status Bar
At the bottom of the applet is a bar that is split into 3 sections. The largest section of the status bar can give you information on tools and shortcuts for tools when you put your mouse over them. The section to the right of that tells you how far you exactly how far you are zoomed into the image. The far right section displays in pixels where the mouse is located on the canvas area in an x,y format. The upper left corner of your canvas is considered to be the point 0,0. The numbers increase as you approach the bottom-right of the canvas.
[edit] Color Toolbox
 On the upper right of the applet is the color toolbox, which contains the color selector, the color palette, and the current active color. Here you can select your current active color according to 3 different schemes separated by the tabs at the top of the color field. |
[edit] Tools
 Lascaux Sketch has a wide variety of tools that you may find useful in certain cases. The real mastery of the applet comes when the artist not only understands the uses of each tool but where and when to use them to achieve the desired effect. |
[edit] Brush Toolbox
 The brush toolbox can be one of the most complicated and at the same time the most creative aspect of Lascaux's interface. Since brushes apply to almost every tool in Lascaux, it will greatly inhance your ability to use Lascaux if your understand how brushes work. |
[edit] Paper/Masking Toolbox
 The paper/masking toolbox part of Lascaux is for halftones and a more advanced way of "selecting" certain areas on the canvas. The top bar (which is black by default and says "Mask Off" in the screenshot) is used to configure masking modes, and the 2 gradient bars below that labeled "i:" and "d:" describe the paper. Think of masking as a way of selectively blocking off certain areas of your canvas (as if by masking tape) by color. By default, masking is turned off which means you can draw on the entire canvas. Left clicking on the bar will switch between "Mask Off", "Mask Normal" and "Mask Reverse". Right clicking on the bar will change the masking color to the current active color. With "Mask Normal" enabled, the masking color will be masked off, in other words you will not be able to touch the masking color. With "Mask Reverse" enabled the reverse is true, you will mask everything but the masking color, in other words you can only touch the masking color. Masking is another extremely quick way to color in certain areas, if you plan to use it ahead of time, since it can accurately allow you to apply paint to the canvas in uniquely colored areas. The paper options are used to describe halftones and more randomly diffuse type brushes. Halftones in professional digital mediums are described as regularly spaced but variably sized spots which compose a certain tone, which are mostly used for producing works or in the process of producing works in the printing field. Mediums like magazines and newspapers are just some examples of printed medium, but actually almost every image, tint or color you see in print is comprised of halftones. Both of these "paper" settings will allow you to create a variety of different textures in your piece that is unproducible using the other ordinary tools in Lascaux. In Lascaux Sketch, halftones are not variably sized spots but rather regularly spaced pixels, the spacing of which can be adjusted using the "i:" gradient bar. This is what is called the "intensity" of the current paper of the canvas. The closer you are to the left (0 being the minimum, black) the more space there is between each pixel, the closer you are to the right (255 being the maximum, white) the less spacing there is. The bottom most gradient bar "d:" describes the diffuseness of the brush. When this is set closer to the left (0 being the minimum, black) the more diffuse the brush is, in other words the more spread out the pixels are. When this is set closer to the right (255 being the maximum, white) the less spread out the pixels are. |
[edit] History
| [[Image:Lascaux-history.jpg | History toolbox]]
The history toolbox contains all (or almost all) of the steps that it has taken you to get to where you are at the moment. Everything applied to the canvas directly is remembered, providing that you have sufficient memory. The amount of memory allocated for Lascaux Sketch's History is actually set on your 2draw account's control panel. If you have sufficient memory, it would be wise to set this as high as possible so that you can have as many undoable entries in the history as possible. Once you run out of memory for the history, it is automatically cleared and you can no longer recover the cleared steps. The highlighted line indicates the most recently applied step and you'll notice that each step states what action was used and if applicable what layer the action was applied to. The undo feature is invaluable in probably any program on any computer today, and Lascaux Sketch is no exception. Being able to undo ( |
[edit] Layers
 For many one of the most confusing aspects of Lascaux Sketch is the layer feature and with good reason. Layers are not only complex and have many nuances in and of themselves, they also require knowledge of more advanced concepts such as transparency. Layers are an extremely helpful and powerful way of organizing your drawing, so knowing every aspect of layers in Lascaux Sketch is a good start to drawing better in it. |
[edit] Mixing Modes 
Mixing modes are ways to combine layers in different fashions in order to achieve some very different effects that can change your piece drastically. Usually one doesn't remember every mixing modes' effect specifically but tries each one out and looks for some expected or unexpected outcome.
[edit] Advanced topics for Lascaux Sketch
Holy cr*p! More topics? Well, this is only for those special cases where sometimes Lascaux needs to be used in a certain way in order to get what you want, the way that you want it. Onwards!
[edit] Merging Layers
Sometimes when you want to start merging layers in Lascaux, things don't seem to merge the right way. You may notice that when you merge things down your picture actually changes! This actually happens only when you happen to be merging layers with different opacities and blending modes because the layer that you are merging takes on the properties of the bottom layer.
The way to fix this is to keep in mind how Lascaux merges all the layers to produce the final image. What happens is that there is always an invisible layer at the very bottom that is white with 100% opacity, and layers become merged from the bottom up.
So if you want to merge some layers together, you want to do the same thing. Keep in mind that this may affect layer transparency, but you knew that already since you want to merge stuff right? Also, all the layers you want have to be on top of each other because merging only merges two layers that are next to each other.
Anyhow, if your bottom merging layer isn't set to normal blending mode at 100% opacity, you can start by making a blank layer. Then from the bottom layer, merge down into this newly made blank layer, and work your way up one at a time until you have all the layers you want together! It may seem like a pain, because it is, but that's just the way things are right now. Hopefully you won't be working with too many layers most of the time so this shouldn't be too much of a problem.
[edit] Anti-Aliasing & Smooth Lines
todo
