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Help Centre
The guides (aka perspective guides or drawing guides) are useful visual reference tools that allow you to easily create precise perspective in your artwork.
This article covers the basics of using the Perspective guides, if you’d like to know how to use the Symmetry guides, see How do I use the Symmetry Guides?
Step 1: Open the Guides view
In order to use the guides, you must open the Guides view in your interface. For more information, see About the Guides View.
To open the view, do one of the following:
- In the top menu, click on Windows > Guides.
- In the top right of any open view, click on the + button next to the tab and select Guides from the menu.
Step 2: Add a guide
- In the Guides view, click the
dropdown menu button in the top right of the Guides section.
- Choose a guide from the menu. It will be added to the list in the Guides section. For more information on the different guides, see What are the different types of guides?
- Continue to add guides if needed.
| NOTE: You can only use one guide in a section at a time, however you can use one guide from each separate section together (one from the Guides section and one from the Symmetry section). |
Step 3: Display the guide
- To see the guides in the Camera view, make sure of the following:
- The guide is selected in the Guides view. Selected guides are highlighted in bright blue.
- The Enable Guide
button is toggled ON in the Guides view.
- You have a drawing layer selected.
- A compatible drawing tool is selected. For more information, see What are the different types of guides?
- To change how the guides are displayed, use the following features in the Guides view:
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Full Cursor Display button: Toggle on or off to lengthen or shorten the dotted lines coming out of your cursor.
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Show Reference Lines button: Toggle on or off to show or hide the guidelines. This will not hide the guide’s points or horizon line.
- Number of Lines slider: Increases or reduces the amount of guidelines visible on the guide.
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| NOTE: Hiding or reducing the amount of guidelines will not prevent your tool from snapping to ‘invisible’ guidelines. These are purely visual preference tools. |
Step 4: Adjust the guide
Once the guide is visible in the Camera view, depending on your display preferences, you will see a combination of points and lines.
Edit the guide to your preference by doing one or more of the following:
- Select and move the points to change the position of the reference points.
- To move the horizon line, do one of the following based on the chosen guide:
- Hover anywhere on the horizon line and click and drag it.
- Hover over a central point on the horizon line and click and drag it.
- To rotate the horizon line, do one of the following based on the chosen guide:
- Hover anywhere on the horizon line and click and drag to rotate it.
- Hover over a point on the horizon line and click and drag it.
- Some guides have extra points that are red or green in colour. These are additional adjustment options for certain guides. Simply move these points to see what they affect.
| NOTE: When a guide is adjusted, it automatically saves the updates in the list and the guide will stay in its adjusted state for that scene/project until it is edited or removed. All guide adjustments are also saved in the undo list and can easily be reversed during the session. |
Step 5: Draw using the guide
When you are happy with your guide, you can start to draw with your chosen drawing tool.
Use the following Guides view tools to change how you work:
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Lock Guide: Locks the guide so that you cannot accidentally edit it while drawing.
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Align with Guide: Aligns your drawn lines with the guidelines. Turn this off to use the guides while drawing freehand.
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Enable Guide with Eraser: Enables the guides when the Eraser tool is selected.
Step 6: Other guide options
The following options are extra actions you can perform while using the guides:
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Full Cursor Display axis isolation While hovering your cursor over the guide, you can isolate the axis you draw on by using the left ◀️ and right ▶️ arrows on the keyboard. This will darken each axis and you will only be able to draw on that chosen axis. Keep using the arrow keys to shuffle through the options or to return to default. |
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Delete Guide button Removes the selected guide from the list. |
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Guide Menu button Allows you to perform the following actions:
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Q&A
Question:
Why can’t I see my guides?
Answer:
Make sure you have followed all the requirements listed in Step 3.
Question:
How do I disable or deselect a guide?
Answer:
Toggle the Enable Guide button, or click in any blank space in the guide list window so that the guide loses its highlight.