The Bézier Toolkit add-on has a number of utility ops and tools for working with Bézier curves in Blender. The important ones are:
Flexi Draw Bézier for quickly creating Bézier curves and primitive shapes like circle, ellipse (with variable segments), polygon and star
Flexi Edit Bézier for interactively editing the curves and shape keys in Object Mode (features include: direct segment editing by dragging any point on curve, adding points or tangent at any position on segment, deleting segments / points, uniformly subdividing the segments, Bevel [fillet] segments and Bézier points)
Flexi Grease Bézier for creating Grease Pencil Bézier strokes and primitive shapes
All the above tools are backed by a flexible Snapping and Locking Framework , that allows (among other things): locking the curve or curve segments to a plane / axis or to any face of the active object as well as entering coordinate values via keyboard for precision drawing and editing.
Some other ops in the toolkit are:
Join Bézier Curves: Joins multiple curves with curve segments or straight lines (close points are merged together)
Paste Length: Makes the selected curve objects the same length as the active one
Convert Curve to Mesh: Options include mesh with quad faces (using Remesh modifier), with faces arranged in triangle fan, with an Ngon face or mesh with only edges
Split Bézier Curves: Splits curves into individual splines, segments or even Bézier points
Split Bézier Curves at selected points: Select points in edit mode and split the curve at these points (supports mutlispline splitting)
Align to Face: Make the curve points coplanar by aligning them with the closest face of selected mesh. This would result in better geometry when the curve is converted to mesh
Export to SVG: Export the curves from the scene (viewport view or any camera view with out without clipping) into an SVG file
Great job. It’s a great tool.
This is similar to the operation of vector paint software such as Adobe Illustrator.
Suggest
We think that it is good to prepare a shortcut that is easy to access from the left hand
Confirm the operation and make it a curve … Space
Move back one operation … Ctrl + Z
I think the add-on’s panel should be in “Tools” instead of “Tool”
I need a handle reset, add / delete function for existing segments like Illustrator.
If you can do this, you will be able to do most of the work of curve creation.
(It’s a greedy proposal, so I don’t think it’s essential if you think it’s a hassle)
Adjust the handle of the existing segment at the clicked position by dragging again
Add a new segment at the clicked position
As far as I know, there is no way to add a segment in the middle of a curve except to select two segments and perform Subdivide. I want to make a segment at a specified position by clicking directly.
Delete the segment existing at the clicked position
Bug report
When dragging on an object and trying to start drawing, the object sometimes moves.
It seems that this phenomenon is likely to occur if you drag it quickly
Thank you for the detailed feedback and suggestions.
I am a little hesitant to change the shortcuts now since the video is already published. I would shortly add right click to combine confirm + new curve, which is likely to be used quite frequently. Hope that would help.
The area reserved for external add-ons is, I guess , Active Tool & Workspace Settings. That’s the reason why I have created all my add-on panels in this area. Again unless there is a good reason to change this, I think it’s better to continue with it as otherwise the video and documentation will need to be changed.
I am planning to work on the feature to adjust the segment curvature by dragging a point on it. Maybe that would meet some of your requirements.
Have not used illustrator so not sure of the reset and other functionality you mentioned. Maybe you could upload a video illustrating that and I will implement it if it’s doable :).
About the bug report… do you use LMB for selecting the objects? I might have missed that because I have the old Blender way of selection with RMB.
That is because the z coordinate of all the points of a 2D curve is zero. By converting 3d to 2d you effectively remove one (z) dimension.
The curves created by this tool are no different than the ones created by Blender. So if you create a similar curve using Blender, you will get the same result.
(Just try adding a standard Bezier curve, rotate by 90 degrees on x and apply transform. Now if you convert to 2d, it will be a line)
The problem with snapping to vertices of mesh objects is there can potentially be a very large number of them in a blend file. So it will not only have performance issue but maybe also ineffective. One option could be snapping to vertices of vertex group. Let’s have some more ideas around this
I am a little hesitant to change the shortcuts now since the video is already published. I would shortly add right click to combine confirm + new curve, which is likely to be used quite frequently. Hope that would help.
Please add more shortcuts, leaving the existing shortcuts.
The operation to confirm with space is the same as the knife tool and loop cut. It can be said that it looks like Blender operation.
I am planning to work on the feature to adjust the segment curvature by dragging a point on it. Maybe that would meet some of your requirements.
Good😃
Have not used illustrator so not sure of the reset and other functionality you mentioned. Maybe you could upload a video illustrating that and I will implement it if it’s doable :).
Master the Pen Tool in 30 Minutes | Photoshop In-Depth Tutorial - YouTube
The above video is a reference video.
In the 16:00 of the video, I will show you how to create a heart-shaped curve.
Video is a Photoshop tutorial, but it has the same functionality as Illustrator.
About the function of “.3” that I proposed in the first reply
In the video, you can “Alt-Drag” on an existing segment to create handles and adjust the length and angle of both handles simultaneously.
“Alt + Click” on an existing segment will delete the handle.
In addition, you can adjust one of the handles just like a free handle by “Alt + Drag” only one of the handles.
Other
Click on a segment to delete the segment.
Click on a curve to add a segment.
Alt-Drag on the curve to add segments, create handles, and adjust the length and angle of both handles at the same time.
Ctrl-Drag on a segment moves the segment.
About the bug report… do you use LMB for selecting the objects? I might have missed that because I have the old Blender way of selection with RMB.
great tool but if you accidentally rotate orthoview you can’t get back with alt+middlemouse drag like in default blender hotkey for jumping back and forth orthomodes (I don’t have numpad I need this feature)
Hi artoonick,
after you draw your Object in Front-View.
Go into Edit-Mode, rotate all Points x-90.
Go into Object-Mode, rotate x 90.
Change the curve to 2D.
An automatic like the Align to View function would be an nice addition.
