Palette knife - lock rotation or contrain to thin vertical and horizontal lines

[pepperstreet]

Hello artists,
does someone know a way to achieve a thin vertical or horizontal line? How to rotate and move the knife "on the edge"? I tried everything, but I can't get a proper setting. I have to admit, that my wacon tablet/pen does support tilt, but not the pen rotation. But I see no problem with it... if I would use a mouse, It should also be possible to achieve this kind of constraint. My first thought was the "lock rotation" setting. I tried different values, but I can't get the desired result. Simply reducing the knife size is no option, I want a large knife that I move in the direction of the handle. This constraint should work for vertical and horizontal strokes. Hope this makes sense ;)

Any tips? Did I miss something?
Thanks in advance.

[markw]

Hello pepperstreet and welcome to the ArtRage forums :)
It depends somewhat on which Wacom Tablet & Pen you have?
The Intuos Grip Pen supported: Tilt and Rotation.
The Intuos Art Pen supported: Tilt, Rotation and Barrel Roll or “twist” if you prefer.
I still use my trusty old Grip Pen that came with my Intuos4. And I can lock the Knife’s head rotation to the Pen’s OK.
The old Art Pen which was sold separately back in the day also had/has Barrel Rotation or “twist” as well. But never having had one I can’t say if the Knife head can be locked to that or not.
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[pepperstreet]

Hello, thanks for the explanation and info graphic. I had a hard time to describe my issue in english ;)
Please, do not lough... I am still using the good old INTUOS 3 A5 wide tablet. I am using it for everything, funnily not very often for art or painting. Many years ago I was more into heavy photoshop and graphics... so I could not really remember if this might be an issue with the tablet/pen feature and current software support.

I believe my task and usage is not too unusual?! I would expect to achieve that tool behavior even without a pen. Somehow, I can't manage it.

[markw]

This one shows the angle relative to the Pen that the head of the Knife Tool will adopt when locked to the Pen at given angles. (as viewed from above).
As the tool inherently dose not have a sense of “forwards” or “backwards”, in the examples 0° & 180° are effectively the same angle.
Likewise 90° & 270° are also effectively the same.
For the rotation to work correctly some degree of “Tilt” must be maintained by the Pen as it swings around the pivot point of the pen tip.
With a perfectly vertical pen AR doesn’t quite know what to do!
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