• Introduction
• UpStage v3
• Introduction
• UpStage Team
• Technical Information
• How to Help UpStage
• Audience
• Audience View
• Audience Chat
• Audience Interactivity
• Players
• Logging In
• Player Profile
• Player View
• On-stage Player Tools
• Avatar Tools
• Audio Palette
• Drawing Palette
• Speech and Text Chat
• / Commands
• Media Management
• The Workshop Interface
• Creating and Editing Players
• Creating and Editing Stages
• Uploading Media
• Browse Media
• Edit Media
• Creating Media
• Creating Graphics for UpStage
• Creating Audio for UpStage
• Streaming
• Introduction to streaming
• Video tutorial
• Sending a stream
• Red5 Publisher interface
• FMLE
• VLC (Linux)
• Creating a stream avatar
• Prerecorded streams
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Text2Speech Voices
• Troubleshooting

Drawing Palette

Clicking on the draw button in the tool palette reveals a different set of tools – the drawing palette. You can be still holding an avatar while you are drawing and can speak, but you won’t be able to move your avatar on stage, because your cursor is now your paintbrush. Click the act button to return to the tool palette so that you can operate your avatar again.

Layers 

Drawing allows you to draw directly onto the stage, in one of four layers; the layers correspond to the four boxes on the right hand side of the drawing palette. Click on the red pencil icon to select a layer to draw in. The black border shows which layer you have selected; a pale blue border indicates that another player is holding that layer. In this example (left) you are holding the top layer, which has the black border around it, and another player is holding the layer beneath, which shows a pale blue border. If you select a layer with a blue border, you will "steal" it from the other player.

The top box will draw in the top layer, over the top of any avatars. The next two layers let you draw in amongst the avatar layers, and the bottom layer draws behind the backdrop (so when a backdrop is placed on the stage, the drawing will be hidden). 

Tools

Click the eye icon to hide or show your drawing. Click clear to erase all the drawing from that layer. Note that it is currently not possible to erase only part of the drawing in a layer. 

The slider in the layer box controls the transparency of what has already been drawn in that layer: move it to the left and the drawing in that layer will become more transparent; move it all the way to the left and it will vanish completely. This is useful for fading a prepared drawing in and out, for example to create a "curtain" effect that covers the whole stage then is faded out to indicate the start of a scene. 

The colour picker at the top has three sliders, letting you adjust the colour of what you’re about to draw. Move the sliders to change the hue, and the new colour appears in the square to the left of the sliders. The small squares below the colour picker sliders show your last used colours, which is useful is you what to repeat the same colours in several drawings as you can simply click on the small square to draw with that colour.

The slider immediately below the colour picker controls the transparency of what you are ABOUT to draw, that is you can draw in percentages of transparency on the same layer (use the slider in the layer box to change the transparency of something AFTER you have drawn it).

The circle and slider below the transparency slider control the size of your brush. Move the slider to the right and the circle will increase in size, indicating how big it will appear on stage. Move it to the left to make it smaller. 

Currently it is not possible to erase, other than to clear everything in a particular layer. If you are trying to draw a curved line and find that it appears as sections of straight lines, you are moving your mouse faster than UpStage can keep up with; try drawing slowly for smoother curves. 

If you want to draw a completely straight line, hold the shift key down while you click at the beginning and the end of the line.

Attaching a drawing to your avatar

A new feature in UpStage v3 is the ability to attach a drawing to your avatar. This means that the drawing will move with the avatar, so for example if you have drawn a hat for your avatar, it can stay on the avatar's head when it moves to another place on the stage. Or, if you are using an invisible avatar, a drawing can move around the stage by itself.

To create a drawing attached to an avatar, right-click on the avatar and select "Draw on avatar". You can then adjust the colour, transparency and size in the drawing palette. (need some more info here about how it works, e.g. can you only draw on an avatar that you are holding yourself?)

To remove the drawing, open the right-click menu again and select ...

What happens to the drawing when you drop the avatar?