Arttista’s Freeze Textures is a tool specifically designed to freeze the amount of textures used to draw a line or outline.

To understand its importance, you need to understand how Arttista handles textures on a daily basis.

The Problem: Default Texture Behavior

When you draw a textured line using the pen, brush, or eraser tools, Arttista doesn’t just keep a static stretched image. Every time the points of that line move, the geometry is redrawn and the software automatically recalculates the amount of textures needed for the stroke to always maintain excellent visual quality and consistent density.

• In Static Illustration: This behavior is excellent because if you stretch a line, Arttista adds more textures so the stroke doesn’t lose quality.
• In Animation: Since distances between points change every frame, this constant recalculation causes the texture density to shift throughout the motion. This creates an unwanted visual artifact where the texture appears to “breathe,” “pulse,” or “jitter” as the character moves.

The Solution: How Freeze Textures Fixes This

When you apply Freeze Textures, you tell Arttista to stop recalculating density. The texture count becomes locked. Even if the points move closer together or farther apart during animation, the texture stretches or compresses organically and uniformly, remaining stable and consistent from start to finish.

⊕ The Zoom and Scale “Trick”

The freezing calculation is extremely sensitive to the zoom level on your screen at the exact moment you activate the tool: * If you freeze the texture while zoomed far out, the line might end up with too few textures. * If you notice that the frozen line lacks definition, the correct workflow is: undo the operation, zoom in closer to view the drawing larger, and apply Freeze Textures again. Arttista will use this larger scale as a reference and freeze a much higher texture resolution.

How to Use Freeze Textures in Practice

1. Select the points of your illustration or character that contain the textured line.
2. Activate the tool in one of two ways:
   • Via Keyboard: Press the shortcut Ctrl + P.
   • Via Interface: Click the Freeze Textures button (represented by a chain icon) on the top toolbar.
3. How to verify it worked: Arttista changes the appearance of the points on the canvas. Whenever a point has its texture frozen, a small chain link symbol appears next to it.

★ When is it recommended?

You should use Freeze Textures on textured elements that scale or deform along the timeline, such as: * Character hair and fur. * Outlines created with texture brushes. * Clothing and stretching details. * Objects that scale up or down on screen.