Overview
The Painter Tool is a universal tool used to paint several different types of textures or effects onto a map.
The tool functions slightly differently depending on what you are painting onto the map, and is used to paint several things, including:
- Terrain Deform Effects
- Ground Textures
- Water Effects
- Grass
- Impasse Areas
- Metadata Areas
Dual Buttons
The Painter Tool features a dual two-button design, with one brush keyed to the Left Mouse Button and the other keyed to the Right Mouse Button.
This allows you to quickly and easily switch between two different painted effects.
Common uses of this two-button system are:
- Painting with the left button and erasing with the right button.
- Blending two different types of ground textures, terrain deforms, grasses, or water effects.
- Painting the same ground texture, terrain deform, grass, or water effect with two differently shaped or sized brushes.
Opening the Painter Tool
To open the Painter Tool, go to the Main Menu and navigate to Scenario > Painter.
The Painter Tool will also open automatically when opening most tools in the main toolbar, including:
- Height Map
- Audio Region
- Camera Mesh
- Colour Map
- Grass
- Impasse Map
- Interactivity Map
- Tiles
- Metadata Map
- Snow Depth Map (disabled)
- Territory Map
- Water Height Map
- Water Flow Map
- Water Tiles
Universal Painter Tool Features
While the painter tool has a wide variety of specific functions depending on what version of the tool you are using, there are a number of universal behaviors common to all or most versions of the painter.
This section covers these universal brush functions.
Blend
The Blend setting controls the opacity of the brush.
The opacity of the brush is a value between 0 and 1, with higher values increasing opacity and lower values decreasing it.
- Lower opacity can be useful to create soft borders of an area and to blend the brush.
- Higher opacity is useful for quickly creating dense areas.
Strength and Gusto
Similar to Blend, the Strength and Gusto settings act as a multiplier for the brush, causing the effect to be either either subtle or strong.
- Strength controls the magnitude and speed with which the brush's effect is applied and can be a be any value between 0 and 100.
- Gusto is a power multiplier that controls the magnitude of the effect and can be a value between 0 and 1. Higher values cause more extreme effects, with lower values causing less extreme ones.
Feather
A Feather effect of a brush has an adjustable soft fall off near the edge of the brush, creating a softer transition from what is being painted.
When selected, a feathered brush will show an outer circle representing the overall brush size and an inner circle showing where the feather effect begins.
The feathered effect is a value between 0 and 1, with higher values having a larger feathered area and lower values having a smaller feathered area.
Size
The Size setting allows you to adjust the size of the brush.
You can press Ctrl + Mouse Wheel to quickly adjust the size of any brush.
Shape
Some brushes allow you to have a square shape, as well as circle.
- Circle brushes are the "default" all-purpose brush and are ideal for making more natural looking textures and areas.
- Square brushes are ideal for making more artificial looking textures and getting a more precise edge or border on an effect.
Mode
Several tools have a Mode setting, allowing you to choose how the tool functions. Different tolls will show different sets of Mode options.
Details for the exact effects of these modes are included in the specific guide for that tool, but most mode effects resemble these below:
- Additive: Adds the chosen effect to the area.
- Subtractive: Subtracts the chosen effect from the area.
- Flatten: Makes other areas uniform with a selected area.
- Roughen: Adds random noise to the effect.
- Smoothen: Removes noise from the effect.
- Normal: This mode works in conjunction with Strength, and sets Strength value as the limit of the brush's effect. For example, choosing Normal mode with a Strength to set to 0.5 results in limiting the brush being only able to paint up to 0.5 Strength and no higher.
- Blend: Blends the brush contents with the current background.
- Add: Adds the brush's effect with no upper cap.
- Subtract: Deletes the brush's effect. Works as an eraser.
- Multiply: Removes the selected tile and uniformly distributes its amount to the other tiles.
Texture
Some tools allow for a Textured Tipped brush that allows you to apply a texture pattern to the brush to create a custom effect shape.
This texture can be derived from any back and white image that contains a clear pattern.
Images can be created in MS paint or a similar program, or with any pre-existing black and white image that has a distinct pattern.
You can load this texture through the Texture field to set it to the brush.
The paintbrush will apply the brush effect in the shape of the image's pattern, painting terrain, grass, or other effects with this custom texture.
