Overview
The Colour Map allows you to paint colours onto the terrain of a custom map, adding tinting and colour variation to the ground.
This tool can be useful for creating blood-soaked ground, areas of scorched earth, slime-covered rocks, and hundreds of other effects
This guide covers what the colour map tool is, how to use it, and what it's unique settings do.
Opening the Colour Map Tools
To open the Colour Map tools, press the Select Colour Map icon in the Main Toolbar.
The Painter tool will then appear keyed to the Colour Map brush options.
Using the Painter Tool
The Colour Map functions similarly to most other Painter tools, with a few unique settings.
The tool operates on the standard dual Left Mouse Button and Right Mouse Button brushes, which can each be keyed to a different colour or brush type.
Painter Tool Brushes
The Colour Map brush has four modes, each with a unique function.
These modes are:
- Feather Tip Brush
- Textured Tip Brush
- Flood Fill
- Sample
Feather Tip Brush
A brush with a strong blend in the center and a soft fall-off around the edges.
Textured Tip Brush
Allows you to upload a texture to shape the brush.
Flood Fill
Fills a previously coloured area with a different colour.
Sample
Samples the selected colour for use with the Feather Tip Brush.
Brush Settings
While the Colour Map painter shares many settings with other painting tools, it possesses a number of unique settings that focus around controlling and blending its colour palette.
Blend: Functionality not supported in this version of the editor.
Colour: Controls the paint colour keyed to the brush. Includes a manual colour wheel as well as controls for inputting hexadecimal colour codes and an Alpha control for opacity.
Feather: Controls the soft fall off of the brush edges.
Mode: Allows you a choice of blending methods. These modes are similar to the settings of Photoshop and are described in detail below.
- Normal: Standard paint mode. Paints each pixel to match the chosen color. Degrees of opacity can be applied if desired.
- Blend: Blends colours up to white. For example, green painted onto red produces yellow. Black does not blend with other colours.
- Add: Identifies at the color information in each channel and brightens the base color to reflect the blend color by increasing the brightness. Blending with black produces no change.
- Subtract: References the color information in each channel and subtracts the blend color from the base color.
- Multiply: References the color information in each channel and multiplies the base color by the blend color. The resulting color is always darker than the original color. Multiplying any color with black produces black. Multiplying any color with white leaves the color unchanged. When painting with a color other than black or white, successive strokes with a painting tool will produce progressively darker colors.
- Darken: References the color information in each channel and selects the base or blend color (whichever is darker) as the result color. Pixels lighter than the blend color are replaced, and pixels darker than the blend color do not change.
- Lighten: References the color information in each channel and selects the base or blend color (whichever is lighter) as the result color. Pixels darker than the blend color are replaced, and pixels lighter than the blend color do not change.
- Screen: References each channel’s color information and multiplies the inverse of the blend and base colors. The result color is a lighter color. Screening with black leaves the color unchanged. Screening with white produces white. The effect is similar to projecting multiple photographic slides on top of each other.
Shape: Allows you to control the shape of the brush from either a circle or square.
Size: Adjusts the brush size.
Lock: Allows you to lock out various parts RGBA parameters, preventing the brush from modifying those colour parameters. For example, checking "Lock A" will allow you to change the colour but leave the alpha transparency channel unchanged.
- Lock A: Locks the Alpha setting, which controls opacity.
- Lock B: Locks the Blue spectrum.
- Lock G: Locks the Green spectrum.
- Lock R: Locks the Red spectrum.
Alpha Setting Zero
The Alpha setting controls the transparency of a color brush.
When set to zero, the Alpha setting will erase the ground texture completely, revealing the empty grid beneath. This will prevent units from being able to pass on top of this terrain.
