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[silentStatic]

This is the development thread for the "Magical Paintbrush" (or Multibrush as I prefer to call it).

The purpose of the brush is to allow the user to paint down multiple textures, in any order, together with colour and grass in one click.

In more detail it allows you to:

Nwvault entry:

•  Paint up to 8 textures (with individual coverage and pressure). 6 of the textures can be unique.
• Paint Grass (up to 3 styles) with its own density and coverage
•  Paint Colour with its own pressure and coverage
• Save your brush settings for a later time
• Eye drop tool to determine which textures a tile uses.

I am currently in the process of making it possible to draw polygons, and have these filled with the texture/colour/grass selection. It seems to work ok, but there are still a few bugs that need to be ironed out.

The entire project is Open-Source, so if you feel that you can contribute in any way (say, finding a better way to describe the tool, write code, create a logo, come with constructive criticism), then you are more than welcome.

The tool was original thought up by Banshe (who frequents these boards), has been mainly written by me (I used the handle "Night Stalker" on the old forum).

Links:
The original thread for the plug-in can be found here.
The plug-in's Nwvault page can be found here.
The direct link to the latest (bleeding edge) version of the plug-in can be found here, or in my signature.

[PJ156]

Promised Banshe I would give this a go and this has reminded me. Thanks for taking the time to create this silentStatic. I will try to give this a go this evening.



PJ

[NWN DM]

An excellent, time saving plug-in for any builder. Highly recommended.

[Banshe]

As promised, here are some thoughts on the contest to promote the Multibrush. The one thing I can't figure out is the prize so suggestions are welcome.



The Contest:



Goal: To create as many quality multibrushes as possible.



I have been giving this a lot of thought and if we can meet this goal, then we can consider the contest a success. However, we have to balance quantity with quality. Neither too few great brushes nor a flood of mediocre brushes would be ideal.



So this is what I think we should do:



Create a point system and award top prize to the man or woman with the most points.



I have a list of terrain types. Some are common (rural farmland) and others more obscure (lava pits and cloudscapes). I can split this list into two groups – the common and the uncommon terrains. “Common” terrains are worth 10 points and “uncommon” terrains are worth 5 points.



Grade every brush with a value from 1-10 points. Remove any submissions with a point value below 5. This is to discourage someone spending 5 minutes on a brush and submitting 20 of them.



Submissions are restricted so that one could make up to 5 “common” terrains but then must make at least 3 “uncommon” terrains before making any more “common” terrains. So, for every 8 terrains someone makes, a max of 5 would be “common”. This is so that there are more “common” terrains being created but not exclusively weighted towards “common” terrains. There are some “uncommon” terrains being made too.



If you do the math, one would get 16-20 points for every common terrain and 11-15 for every “uncommon” terrain made. With no limit on the number of brushes that can be made, the quantity of brushes submitted can be quite high. There is also the texture count (see below).



Each submission would include the brush (they are exportable in the Multibrush), a screenshot and the name of the terrain type that the brush is for. The reason for the screenshot is to give the judges a vague idea of what the brush looks like but is not the basis for judging as the area can be touched up (improved) beyond the abilities of the brush.



For judging, the actual brush should be used/dragged across an area.



Each brush should use a minimum of 2 textures but artists should be encouraged to use as few textures as possible. The reason for this is so that more than one multibrush can be used in a metatile (each metatile can have a maximum of six separate textures in it). For instance, if you have farmland with a road going through it, both brushes (farmland and road) together can’t equal more than six textures. So if the brush has 6 textures, you get no extra points. If it has 5 textures, you get one point. For 4 textures, two points and so on down to two textures (the minimum).



There can be multiple judges. Each one can award each brush 1-10 points and the values are added together.





That is the idea. I should also point out that brushes that do indicate that some level of effort has been put into them would generally get above a 6 in score and therefore not be eliminated from the contest. This is so that even mediocre artists that are at the same skill level as me can stand a chance. It levels the playing field between those with great talent and those with lesser talent.



End Result: No matter what happens in the contest, all entries can be compiled into a pack put on the vault for everyone to use. This should be made clear to all entrants that their brushes will be put on the vault (with due credit). However, I would not want to see people withdrawing permission to post their submissions because they did not win or for another reason. If something unfortunate like that was to happen, it could undo the whole purpose of the contest: to create brushes for the multibrush to be used by the community. So perhaps a condition of the contest would be that these brushes are to become the property of the community. In essence, contest submissions are donations to the community.

[Banshe]

PJ156 wrote...

Promised Banshe I would give this a go and this has reminded me. Thanks for taking the time to create this silentStatic. I will try to give this a go this evening.

PJ

Thanks.

[dunniteowl]

This is a great idea and I have long championed this plugin. It has had its fits and starts, though I can say with a fair amount of certainty that, along with (in my personal estimation) Tanita's Watermill, TerraCoppa, the PowerBar and GrinningFool's Creature Creator, the Multibrush stands amongst them as a real boon to building. Anything that makes it easier to build, still maintain a decent quality rating (visually) and speeds up the process is always welcome.

As to the contest, I am thinking about that, though I don't know what I can recommend. I like limiting the number of total entries per person to some manageable number. Say, 12 Common and 6 Uncommon max, otherwise it could get kind of lopsided when judging. It would be unfair in any sense of the word if one person submitted like 30 Common and 20 Uncommon texture settings and the next person in line only did half that. So a total entry limit is probably a good idea.

In any case, I am definitely adding this to my "things I have to do" list and will be playing with this more in the weeks to come. In the meantime, anyone with any creative ideas about what can be done as to an award or prize for the winner, please feel free to PM either Banshe, SilentStatic or myself. Please don't post prize suggestions in the thread as it will derail the intent behind posting this topic to get people interested in using the Multibrush.

best regards,

dunniteowl

[silentStatic]

New version out, it can be found through my signature:

* The Polygon tool should now be feature complete, though there are a few remaining bugs I might have to look into (and I need to write documentation for it).

* I have improved the precision of the basic multibrush, and I now allow the rounds to be set down to 1, giving you 100% precision, at the cost of less blend.



Unless there are any objections I will now look into:

* Improve multibrush precision

* Write polygon tool documentation

* remove Polygon tool bug

[dunniteowl]

Very Cool, thank you for being bored and wanting a challenge.

dno

[Banshe]

Excellent! I'll check it out!

By the way, did you ever find out what was causing the crash when you close the toolset?

Modifié par Banshe, 01 septembre 2010 - 06:54 .

[silentStatic]

Banshe wrote...

Excellent! I'll check it out!

By the way, did you ever find out what was causing the crash when you close the toolset?

No, I was never able to reproduce it, without having any non obsidian plug-ins installed. However, it always crashes with the Console plug-in installed, and I have been unable to find out why.

[Banshe]

Hmm...



The only plugin I have installed is the Multibrush.

[PJ156]

It crashed me a couple of times as well but without damaging the file.



Does it help to switch it off before exiting. I did not try that.



Going to try the Polygon tool tonight or tommorow time permiting.



PJ

[silentStatic]

New version out: Improved the way that the polygon tool is used - vertices are now marked with waypoints with a veriy specific tag.

I have updated the documentation, take a look: http://jump.fm/WEMJK

There are some clear problems with the code that decomposes the figure in to triangles (which is needed in the current solution) - I'll take a look at that next.

Modifié par silentStatic, 01 septembre 2010 - 10:53 .