Skip to content

Brush system

The brush system is the Designer's painting surface. Six engines produce strokes; thirty built-in presets cover the most common looks; a Library manages your own presets and imported brushes; and the Brush Studio lets you author from scratch. The whole stack is also exposed to Python so you can extend it in code.

Brush system overview: engines, presets, Studio, Library, painting surface

The six engines

Engine Best for Built on
Round Stamp Pencil, marker, hard-edge Tight rounded nib, no texture
Airbrush Soft falloff, gradients, glow Gaussian falloff
Bristle Oil, ink, gestural Multi-tip with per-bristle paint flow
Texture Concept art, photo-based Repeating texture overlay
Pattern Decals, stamps, stickers Single non-tiled image stamped along the stroke
Wet Mix Watercolor, smudge, blend Real wet-on-wet color mixing

The full engine internals (parameters, math, performance notes) live in Engines reference.

Three ways to get a brush

  1. Library: pick a preset from the Library tour.
  2. Studio: author your own in the Brush Studio.
  3. Import: bring in .abr (Photoshop), .sut (Clip Studio), or .elybrush (native) files via the importing pages.

Where each surface lives

Surface Where What it does
Quick Wheel Hold B for 0.4 s 6-engine radial picker; quickly switch engine without leaving the canvas
Brush palette panel Bottom of the toolbox column 12 color + 12 texture slots; left-click to apply, right-click to manage. See quick-start.
Tool Properties dock Below the View Panel Engine + preset + size + opacity + dynamics for the active brush
Brush Library panel Window > Brush Library Searchable, taggable preset list with thumbnails
Brush Studio Window > Brush Studio Full editor: engine params, dynamics curves, texture pick, preview
Aether chat Cmd+/ Talk to the agent to make brushes; "give me a soft watercolor wash"

Stroke pipeline (top to bottom)

Input device (mouse / pen / touch)
  ↓
elysium.brush.engine.apply_dynamics(params, dynamics, sample)
  ↓
BrushEngine.stamp(canvas, x, y, params, color)
  ↓
Canvas DisplayList (Skia paths + textures)
  ↓
wgpu compositor → final pixels

Dynamics is where pressure, tilt, rotation, velocity, and altitude get folded into the stamp parameters. The output is a list of stamps that the engine renders.

Performance defaults

  • Round Stamp + Airbrush: ~5,000 stamps/sec on baseline GPU.
  • Bristle: ~1,500 stamps/sec (more expensive per stamp).
  • Wet Mix: ~800 stamps/sec (involves a wet-buffer read each stamp).
  • Pattern / Texture: ~2,500 stamps/sec.

These are floors. A modern discrete GPU easily 4-10x's these.

Where to next