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Brush quick start

Three minutes from a fresh project to a confident first stroke.

Activate the Brush

  1. New project: File > New Skin, name "Brush Practice".
  2. Drop a placement to paint on: File > Import > Image and pick any PNG, or drag a rectangle with the Rectangle tool (M) so there is a placement to paint on. The brush paints into the selected placement's mask layer.
  3. Press B to activate Brush. The cursor changes to a circular nib showing the current size.

Make a stroke

Drag across the canvas. With the default preset (Round Stamp, 20 px, full opacity, white), you should see a clean line follow the cursor.

Switch engines instantly

Hold B for ~0.4 seconds without releasing. The Quick Wheel pops up around the cursor with six pie slices, one per engine. Mouse to the slice you want and release.

Slice (clockwise from 12) Engine
Up Round Stamp
Up-right Airbrush
Down-right Texture
Down Pattern
Down-left Bristle
Up-left Wet Mix

The Quick Wheel never blocks: keep dragging mid-stroke without it, or hold B deliberately to invoke it.

Common adjustments

The Tool Properties dock under the View Panel shows the brush's live options:

Slider Default Hotkey
Size 20 px [ smaller / ] larger
Opacity 1.0 Shift+[ / ]
Hardness (Round Stamp only) 0.8 Ctrl+[ / ]
Spacing 0.25 (no hotkey, drag the slider)
Smoothing 0.4 (Properties dock)

Hold Alt + click to sample a color from anywhere on the canvas; the brush color updates. (The Eyedrop tool (I) is the full-power version when you need swatch-tile or N×N samples.)

Erase

Press Shift+B to swap to the Erase tool. Same controls as Brush, just inverted: removes from the mask instead of adding to it. Shift+B again toggles back.

Pick a preset

The Quick Wheel switches engine. To switch the full preset (engine + parameters + dynamics + texture), open Window > Brush Library. Click any thumbnail to apply. Continue painting with the new preset live.

The 30 built-in presets are grouped by family. The Library tour walks through them.

The brush palette panel

The bottom of the toolbox column hosts a compact brush palette: one strip of 12 generic slots. Each slot can hold a color, a texture, or be empty.

Brush Palette
[active preview][Clear]
[■][▦][+][+]
[+][+][+][+]
[+][+][+][+]

The palette is never changed without your explicit confirmation. Every click opens a menu. You always see what is going into each square before it is saved.

Click behavior

Click What happens
Left-click any slot Opens the Color menu popover
Right-click any slot Opens the Texture menu popover

Both menus include:

  • A way to pick a new value (color picker for the Color menu, tile picker for the Texture menu).
  • Apply to brush when the slot already holds a value of that kind (uses the slot's content as the active brush).
  • Clear this square when the slot holds anything (wipes the slot).
  • Cancel (closes the menu without changes; Esc or outside-click also dismisses).

Nothing fills automatically. If you cancel a file dialog or close the picker, the slot stays exactly as it was.

Color menu

Left-click a slot to open it:

  1. Pick color… opens the framework's color picker (wheel + hex
  2. alpha). Confirming the picker writes the color to the slot and applies it as the active brush color.
  3. Apply to brush (only when the slot already holds a color) sets the active brush color without re-opening the picker.
  4. Clear this square wipes the slot.
  5. Cancel closes the menu.

Texture menu

Right-click a slot to open it. The headline action is capture from the canvas the same gesture Maya's Artisan and Blender's Texture Paint use for "I want this region as a brush stamp". The menu is sectioned so the workflow is clear at a glance:

Primary actions (top of the menu)

  1. Capture from an Image placement… switches to the Eyedrop tool with the slot armed. Drag a rectangle over an Image placement on the canvas; on release the slurped tile fills the slot AND becomes the active brush stamp. Press Esc to cancel.
  2. Import from file… opens the OS file picker. If you confirm a file it is copied into the texture library, written to the slot, and applied. If you cancel, the slot is unchanged.
  3. Generate via Aether prompt… opens the Aether chat with a pre-filled prompt and remembers your slot. When the agent registers a tile via brush.add_to_palette, it lands in your slot.

Saved tiles (secondary section)

When you have previously captured / imported / generated tiles, the menu shows a labeled "Saved tiles › click to reuse" grid of thumbnails. Click any thumbnail to write that tile into the slot and apply it. This section is hidden when there are no saved tiles the menu is never just a wall of unlabeled squares.

  • Apply to brush (when the slot holds a texture).
  • Clear this square (when the slot holds anything; tinted red).
  • Cancel (or press Esc).

Why this shape (no auto-fills)

The earlier design auto-filled an empty slot with the next unused library entry if you cancelled a file dialog. That was wrong. Every slot change now comes from an explicit user gesture. If a popover is dismissed without a selection, the slot stays empty.

The single-strip model (no separate "colors strip" and "textures strip") is closer to how Procreate, Krita, and Photoshop treat swatches: a slot is a slot is a slot; what kind of value it holds is a property of the slot, not a property of which row it lives in.

Persistence

Palette slots persist between launches in your user preferences file under the brush_palette_slots key. Slots from the previous dual-strip build migrate automatically on first load.

If you want the full preset catalog (engine + dynamics + thumbnails in addition to bare swatches), use Window > Brush Library instead. The palette panel is for fast access; the Library is for browse and discover.

Save your tweaks as a preset

After dialing in a brush you like (engine + size + opacity + dynamics), press Save current as preset… at the top of the Brush Library panel. Name it; it appears in My Presets.

Tablet and pen

If a tablet is connected the Designer auto-maps:

Channel Default mapping
Pressure Size (0 → 0.1×, 1.0 → 1.0×)
Tilt Rotation (Bristle, Pattern)
Velocity Opacity attack

The full mapping table is in Touch and dynamics.

What you painted into

The brush writes into the selected placement's mask layer (one mask per placement). The mask is stored alongside the placement in the .esk bundle's textures/ folder when you export, so brushwork travels with the skin.

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