The tilemap brush editor
This editor is used to create, edit and delete auto-tiling brushes for use with the Tilemap Bar.
Currently there are two types of brushes supported and they both work with the auto tiling tool: a 16 tile brush and a 47 tile brush. One of each of these brushes is created by default with each instance of the Tilemap plugin. The default brushes are setup to work correctly with the default tilemap image.
Using the tilemap brush editor
Here is a short summary on how to create, edit and use an auto tiling brush.
Open the editor
Click the Edit brushes option from the dropdown menu of the auto tiling tool button in the Tilemap Bar toolbar.
Create (or edit) a brush
Click the Add option from the editor's toolbar.
If you don't need to create a new brush, one of the existing ones can be picked from the first dropdown in the editor's toolbar.
Make changes to an auto tiling brush
In order to properly set up an auto tiling brush, you will need to choose which tiles of the tileset will go in each position of the template. To do that, click on the tile you want to change in the template (left pane). If this is a new brush it's best to start with the top left tile. After clicking the template tile, it will become highlighted. Then choose the tile from the tileset (right pane) that will go in that position.
After doing that, the selected tile will be assigned to that position and the next tile in the template will be highlighted. From here, all that needs to be done is to repeat the process until all the tiles in the template have a value assigned to them.
After you are done you can use the "Toggle tiles" button in the toolbar to quickly review what tiles have been assigned to each position of the template.
| Neutral Template Tiles |
Assigned Template Tiles |
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Using an auto tiling brush
Click the brush you want to use from the dropdown menu of the auto tiling tool button in the Tilemap Bar toolbar.
Make sure the auto tiling tool is activated (by clicking the main part of the button) and start drawing on the tilemap instance as you would with any other tilemap tool.
Interface
This dialog is separated into 5 different panes which are described below.
Panes
- Template: located in the top left, this pane shows the template of the brush being edited. Its purpose is to select the tile of the template to be modified. Clicking on a template tile will update the Current tile, Assigned tiles and Tile properties panes. The template shown will change depending on the type of the current brush.
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- Tileset: located in the top right, this pane shows the tiles being used by the tilemap object type. Its purpose is to select tiles to assign to the currently selected template tile. Just selecting a tile from here will assign it to the current template tile and move to the next. If you bring up the context menu of a tile (e.g. by right-clicking), it is possible to assign multiple tiles to the same template tile. The use of this feature is discussed later.
- Current tile: located in the bottom left, this pane shows the current template tile. It is only a visual aid and serves no other purpose.
- Assigned tiles: located in between the Current tile and Tile properties panes, this pane shows all the tiles assigned to a template tile. Selecting a tile from the list will update the Tile properties panes with the appropriate values. From this pane it is possible to remove an assigned tile using a context menu option.
- Tile properties: located in the bottom right, this pane shows the properties of the currently selected tile in the Assigned tiles pane. Tile properties are the following:
- Probability: in the case there is more than one tile assigned to a template position, the auto tiling tool will pick one of the available tiles at random. This value dictates the probability of a tile being picked over the others.
Toolbar
From left to right these are all the tools in the main toolbar.
- Brush: dropdown to select a brush to edit from the existing ones.
- Options: the button next to the brush dropdown, has three basic options to manage brushes: Add, Rename and Delete.
- Type: change the type of the current brush. Currently two types are supported: Auto 16 and Auto 47. Changing this setting will update the contents of the Template pane.
- Tiles toggle: this is a visual aid to quickly see the first tile assigned to each template tile. If a template tile has nothing assigned, the toggle will make no changes.
- Background toggle: change the background color of the Template and Tileset panes between a light and dark color.
- Zoom in: zoom in the Template and Tileset panes.
- Zoom out: zoom out the Template and Tileset panes.
- Zoom reset: reset the zoom of the Template and Tileset panes.
Context Menus
- Template pane
- Zoom in
- Zoom out
- Zoom reset
- Help
- Tileset pane
- Add tile: Add an additional tile to be used in a template position in addition to the first one. Multiple tiles might be added and will be visible in the Assigned tiles pane
- Zoom in
- Zoom out
- Zoom reset
- Help
- Assigned tiles pane
- Remove Tile: Remove the selected tile from the list of tiles available to the corresponding template tile.
- Help
Using multiple tiles on a template position
As mentioned earlier, it is possible to assign multiple tiles to a template position. The result of this is that for the positions where multiple tiles have been chosen, the auto tiling tool will pick one of them at random when needed. This is useful to create more varied tilemap layouts without having to manually edit tiles one at a time.
The following image shows how would you add an additional tile to the selected template position.
Next you can see how the editor would look like after adding multiple tiles to the same template position.
Using the Probability property of each tile, found in the Tile properties pane, it is possible to adjust which of the tiles is more or less likely to be chosen by the tool. Keep in mind that all tiles with the same probability value will have the same chance of being chosen. For example, two tiles with 100% probability results in each tile having 50% chance of being chosen when using the auto tiling tool.