Tutorial: Object Brush Creation for Placement and Procedural Generation of Ground Cover   

First we need to select the world in which we're going to be creating the Object Brush. For this tutorial, we'll select Land
 
Cover Map. See Fig. 1

 

Fig. 1

 

 

Once we have done this, move to an open area to practice on as in Fig. 2. This will make it easier to see your work as you
 
practice with your brush.

 

 

Fig. 2

 

 

Now lets move on to the Object Brush Creation!   You can create an object brush with many different combinations of objects by using the Asset Explorer drag-n-drop functionality. The following steps will teach you what should be done for brush creation.

 

1. In Asset Explorer, find the [Object Brushes] folder. It is a place where your brushes will be created and stored. (See Fig. 3)

 

Fig. 3

 

 

 

This is where your going to drag-n-drop your assets into your brush. 

 

2. Now, lets start building this Object Brush by going to [Objects-Particles] in the Asset Explorer. {Click} on [Objects] then on [Particles]. This will display three assets, Fire, VolumetricAcid and VolumetricFire.  Lets {Click} on Fire as seen in Fig. 4. so that we can add that asset to our Object Brush.

 

Fig. 4

 

 

3. Now you should drag-n-drop this "Fire" object on the [Object Brushes] folder.  A brush with one cluster and one object "Fire" will be created. See Fig. 5.

 

 

Fig. 5

 

 

 

4. Brushes can have more then one cluster and each cluster can have more then one item within them. It can combined in itself to produce many different combinations of clusters. And each cluster can have a different combination of items. Let’s add one more asset to our cluster in our brush. See Fig. 6.  

 

 

Fig. 6

 

 

VolumetricFire for example.  This time we'll drag-n-drop it into the folder [Clusters #0]. (See Fig. 7) This is the folder under [Object Brush] that was created when we dropped "Fire" into it. Adding this to the cluster and coincidentally our brush, will give the brush a more “colored” look.

Fig. 7

 

 

5. And the last asset for our brush will be a small tree. It can be found by going to [Objects] and finding the [Environment] folder and {Clicking} it. You will see three assets in this folder. "Bigtree1.mesh", "mediumtree1.mesh" and "smalltree1.mesh". {Click} on "smalltree1.mesh" as seen in Fig. 8.

 

 

Fig. 8

 

 

 

Once you have "smalltree1.mesh" selected, drag-n-drop it also into the folder [Clusters #0]. (See Fig. 9)

 

 

Fig. 9

 

 

Now we have created a simple brush with one cluster that contains three assets.  Let set count of "Fire" to more than 1. 

To do this, {Click} "Fire" in the [Clusters #0] folder as seen in Fig. 10.

 

 

Fig. 10

 

 

 

Once we have done that, then we will go to the [Object Editor] and expand the [Cluster Item] folder as we did in Fig. 11.

 

 

Fig. 11

 

Make sure the “Count” value field is set to 3.
 

Now {Click} on the [Range] expansion button [+] and set the Max Range value to "4" and the Min Range value to "2" then {Press} [Tab]. This will finish up the Range values for the asset as we see in Fig. 12.

 

 

Fig. 12

 

 

 

6. And finally, we get to rename [Object Brush] to "Tree”. This will make it easier to find and use once you have made more brushes. In Fig. 13, you'll see that we've selected [Object Brush] to be able to change the name.

 

 

Fig. 13

 

 

Ok, now we type then name [Tree] to rename our [Object Brush]. This can be viewed in Fig. 14.

 

Fig. 14

 

 

 

Ok, now lets paint with our new [Tree].  {Click} on our brush node [Tree] and then {Click} on the scene. As you can see in Fig. 15 we have placed assets according to our newly created [Object Brush] settings.

 

 

Fig. 15

 

 

 

Now {Click} a couple more times. You'll begin to see your scene develop like ours did in Fig. 16.

 

 

Fig. 16

 

 

We can now see that our [Object Brush] that we created is working nicely. Not only can you paint by just {Clicking} onto your scene, you can paint it in by holding the Left Mouse button down and moving the cursor in the scene by dragging the Mouse in any direction, just like a brush painting.  You can see the terrain fill with your assets in Fig. 17.

 

 

 

Fig. 17

 

 

That's all there is to it! So, you can see that it is a very simple operation to create a variety of brushes to populate your scene. Experiment and Enjoy!