Post by sodedromme in Brush Manager Pro For Aseprite comments

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hello. i'm really sorry, i'm very sick with a virus right now and can't get to my pc. so if you don't mind, i'll try to answer your questions step by step in text for now.

- - - - 1. about Palette Generator:

the main feature here is that it works like a "gradient map" in photoshop or clip studio paint, but specifically for your brushes.

let's say you have a multi-colored brush (you can use the built-in ones as an example). if you enable "Gradient Map" in the plugin settings, your brush will be dynamically repainted using the colors from the generator.

to get those colors, you first need a base. click "Get From Palette" (takes colors from your standard aseprite palette) or "Get Brush Colors" (extracts colors from the active brush). the plugin will generate mathematical variations in the rows below (Shade, Saturation, Hue).

so you can use it to instantly remap your multi-colored brushes on the fly, or you can just use it as a convenient color picker for your art - left-click a generated square to set your Foreground color, or right-click for Background color.

- - - - 2. about live preview for brush size:

the thing is, aseprite only shows the brush outline when your mouse cursor is actually hovering over the canvas. when you click buttons or drag sliders inside the plugin window, your mouse is outside the canvas, so aseprite hides the preview.

to see the size changing live, just move your cursor over the canvas and use standard aseprite hotkeys to change brush size (usually "+" and "-" keys on your keyboard, or holding alt + mouse drag). the custom brush will scale and you will see the preview updating in real time.

if this is still a bit confusing, please let me know. i will record some short video gifs to show how it works as soon as my fever drops and i can sit at my computer...

LuxSolace1 day ago

No need to apologise, I hope you'll feel better soon ! Thank you for your answer, it's indeed a little bit clearer. For the palette generator, I get the following error when using "Get Brush Color" :

/home/user/.config/aseprite/extensions/brush-manager-pro/brush_ui.lua:978: attempt to call a nil value (field 'UpdateToolsRandColor')

And for the live preview, + and - do work, but not alt + mouse drag. I think it's a limitation of aseprite itself tho (since the custom brush has to be scaled by x2, x4 and so on...), so nothing to do about it.

Anyway, I feel like your tool would greatly benefit from a documentation or tutorial of sort. It's obvious you worked really hard on it and that it has a lot of useful features, so much in fact it can be quite overwhelming in the beginning. I've spent ten minutes trying to understand why Tools > Random Modes > Color did nothing before understanding you first have to set the color range in Settings > Color Jitter > Hue/Sat. It's very logical in itself but having the option and its setting in two different windows can be confusing (especially with different names, random color vs color jitter). If you need a stupid idiot to look for other confusing stuff of the sort, I happen to be one and can gladly give out feedback.

Anyway, it's nothing urgent so please take care of yourself first.

(Also, I really love your profile picture. Do you post your art somewhere ?)

sodedromme1 day ago

tysm for understanding and for the detailed crash log. i already found that bug - it was just one forgotten line of code from the old version that i missed during the refactoring. i couldn't help myself and just pushed a hotfix (v0.9.7.1) right now to fix it!

you are absolutely right about the alt + drag limitation. aseprite's engine doesn't allow smooth scaling for custom image brushes, so i had to make those manual buttons for fractional scaling. there is nothing we can do about it sadly.

and your feedback about the random modes ui was so good that i decided to implement it right away instead of waiting. now if you check any random mode (Color, Size, Alpha, or Offset) and its values are currently at zero, the plugin automatically sets a small default value so you see the effect immediately. i also renamed the tab to "Random Settings" and added a note at the top so it's much clearer.

(btw, i also added French localization in this hotfix too! xd)

and yes please, i would absolutely love your feedback on any other confusing stuff or bugs! since none of my friends wanted to help with testing, i had to release the plugin blindly. aseprite is very unpredictable, you delete one function and forget one line and everything crashes haha, so having someone to point out these things is a lifesaver.

as for my art, thank you! (˶˃ᆺ˂˶) sadly i don't draw much right now. dealing with health issues, depression, and focusing mostly on coding/studies to survive financially, so my art is on a long pause (i only have an abandoned telegram channel). but it really means a lot to hear that you like my profile picture.

you really made my day •⩊•

LuxSolace20 hours ago

Thank you for the update ! I've played with the hotfix a bit, here's some more feedback.

BUG

Error when doing : File > Settings > Multi-Layer Brush : brush_ui:lua:278: attempt to call a nil value (field 'clearCurrentCache')

Translation

(I'm a french native speaker so I looked up the translation as well !)

Fichier > Nettoyage -> Effacer les récents / I'd say "Effacer pinceaux récents" might be a tad clearer
Not sure if it's intended, but the tab name are still in english. Such as File > Library / Settings or Tools > Transform.

Feedback

Maybe add somewhere that Smart Color has to be activated for the color random mode to properly work. Otherwise, the brush color keep being changed to black.
Tools > FX > Link / maybe change "Link" for "Link W with H" for some more context
I'm not sure I understand what Keep Grid in Tools > FX > Coverage does.
Purely UX but it would be nice if you could also type your values into range such as the one in "Coverage". Something like left click let your drag and right click let you type. But it might be hard to implement into Aseprite...
Btw is there a reason some value cannot be used for coverage ? For example, I'm using the dither_brick_horizontal_trans_04 from your paid brushes pack. It's, by default, 12x12, but I cannot use a W of 24, 25... I cannot use 30 either, which would change the props size into 42x12.

I hope your situation improve and that you can pick up drawing again, you really seem to be skilled from what I saw of your work !

sodedromme15 hours ago

thanks again for the detailed feedback, and thanks for the kind words about my art, it really means a lot! <3

i'll break it down point by point:

bug (clearCurrentCache) — yep, you nailed it. just a casualty of my recent refactoring in a hurry. already fixed it in the code. (i just re-uploaded the v0.9.7.1 zip, so you can just redownload it whenever you have time).
translations — changed it to "Effacer pinceaux récents". as for the english tabs ("File", "Settings", etc.) — it's intentional for now. aseprite's mini-font doesn't support a lot of special characters (or cyrillic), which breaks the compact UI layout in other languages. so i'll leave it like this for now and think about it later.
smart color vs color randomizer — this is basically a math thing. if a brush is pure black (0 saturation, 0 value), shifting its hue does nothing, it just stays black. "Smart Color" replaces the black pixels with your active "Foreground Color", which then gives the randomizer actual color values to shift. i assume this is what you meant, right?
"Link" vs "Link W with H" — mostly kept it short to save space so the panel doesn't look too cluttered. i've updated it to "Link (W/H)" and "Lier (L/H)" which still fits and gives the right context.
keep grid & coverage sizes — this is actually "Keep Grid" doing its job. when checked, it forces the coverage to snap to a multiple of your original brush size (so a 12x12 brush snaps to 24, 36, 48). this ensures that seamless patterns (like the brick brush) tile perfectly and don't get misaligned. if you uncheck "Keep Grid", you can use exact values like 28 or 30, but your pattern might break. you can check out this devlog to see how it works visually (especially the gifs with the transparent checkerboard): https://sodedromme.itch.io/brush-manager-pro-aseprite/devlog/1576692/v095-update-the-coverage-update-tiling-cropping
typing values into sliders — unfortunately, this is a strict limitation of the aseprite API. standard sliders in lua don't support right-click keyboard input. to allow typing, i'd have to use a "number field" widget instead, which takes up more space. i kept it as sliders for a compact UI, but i'll think about adding a toggle in "File" > "Settings" for manual input in the future.

going forward — to avoid making you download hotfixes every day, i'll patch only critical bugs right away, and collect all the other feedback for larger updates. if you post more feedback, i will just "like" your comment so you know i saw it and added it to my to-do list ^-^

itch.io

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