This little tutorial will not make you a master brush designer. Time and practice will do that. The intent here is to simply encourage users to explore possibilities.
TwistedBrush allows any user full access to brush design and modification. Brush modification is basically easy, not mysterious nor technically difficult. The process itself is fun, satisfying, and well worth learning.
You can start right now, without knowing a thing about the brush design system. Just jump right in. You will learn as you go along. You may soon be addicted, or you may never do more than make simple modifications to existing brushes. Either way, you owe it to yourself to explore this valuable TwistBrush feature.
A good bit of study and practice may precede the creation of your first truly unique and original brushes, but anyone can get usable results immediately! The most common starting point is the modification of any of the thousands of existing brushes. Even if this is your first Brush Effects Panel launch, you can be using your first modified brush just a couple minutes from now.
Keep in mind that you can’t do anything wrong. Nothing really happens to the system until you deliberately save a brush. Modifying an existing brush does not change the original brush itself, unless you choose to overwrite the existing brush. But you will most likely want to save a changed brush with a new brush name, leaving the original brush unchanged. Or you can simply close the session at any time, leaving the system unchanged.
The very first step always is to click the Brush Effects Panel icon to open the Panel.
All design and modification is done within this Panel. The author of TwistedBrush designs with this same Panel. You have the potential for designing any brush he can design. How about that!
Every time the Panel opens, you will see the Brush Effects for the currently selected brush. You can at any time choose a different brush, and the Brush Effects Panel will automatically change to show the Effects describing the newly selected brush.
The basic characteristics of a brush are determined by selections from the two drop down lists at the top of the Panel. The top list contains CORE BRUSHES. That term describes the basic tools used by artists--acrylic, airbrush, oil, watercolor, charcoal, conte, etc. The second list contains VARIATIONS which further define the characteristics of the Core Brushes. For example, you could design an “Acrylic Brush, Small bristle on wet.”
For your very first session with the Brush Effects Panel, select any paint brush as you always do. Select a dark color. Paint single strokes across the page. Make any slider adjustments until you get a stroke you like. Now using the two lists at the top of the Panel, practice selecting various Core Brushes and Variations thereof. After each selection from the either or both lists, paint another stroke. That should keep you entertained for awhile, and it is very beneficial practice.
To practice saving a brush design, press the “M” key. That brings up the powerful Edit Artsets dialog. You will later most likely want to make an artset of your own for storage of brushes you design and modify, but for now, select any artset with empty brush slots. Click on an empty slot. The small “Brush options” dialog appears. Change or modify the Brush Name at the top of this small dialog. Click Okay and Exit. That is all there is to that. You can now select the new brush and paint with it, just as with any other brush. Be very aware, however, that if you save in one of the installed artsets, the next release will overwrite it. Thus the eventual need for an artset of your own creation. If you do accidentally overwrite an existing brush, no problem. The next release will replace it or you can reinstall the current release.
After Saving a brush, to continue working on the same brush, you will need to make it the Current Brush by selecting the brush from the Artset you saved it in. If you want to save additional modifications, press M, click on the brush you saved, and click the "Update" button. If you should want to rename your modified brush, click the "Edit" button. Exit the Edit Artset dialog when done. This time, your modified brush will already be the Current Brush, so you can go right back to work on it, or you can select any other brush.
After getting familiar with the Core Brushes, it is time to start playing with BRUSH EFFECTS and ENVELOPS. Effects can appear on any or all of twelve(as of 15.03) levels. There may be no Effects or there may be a maximum of eleven. Effects modify the behavior of the Core Brushes and their Variations. If there are no Effects, you will be painting with the unmodified Core Brush with whatever Variation is selected. Many of the original TwistedBrush brushes are Core Brushes with no Effects.
(Column one) symbols indicate the current status of a given level. Green indicates the level is enabled. Red indicates the level is disabled, meaning it is essentially a temporary No Effect level. Gray indicates a No Effect level. Repeated clicks change the indicator. (Column six) allows you to change the vertical order of levels. To move a level up or down, click and hold while dragging.
There can be blank (no effect) level(s) between Effects. The No Effect levels are invisible to the brush. The first Effect (column two) at any level modifies the behavior of the Core Brush. The next Effect further modifies the behavior. The strength of each Effect (column five) can be modified. The ENVELOP (column three) controls how the Effect strength varies over the length of the stroke. The Effect strength may for examples be applied in a sawtooth, peak, or pulse “pattern” or envelop. And to make things even more interesting, (column four) modifies the Envelop. For example, changing the number in column three will change the distance between Envelop pulses. To make changes in columns 2, 3, 4, and 5, left-click on any item.
(NOTE: Obsolete Effects Panel. Redesigned in release 15.10)
What that last paragraph tells us is that a single Effect can greatly modify the behavior of a single Core Brush. And we can have up to twelve Effects modifying preceding Effects. Given all the many available Effects and Envelops and the modifications provided by columns 4 and 5 combinations, the possibilities are, for all practical purposes, infinite--many, many millions of possible brush designs.
There are lists of Brush Effect and Envelop Definitions available in the Forum and in the online Help. It can appear a bit overwhelming, but it isn’t so difficult when looked at overall. The Effects and Envelops tend to fall into Groups. There are lots of Effects and Envelops but not all that many groups. Once you have learned to apply any Effect from a given Group you will have essentially learned how to apply all other Effects in that same Group.
You should find a list of Definitions at the top of Brush Discussions Category in the Forum. You can Select All, Copy, then Paste into Word Processor or Text Editor and Print. It is a very long Topic. There is also in the Forum a Quick Reference with the entire Brush Effects System on a single 8 1/2 X 11 page in both RTF and PDF formats. This Reference defines Groups. Probably the most discouraging thing about working with the Brush Effects Panel is scrolling around looking for Effects and Envelops. With this Reference sheet in front of you, you will be scrolling to a known target location--much, much easier.
A good way to begin to get comfortable with Effects is to work with just one of the Effects in the current brush. You have total freedom to play and experiment. You cannot do anything wrong. Try modifying columns 4 and 5. Try different Envelops. After each little change, paint a few strokes. You will soon get the hang of it. If a particular Effect doesn't seem to do much, try another. A few Effects totally ignore columns 3, 4, and 5. They set some overall characteristic of the brush such as cloning, blob, etc.
Experiment altering Effects and adding Effects in various kinds of brushes. Who knows what you will discover. Don't take it too seriously. Have fun. The rest will come with time.
The “combo” Envelop is very common. It works with most Effects. It doesn’t apply an Envelop as such but rather uses both columns 4 and 5 as a single number to control the strength of the Effect. Strength thus can be varied from 00 to 99. You could have a brush with eleven Effects, all with the “combo” Envelop. Try it.
(Incidentally, you are modifiying a brush anytime you click on a modifier with the little Gear Icon. For example, the Symmetry Effect modifiers can be entertaining.)
Hopefully this little tutorial will get you started and give you something to think about.
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