Painting with textures


Texture painting lets you add textures to your projects by taking the color and luminance components of a source image — the texture — and transposing them onto another surface — your painting — using different brush methods. Texture painting works with brushes that use any of the following dab types: Circular, Computed Circular, Captured, Single-Pixel, Dynamic Speckle Bristle, and Particle types (Flow, Gravity, and Spring).

You can display a representation of the texture onscreen to help you move it, position it precisely, and manipulate it in relation to the underlying brushstrokes or image. In addition, you can control how much of the underlying image you see through a texture. If you don’t want to see the texture or it’s obscuring your ability to paint, you can hide it.

You can quickly adjust the visibility of a texture by using the controls on the property bar. (1) Show Texture button; (2) Visibility slider.

Before you apply a texture, you can modify its appearance to suit your composition and concept. For more information, see Transforming and editing textures.

From left to right: original texture; the texture after distorting; the texture is blended into a model. Model by Erik Holmen.

When you apply textures, you can specify how Texture brushes interact with previously applied brushstrokes. For more information, see Customizing Texture brushes.

To paint with a texture

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1 In the toolbox, click the Brush tool .
2 Click the Brush Selector on the Brush Selector bar.
3 Click a Texture brush category and a brush variant.
4 Click the Texture selector on the property bar, and click a texture.
If you can’t see a representation of the texture in the document window, click the Show Texture button on the property bar.
5 Choose settings from the property bar.
6 Perform a task from the following table.

 

To paint on
Do the following
The canvas
Select the canvas in the Layers panel.
A layer
Select a layer in the Layers panel.
Note: If you are painting with a brush that uses Source Blending, click the Pick Up Underlying Color button . For information about source blending, see Blend the texture with the underlying image.
7 Paint in the document window.

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For information on creating, importing, transforming, and modifying textures, see Textures.

To show or hide the display of textures

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Click the Show Texture button on the property bar.

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You can assign a shortcut key to this command. For more information, see Customizing keys.

To control texture visibility

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On the property bar, move the Visibility slider, or type a percentage in the Visibility box.
A low value reveals more of the underlying brushstrokes.

To invert a texture

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Click the Invert Texture button.

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