Brushes with a mind of their own
Canvas spin, automatic paths and gradient paint: a look inside the brush engine in Paint by Zaweba.
Most brush engines copy the real world: a round tip, a bit of pressure, a bit of texture. Paint by Zaweba does all that, then asks a slightly silly question: what if the brush could move by itself?
Three separate effects
In Paint, colour, spin and path are independent. Any brush can use any mix of them, straight from the options bar.
- Colour can be solid, or a gradient that changes along the stroke, over time or with the direction you move.
- Spin turns the canvas under the brush like a potter's wheel, so holding still paints perfect circles.
- Path makes the brush follow a circle, arc, spiral or Lissajous curve by itself from a single click.
Deterministic by design
Automatic strokes advance in fixed steps of 1/240 of a second, so the same brush, seed and click always produce exactly the same result, whatever your frame rate. That makes the effects repeatable, which matters when you are building a pattern.
Oscillators
Oscillators wiggle a setting such as size, angle or hue over distance or time. Combine a size oscillator with a spiral path and a rainbow gradient and you get something no human hand would draw, in about a second.
Tools should occasionally surprise you, in a good way.
Try it: pick the Spiral Bloom preset, set Colour to Gradient along stroke, choose Rainbow in the Gradients panel, and click once.
