Airbrush has two
modes of operation: Mesh and Texture.
These two modes allow you to paint almost all aspects of the shape. To
switch between the modes, either press the F10 key or use the main
menu (see below)
Miscellaneous
Controls:
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The following controls
are part of either mesh or texture mode:
Key 1 / Key 2 | Cycle through roundel options |
Key 3/ Key 4 | Cycle through nose art options |
Key 9 / Key 0 | Cycle through LOD meshes |
Key 8 | Display vertices as circles |
Key Home | Toggle wireframe mode |
Rotating
the mesh:
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The first thing you need to know is hot to move the mesh around so that you can edit the parts of the shape you want. Rotation and zooming of the mesh is done via the keyboard:
Holding down zoom with any of the rotation keys will speed up rotation by 3x. To view the shape from a given view (such as from the top) the View menu may also help.
Another view which
may be useful, is wireframe view. This is a toggle, which is selected using
the Home key. This will often ease the selection of polygons. In
wireframe view, the polygons are displayed as outlines (textures, shading
etc. are not rendered).
Selecting
polygons to edit:
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When using airbrush, one polygon will always be ready to be edited - this is called the current polygon, and is displayed by means of a flashing green/red outline (using the wireframe view (Home key toggle can help to find this polygon). The current polygon is the one which will be changed if you select an editing function (such as changing colour). You can select the current polygon via the keyboard or the mouse:
Using the keyboard:Tab or ~ (Tilde - to the left of the 1 key) keys to move to the next or previous polygon (respectively) in the mesh.
Using the mouse:Left Click on the desired polygon to select it.
Editing a polygon one at a time would be tedious. It is possible to select multiple groups of polygons to perform editing functions on. There are two ways of doing this: adding each polygon separately to the selection, or automatically selecting all polygons of a particular colour:
Adding polygons
to the selction one at a time: Using the keyboard, select the polygon
and press Space. Or, hold down the Shift key and Left
Click on the polygon you wish to add. When holding down shift, the
mouse pointer shows a small plus to indicate polygons addition to the selection:
To remove polygons from a selection, follow the same procedure (polygon
selection is a toggle action).
Adding polygons
to the selection by colour: Using the mouse, hold down the Control
(Ctrl) key and Left Click on a polygon. All polygons of the
same flat colour as the one you clicked on will be added to the
selection. When holding down the Control (Ctrl) key, the pointer
displays a small RGB tritone:
To clear a selection completely, simply press the Backspace key (rightmost key on the top row of the keyboard).
Both of these methods
can be combined to create a selection. Selected polygons are highlighted
by means of a flashing light blue/dark blue border.
The
main mesh mode menu:
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Mesh mode allows you to change the colours of polygons, as well as the assignment of textures (to actually modify the texure, you need to be in mesh mode). Most features are accesable via the main menu, which is brought up by a right click anywhere on the screen:
The buttons with an ellipse ("...") indicate a sub-menu will appear, whereas those without are simply functions (this applies to all menus). The buttons have the following functions:
File... : This brings up the file submenu, which allows loading and saving of shapes.
Help... : Brings up the help utility, which provides some information on the program.
Misc... : Brings up the miscellaneus submenu, which includes various useful utilities.
Texture Mode : Switches the program into texture mode. Keyboard equivalent is F10
Properties... : Allows changing the properties of a polygon or selected groups of polygons.
View... : Brings up the views submenu, which allows changing the view of the shape to certain pre-stored views.
Quit : Quits the program (asks before quitting).
Cancel : Return to airbrush without performing any actions.
The
View Menu:
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The view menu allows you to select six pre-defined views of the shape, as well as three user-definable ones.
Pressing Front, Left, Top, Back, Right, or Under will rotate the shape so that the relevant view is shown to the user.
Pressing User
1, User 2, or User 3 bring up one of the defineable views.
Unless you program them, they will bring about no effect. To program a
view, rotate the shape to the desired angles, then press Alt together
with a number key (from 1 to 3), to set that view. User views
can be redefined at any time, and are not saved when you quit the program.
The
Properties Menu:
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This menu allows you to change the properties of either the current polygon or (if a selection has been made) the polygon selection. The following options are available:
Colour: Brings up the colour requester, to select colour for the current polygon or selected group
Texturing: Not yet
implemented
The
Colour Requester:
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The colour requester allows you to set the colour for the current polygon or polygon selection.
Simply click to select the colour (which will become the new flat colour of the polygon), and then select.
Note the restriction on colouring convex hulls: all polygons in a hull must have the same colour, or strange effects may appear on your shape.
Although the entire palette is presented, you should only use the colours between 80 and 160 (ie. those in the yellow, green, brown blue and grey ranges). Use of the other colours may produce strange effects.
The ranges can provide various shades of the same colour - setting a lighter grey and darker grey will have visible differences.
Texture Mode Controls
Moving
the texture bitmap and making selections:
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Often, the texture bitmap will be too long to be seen all at once on the screen. To move the visible portion of the texture bitmap, use the Cursor Up and Cursor Down keys (faster movement can be achieved using the Page Up and Page Down keys).
When performing operations n the bitmap (such as shade remapping), the entire bitmap will be operated on. However, it is possible to select a small region of the bitmap to operate on to do this use the mouse:
1. To define a selection, Left Click on the top left of the desired area to start the rubber rectangle,and then move and Left Click again on the bottom right of the selection to mark it.
2. To create a new selection, simply perform the selection again. The new selection will remove the old one.
3. To remove the selection, simple Double Left Click anywhere on the bitmap.
To bring up the
menu, as in Mesh Mode, simply Right Click:
The
texture properties menu:
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The texture bitmap properties menu has the following options:
Remap Shades: allows you to remap from one shade to another (eg. from blues to greens). Airbrush will prompt you for a source shade and a destination shade. If you have not selected a rectangle in the bitmap, the entire image will be changed.
U-V Pair editing:
Not implemented yet
Exporting
and importing bitmaps for textures:
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You can export the texture bitmap in order to edit it in your favourite bitmap editor. To do this, use the Save texture as... option in the Files menu. You may save as PCX, BMP or TGA (simply give your file the appropriate extension).
To import a texture you have edited, use the Import texture... button in the Files menu. You may import files in the PCX, BMP, and TGA formats. Note that the file you import must have the same dimensions (width and height) as the shape's original texture bitmap.