Laydown Features More Like Paint Brush
Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:58 pm
Currently, when you go to lay down Features on your map, you have a few options - Single, Tile, Brick, Scatter, Along Path, and Fill Path. These are great. However, I'd like to add one that works more like a paint brush where you could adjust the size of the brush and the size determines how many entities it places as you "paint". This "brush" would function somewhat like the freehand mode when creating a landmass in that the end-user would be free to "paint" a line and Features would be placed along the path. This would be faster than using the current Along Path tool, which requires placing points (for straight lights) or dragging points (for bezie). You would just "paint" a stroke and Features would follow the painted path.
You can sort of do this with the Scatter tool, but I can never get it to place a single feature repeated along the stroke I paint. Instead, when using something like trees, I get four or five wide, no matter what I set the settings to. I could get exactly what I want by using the Single option, but it would take a long time to click, click, click along the path I want to follow. And the Along Path tool is too restrictive and slow, imo, compared to just being able to freehand a stroke and having Features "dropped" along the path by your brush.
As indicated above, a brush size could be set to determine how many Features show up along the path you create ... small brush sizes would spit out one feature wide, larger would be two ... or some such. And, of course, we would need controls for how far apart they are spaced along the path. It would be important to be able to overlap them ... or not ... as the end-user needs.
I hope I am making a bit of sense here.
You can sort of do this with the Scatter tool, but I can never get it to place a single feature repeated along the stroke I paint. Instead, when using something like trees, I get four or five wide, no matter what I set the settings to. I could get exactly what I want by using the Single option, but it would take a long time to click, click, click along the path I want to follow. And the Along Path tool is too restrictive and slow, imo, compared to just being able to freehand a stroke and having Features "dropped" along the path by your brush.
As indicated above, a brush size could be set to determine how many Features show up along the path you create ... small brush sizes would spit out one feature wide, larger would be two ... or some such. And, of course, we would need controls for how far apart they are spaced along the path. It would be important to be able to overlap them ... or not ... as the end-user needs.
I hope I am making a bit of sense here.