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Organic Tool

The Organic Tool (keyboard shortcut O) paints organic surface detail directly onto map surfaces.

Use it for:

  • moss and grime
  • mud and stains
  • edge breakup and noisy buildup
  • painted surface accents on floors, walls, ceilings, and supported terrain targets

The current Organic tool is a brush-based painter. It no longer uses the older node-graph workflow.

Organic Dock​

When the Organic tool is active, the lower picker area shows the Organic dock instead of the Tile Picker.

The dock is split into three parts:

  • Brush Preview on the left
  • Brush Presets in the center
  • Brush Settings on the right

Brush Preview​

The left preview shows the current brush using the active brush colors and outline.

This is a fast visual check for:

  • fill shape
  • border thickness
  • noise breakup
  • current color balance

Brush Presets​

The center column contains visual brush-shape presets.

These presets change the brush shape behavior only. They do not replace your current brush colors. All preset thumbnails reuse the current Base, Border, and Noise colors so you can judge the shape without losing the active palette setup.

Brush Settings​

The right sidebar contains the main brush settings:

  • Base: main paint color
  • Border: outline color used around the brush
  • Noise: noisy breakup color used inside the brush
  • Brush Size: overall brush radius
  • Border Size: thickness of the outer outline
  • Noise Amount: amount of noisy breakup inside the brush
  • Opacity: paint strength

The Organic tool is meant to stay compact. The main workflow is selecting a brush shape, choosing the three colors, and adjusting only a few obvious paint controls.

Toolbar Controls​

The Organic toolbar contains:

  • Free / Locked
  • Clear
  • Active / Deactive

Free / Locked​

  • Free lets you paint on any valid hovered surface.
  • Locked restricts painting to the current selection, typically the selected sector or active surface.

This is useful when you want to avoid spilling detail onto nearby geometry in dense 3D scenes.

Clear​

Clear removes organic paint.

  • In Free mode it clears all organic paint in the current map.
  • In Locked mode it clears only the currently locked target.

Clear is undoable.

Active / Deactive​

This toggle turns the organic paint layer rendering on or off.

Use it to compare:

  • the base surface without painted detail
  • the final result with the organic layer enabled

The toggle affects rendering only. It does not delete the painted data.

3D Brush Preview​

In 3D editing, Organic mode replaces the normal yellow hover marker with a brush-footprint preview.

That preview shows:

  • the current brush radius
  • the border ring
  • the surface position where the stroke will land

This makes it easier to judge placement before committing a stroke.

Painting Workflow​

A simple workflow looks like this:

  1. Switch to the Organic Tool.
  2. Choose a brush-shape preset.
  3. Pick Base, Border, and Noise colors.
  4. Set Brush Size, Border Size, Noise Amount, and Opacity.
  5. Use Free or Locked depending on whether you want broad painting or target-restricted painting.
  6. Paint directly in the 3D scene.
  7. Toggle Active / Deactive to compare the result.

Undo / Redo​

Organic brush painting supports undo and redo as normal map edits.

This includes:

  • brush strokes
  • Clear
  • render-layer visibility changes where supported by the current session state

Notes​

  • Organic painting is intended for surface detail, not for placing trees, bushes, or other large procedural scene objects.
  • Builder remains the better tool for reusable placed assemblies and future hybrid mesh / billboard content.
  • Organic paint is rendered as a surface layer. It does not generate separate organic geometry.