Making a Set

Making a Set

What a set is

A set is one of your textures, marked up so PolyPalette knows what's on it.

You draw lines over the texture once to say where each trim sits, name it, and from then on that texture turns up in the Trim Sheets tab as a grid you can click.

Where sets live

In your set library folder. By default that's PolyPalette_Set_Data\ inside the PolyPalette installation folder.

Options lets you keep more than one library, a personal one and a studio one on a network drive for instance. New sets get written to whichever is the working library.

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Before you start

You need a texture, ideally applied to a material in your scene. That's what gives the set its icons and its entry in your material library. You can mark up a texture straight off disk instead, but then the set's got no material behind it.

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Step by step

1. Open the Set Creator

Go to the Set Manager tab and press New….

The Set Creator opens in a window of its own. Identity and settings on the left, the texture and mark-up canvas on the right, drawing controls underneath.

Import… is for a set somebody's sent you. It unpacks .zip set archives into your library, several at once, and doesn't open the Set Creator.

2. Name it

Under Set Identity:

• Tool Type. Leave it on Trim Sheet and Hotspot.
• Category. The broad bucket, Environment say.
• Style. Groups textures sharing an art direction or a subject, Generic say.
• Set Name. Name it after the material it came from. Keeping the texture name as the base makes it findable later: SciFiPanels_A.
• Layout Type. Horizontal or Vertical, whether the trims run across the sheet or up it. A pure hotspot texture can skip this.

Category, Style and Set Name are dropdowns you can type into as well, and all three are required.

Export writes the set out as PolyPalette_<set name>.zip, once one's open.

3. Fill in the settings

Under Set Settings:

• Texture Name Override. Set this if the set should point at a texture with a different filename.
• Material Name. Filled in from the scene material for you.
• Inset Default. A pixel amount, and it takes a negative number too, so it can push outwards as well as in.
• Tags. Comma-separated words describing the set: scifi, panels, dirt. Tags make it easier to find in the library.
• Render Style. How the icons are drawn: Render Material Previews, Render Texture Previews, or 3D Preview.
• Description. Free-form text, shown when you hover the set in the library.

4. Load the texture

Under Preview:

• Multi/Sub Material. The material your sheet's assigned to. Pick the Material ID beside it and that sub-material's texture appears on the canvas. Refresh after adding or changing a material.
• Preview Texture. Which map to show. Diffuse is the usual choice.
• Scene Texture. Leave it on (Use Material Slot) unless the sheet lives on a different material.
• Pick Scene Texture. Finds a scene material matching this set's name and loads it.
• Load Texture… Picks a file off disk, for when the sheet isn't in the scene yet.

A line underneath names the loaded file and its pixel size.

5. Draw the trim lines

Do this	To get this
Click	Place a primary divider line between trims
Drag a line	Move it
Shift + click	Place a secondary divider spanning the whole sheet
Ctrl + Shift + click	Place a secondary segment covering one row only, which is how you build a hotspot grid
Double-click a secondary	Split it per row, and again to put it back
Ctrl + click a line	Delete it. The outer boundary lines are protected.

A magnifier loupe follows the cursor while you're placing a line.

Group Trims treats several rows as one trim. Switch it on, click the cells you want, then press Group Selected. Each group shows as a coloured strip beside the canvas. Click one and press Remove Group to split it back up. Switch Group Trims off to leave group mode.

Canvas tools

Fit puts the whole texture back in view. Brightness makes faint detail easier to see. Enable Grid shows an alignment grid and lets you hold Alt while dragging to snap to it. Set its columns and rows to match your sheet. Clear All removes every mark, and Delete Selected removes just the ones you've picked.

Scroll wheel zooms, middle-drag pans, middle double-click fits the canvas to the view.

6. Save it

Press Create Trim Sheet Set Data under the canvas. Your lines become the set's trims, the icons are rendered, and the set's written. Open an existing set and press it and you update that one instead.

Add to library, in the footer and on by default, also adds the set's material to your material library. That's what fills the P, S and T slots on the Trim Sheets page.

Save Selected saves only the marks you've picked, rather than the whole canvas.

Cancel throws the edits away. It asks first, as does closing the window or opening another set.

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After it's saved

The set turns up on the Set Manager tab, grouped by Category and Style. Each group folds with the triangle at its left, and Collapse All folds the lot.

Click a set to select it, Shift-click or Ctrl-click for several. The actions work on everything selected:

Action	Notes
Edit	Reopens the Set Creator with everything in place
Rename	Renames its folder and data file with it
Organise	Moves it to a different category or style. Type one that doesn't exist yet and it's created.
Export	Writes PolyPalette_<set name>.zip. Exporting several asks for one folder and an optional filename prefix.
Delete	Removes the set folder and everything in it. Can't be reversed.

Then open the Trim Sheets tab and pick your set from the Library row at the top. See The Trim Sheet Tool.

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When it won't save

What you see	What to do
"Category, Style, and Set Name are required."	Fill all three in.
"No texture could be captured for this set"	The scene had no texture loaded, and your material library's got nothing under this material's name. Use Pick Scene Texture or Load Texture… first.
"'<name>' is open in the Set Creator"	Close it before deleting, moving or renaming it in the library.
"A save is still in progress"	Wait for it to finish.