Displacement Painting

The Displacement mode of the Vertex Painting tool raises and lowers a surface along its normal. It works on any surface, whatever its shader, but only a box or a brush can be displaced.

Painting heights

• Pick Displacement as the paint tool's mode and paint on a surface of a box or a brush.
• Heights build up over a stroke, as a dab comes with every move of the mouse.
• Add and Subtract raise and lower the surface. Smooth evens it out, and Erase takes it back to flat.
• Heights go from -16 to 16 metres.
• Paint Spacing sets the grid the heights are painted on: every cell is two triangles.
• A dab reaches past the surface it is on: the surfaces of other boxes and brushes next to it, in the same plane, are raised and lowered with it, so they meet where they touch.

What it makes

The displaced surface becomes columns along its normal, one for each triangle of the grid. A raised column adds to the brush, a lowered one cuts into it. Where a lowered part comes close to the brush's opposite side, it pushes that side out. Flat cells with nothing displaced around them stay one piece.

The result is ordinary CSG geometry, so it works with every other brush. Normals are smooth across the surface and it keeps the surface's texture coordinates. Painting rebuilds only what the dab changed.

Heights very close to 0 leave the surface flat.