MyPaint Brush Engine

../../../_images/mypaintbrush.svg

MyPaint is a free painting program that comes with a lot of specific brushes. Krita can use those brushes for painting using the MyPaint brush engine.

Warning

You can create new brush presets using the MyPaint brush engine in Krita, but the presets are saved in Krita’s .kpp file format, not mypaints .myb format, so you cannot reuse those presets in MyPaint.

Dynamic Inputs

Dynamic Inputs are a way for MyPaint to get information of the external devices as a drawing tablet; for instance the pressure over the drawing tablet, the speed of pencil movement, the pencil tilt .. etc. They are equivalent to Sensors in Krita.

MyPaint has 9 inputs:

  • Pressure

    The pressure handled by a tablet. Typically in the range 0.0 to 1.0.

  • Fine Speed

    How quickly the stylus is moving. This can vary quite a lot.

  • Gross Speed

    Similar to fine speed but it changes very slowly.

  • Random

    Fast and random noise, changes with every brush stroke.

  • Stroke

    This input goes slowly from 0.0 to 1.0 while the stroke is being applied. This is related to “stroke duration” and “stroke holdtime” settings.

  • Direction

    This input defines the angle of a stroke, in degrees.

  • Declination

    This input defines the declination of the stylus tilt. This is the same as tilt-elevation in Krita.

  • Ascension

    Straight pen ascension. When the active tip points to it, it is 0. When the pen turns 90 degrees clockwise is +90. When it turns 90 degrees counterclockwise is -90. This is the same as tilt-direction in Krita.

  • Custom

    This is a user-defined input. It is related to the “customized input” setting.

Parameters

Has the following parameters:

Basic

Radius

This is to set the radius of the brush. Please note that all of the mypaint radii are logarithmic. For instance, if you are setting the radius of a preset to say, 2.0 then the actual radius of the preset is going to be e^(2.0) which is equal to 7.389. This makes the size of the brush equal to 14.78. So, we can say that mypaint_radius = log(actual_radius).

Hardness

Hardness defines the sharpness of the brushes.

../../../_images/hardness.png

Eraser

If this option is checked the brush will act as an eraser.

Radius by Random

This option is used to generate a brush preset whose radii and opacity change randomly during the stroke. This should not be confused with the random dynamic option in the radius setting.

Anti Aliasing

This option is used to smoothen the edges of the brush and remove the jagging effect. Most useful for very small presets.

Elliptical Dab: Angle

Sets the angle of the brush dabs. Gives the best results for brushes with a low ratio and a direction filter, and allows for strokes akin to a calligraphic pen.

Elliptical Dab: Ratio

This option is used to change the aspect ratio of dab.

../../../_images/elliptical_dab_ratio.png

Direction Filter

This option is used to make the dabs adhere to a specific vector direction. In simple words, at times you might find the dabs not following the vector path of your strokes, this setting helps us rectify that.

Color

Change color Hue

This option is used to shift the hue in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction.

Change color Lightness

This option is used to change color luminance using the HSL color model.

Change color Value

This option is used to change color value (brightness, intensity) in HSV color model.

Change color Saturation HSL

This option is used to change color saturation using HSL color model.

Change color Saturation HSV

This option is used to change color saturation using HSV color model.

Speed

Fine Speed Gamma

This option is used to change the reaction of the fine speed input to extreme physical speed.

Gross Speed Gamma

This option is used to change the reaction of gross speed to extreme physical speed.

Fine Speed Slowness / Fine Speed Filter

This option describes how slow the input fine speed is following the real speed.

Gross Speed Slowness / Gross Speed Filter

This option describes how slow the input gross speed is following the real speed.

Offset by Speed

This option is used to change the position of dabs based on stroke speed.

Offset By Random [Jitter]

This option adds a random offset to the position where each dab is drawn.

Dabs

Dabs per Actual Radius

This option describes how many dabs to draw when the pointer moves the distance of the brush radius.

Dabs per Second

This option describes how many dabs to draw per second irrespective of any other parameter.

Opacity

Opaque

Opaque describe the translucency or transparency of mypaint brushes.

Opaque Linearize

This option lets you correct the nonlinearity introduced by blending multiple dabs on top of each other.

Opaque Multiply

This makes opacity depend on pressure.

Tracking

Slow Tracking

Slow pointer tracking speed. Higher values remove jitter in cursor movements. Useful for drawing smooth outlines.

Slow Tracking per Dab

Similar to above but at a brushdab level.

Tracking Noise

Add randomness to the mouse pointer. This usually generates many small lines in random directions.

Smudge

Smudge

This option lets you smudge, by picking a color from the canvas and mixing this with the brush color. The color slowly changes to the color you are painting on.

Smudge Length

This option controls how much the painting color is mixed with the colors from the canvas.

Smudge Radius logarithmic

This option modifies the radius of the circle where the color is picked up for smudging.

Stroke

Stroke Duration logarithmic

This option describes how far you have to move until the stroke input becomes 1.0

Stroke Holdtime

This option defines how long the stroke input stays at 1.0. After that it will go back towards 0.0 and then start increasing again.

Stroke Threshold

This option defines how much pressure is needed to start the stroke. This affects stroke input only. The MyPaint brush engine does not need any minimum pressure level to start drawing.

Custom Input

Custom Input

The idea of this input is that you make this input depend on a mixture of pressure/speed/whatever, and then make other settings depend on this ‘custom input’ instead of repeating this combination everywhere you need.

Custom Input Slowness

This option defines how slow the custom input setting actually follows the desired value.