Sujet - Avoyd 0.8.7 - New Materials, Import Palettes, Heightmap Invert and Fixes

This release adds

• New Material Types and default Palette designed by Rebecca Michalak
• Import colours from images and palettes
• Automatically create palettes from material types
• Image as heightmap inversion
• Shift + Mouse wheel to increase / decrease the size of the brush
• Simplified the Replace Material tool UI

We've also fixed several issues:

• Lack of warning when saving a file with the same name but no extension, resulting in a file overwrite
• Anchor vibrating and uneven snap to grid spacing when using an odd sized shape
• New Material Types and palettes now automatically get unique names

For details and further changes, see the Avoyd 0.8.7 changelog

Download and purchase Avoyd

Import colours from images

Avoyd can now import colour palettes from images. Each imported image is turned into a Material Type.

If there are fewer colours in the source image than what you set as Maximum Number of Colours during import, every colour will be imported faithfully and turned into a material. However if the image contains more colours than max, they will be interpolated and therefore the resulting materials will not be exactly the same colours as the source.

How to import a palette

• Download your palette in .PNG format and save it to your computer. Lospec has a great selection of palettes.
• Open the Avoyd Voxel Editor and select File > Import > Image (*.jpg, *.png, *.tga) as Material Type
• Find the palette file you downloaded and click Open
• Set the Maximum Number of Colours to the maximum allowed to ensure the discreet colours are kept as is
• Click Import and open menu Tools > Materials

To use the colours to create voxel art

• Open menu Tools > Materials, a new Material Type is added with the same name as your file.
• Add a Palette: under the 'Palettes' menu, click 'Auto +' to create a new palette from the Material type. Adjust the width with '<>'.
• In menu Tools > Edit Tool, select the new Palette and click on a coloured swatch to use the material for editing.

Importing a colour palette (PNG image of discreet colours) from Lospec as a material type in Avoyd and creating a Palette from the Material Type. The Palette is used in the Edit Tool to select materials (colours) to create voxel art with.

Tips

• Change the properties of any material from the Materials tool: Colour, Metallic, Smoothness, Emissive etc.
• Palettes can be customized: add Materials from any Material Type
• Save Material Types and Palettes as template to reuse in other projects with File > Save Template > Materials...

Heightmap Inversion

When importing an image as heightmap, a new setting inverts the elevation calculation, as if importing a negative image but with the colours unchanged. To access it :

• Open menu File > Import > Image as Heightmap.
• Select the image file to import and in the window that opens you'll find the Invert tick box.

When Invert is unticked (default), higher value pixels have a higher elevation in the heightmap. With Invert ticked, lower value pixels have a higher elevation.

Shift + Mouse wheel for brush size

When editing with the Edit Tool, you can now control the size of the brush by keeping Shift pressed and using the mouse wheel. It increments/decrements all shape dimensions by one voxel. Note that the keyboard up and down arrows have a similar effect with finer control.

Voxel art

Voxel art made in Avoyd by Rebecca Michalak

Forest, voxel art by Rebecca Michalak