Paint Tile From Mesh

Note

This feature is only available in Tessera Pro

When using Mesh Edges model type, Tessera will automatically infer adjacency information from the mesh of each tile. This can be a real time saver. But it's hard to diagnose visually, and it can only be customized by changing the meshes.

So, as an alternative, you can use the Paint Tile from Mesh Dialog to copy the details of the mesh to tile paint instead. You can then use the Adjacent Paint model type instead, which is often easier to work with.

This feature is a useful way of visually debugging if your edges are being detected as you expect. Each face is painted with a unique pattern, with the following properties:

  • If two faces have the same edges, they'll have the same pattern
  • If two faces have mirror-image edges, they'll have mirror-image patterns
  • If the edges are symmetric, the pattern will have the same symmetry
  • If there are no edges on the face, it'll be a solid color (black/white)
  • The corners will always be painted black/white depending on if they are in/out of the mesh (by default)

Because the paint is pre-computed, it can be a bit faster than using the Mesh Edges model type, particularly for large meshes.

Here's some tiles painted, from the Building sample. You can see repeated patterns where the tiles form similar shapes.

Usage

This window is launched from the tools menu, look for Tools > Tessera > Paint Tile from Mesh....

It has the following options:

X items selected in scene - Select which tiles you want painted

Corner Paint and Other Paint - There's several different ways of painting tiles, which can be set separately for corners and other parts of the tile. The different options are described below.

Tolerance - Controls how precisely vertices are matched. See Tolerance.

Debug - Prints detailed information to the console about exactly which edges were detected.

Go - Actually do the painting.

Paint Options

  • Clear - Removes paint from this area
  • Mesh Hash - Paints the face according to what mesh edges lie in that face.
  • Interior vs Exterior - Detects the outside and inside of the mesh using vertex normals, and colors either black (interior) or white (exterior). Meshes do not need to be watertight.
  • Don't Change - Leaves whatever paint was already present