[1.12.5] Lazy Painter - Alternative UI for Textures Unlimited

[Halban]

 

What does this mod do?

This is an addon for Textures Unlimited that provides an alternative UI designed for colouring large numbers of parts simultaneously.

Click on individual parts, types of parts, or groups of colours to make simultaneous adjustments in a single window where you can toggle recolouring altogether, toggle secondary and detail colour slots, edit hue, saturation and value or RGB, change material settings, and save your favourite colours into TU's existing preset system.

Check the '?' menu in the top right of the window for a list of controls. The important ones are:

Click to select.
- Hold shift: add parts to the current selection.
- Hold control: select all parts of the same type.
- Hold control + alt: select all parts of the same colour.
- Alt click: copy that part's colours to the palette.

 

Dependencies

- Textures Unlimited Recolour Depot (TU included):

 

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Download

SpaceDock: https://spacedock.info/mod/3415/Lazy Painter

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Credits

@Shadowmage for Textures Unlimited, upon which this UI is based.

@Manwith Noname for Textures Unlimited Recolour Depot.

 

Source

The complete source for Lazy Painter is available on Github:
https://github.com/Halbann/LazyPainter

 

License

Lazy Painter is distributed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Read about the license here before redistributing :
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Edited July 10, 2023 by Halban

[Dakitess]

That's nice !

So i've not tried it yet, but is there a button to make a whole craft recoloration ? I mean, a RolePlay corporation would have the same color affected to the Red Green Blue part separation, and so it would be one click to actually recolor a craft.

[Halban]

1 hour ago, Dakitess said:

That's nice !

So i've not tried it yet, but is there a button to make a whole craft recoloration ? I mean, a RolePlay corporation would have the same color affected to the Red Green Blue part separation, and so it would be one click to actually recolor a craft.

Thanks, I'll add a keybind to select all parts. Probably A or ctrl+A.

[HebaruSan]

Hi, since we received a pull request to add this to CKAN, I wanted to let you know that TURD can't be added to CKAN because it's hosted on Google Drive, which presents the files as a web page that the user has to click in a browser to download, so automated tools (like CKAN and its infrastructure) can't access them. Since TURD is a dependency of this mod, it unfortunately can't be added either. We can revisit this if this mod ever drops the TURD dependency or if TURD changes its hosting arrangements. Cheers!

Edited July 9, 2023 by HebaruSan

[Halban]

14 hours ago, Dakitess said:

That's nice !

So i've not tried it yet, but is there a button to make a whole craft recoloration ? I mean, a RolePlay corporation would have the same color affected to the Red Green Blue part separation, and so it would be one click to actually recolor a craft.

I've just done an update that adds ctrl+A to select all parts.

8 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Hi, since we received a pull request to add this to CKAN, I wanted to let you know that TURD can't be added to CKAN because it's hosted on Google Drive, which presents the files as a web page that the user has to click in a browser to download, so automated tools (like CKAN and its infrastructure) can't access them. Since TURD is a dependency of this mod, it unfortunately can't be added either. We can revisit this if this mod ever drops the TURD dependency or if TURD changes its hosting arrangements. Cheers!

Thanks for letting me know. Would you be open to reconsidering if I removed the dependency? This mod isn't particularly useful without TURD, but TU is the only strict runtime dependency. This mod will work fine in a scenario where the user doesn't have TURD but they do have another set of third party TU paint masks/configs like the BD one. I just refer people to TURD because that covers all the stock parts. It would be great to have this mod kept up to date with CKAN if possible.

[HebaruSan]

19 minutes ago, Halban said:

Would you be open to reconsidering if I removed the dependency?

Absolutely!

19 minutes ago, Halban said:

TU is the only strict runtime dependency. This mod will work fine in a scenario where the user doesn't have TURD

So should we add the current version as-is, requiring TU instead of TURD, or should we wait for a new release? It sounds like the former to me, but better to check first.

[Halban]

25 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

So should we add the current version as-is, requiring TU instead of TURD, or should we wait for a new release? It sounds like the former to me, but better to check first.

Yes, the former, that would be perfect. Thanks very much for reconsidering.

[Zelda]

Hi @Halban, just wanted to say thanks for making this mod - it's great. Very nice QOL improvement!

Is there a way to use it with parts that have more than one component/color set, specifically to only set colors for one set at a time? I use a lot of procedural parts in my RO playthrough, and what I've noticed is that LazyPainter applies the paint selections to every set.

Example: Here is a part with two color sets ('Sides' and 'Ends') that I manually colored (garishly to make it easy to see the issue ).

And here is after using LazyPainter to paint the first slot red - it colors the first slot for every set.

 

I imagine based on LazyPainter only having one set, this is not supported, and that's fine! If so, consider this a feature request if that's something you're open to.

[Halban]

@Zelda Thanks! The lack of support for individual sections is by design, at least for the moment. The target for Lazy Painter is painting the bodies of large craft quickly, so I didn't think I would be saving people much time with a feature that usually only affects parts that only appear in limited numbers like engines/cockpits, compared to the time it would take to design and implement the feature. I didn't anticipate what kind of modded parts might use sections though. With the kind of craft you're building, do you feel it would save you a very significant amount of time to be able to paint all the procedural tanks in one go?

Edited August 4, 2023 by Halban

[Zelda]

8 hours ago, Halban said:

@Zelda Thanks! The lack of support for individual sections is by design, at least for the moment. The target for Lazy Painter is painting the bodies of large craft quickly, so I didn't think I would be saving people much time with a feature that usually only affects parts that only appear in limited numbers like engines/cockpits, compared to the time it would take to design and implement the feature. I didn't anticipate what kind of modded parts might use sections though. With the kind of craft you're building, do you feel it would save you a very significant amount of time to be able to paint all the procedural tanks in one go?

Thanks for the speedy reply! I sort of assumed that it was by design given the challenge of trying to support modded parts, which can be subject to change and implemented in a variety of ways.

To answer your question, when playing with Realism Overhaul, the majority of the parts used are procedural, such as fuel tanks, probe cores, batteries, etc, and most have  (or can have depending on texture) multiple sections. That results in the majority of my vessels having multiple sections. LazyPainter applies colors to every section, so after using it you need to go back and individually edit each part to update the other sections that were overwritten. So honestly I'm not sure LazyPainter is saving me much time with my RO save.

That said, I think it works great in my closer-to-stock game, where it does save a huge amount of time. So I get why you made the decision to focus on that. I tend to recolor more in RO, so if you do end up ever supporting that, I'd be grateful! I understand though that supporting a variable number of sections across parts would be pretty challenging / problematic, so I'd totally understand if you weren't wanting to take that on.

[Halban]

On 8/4/2023 at 9:48 PM, Zelda said:

Thanks for the speedy reply! I sort of assumed that it was by design given the challenge of trying to support modded parts, which can be subject to change and implemented in a variety of ways.

To answer your question, when playing with Realism Overhaul, the majority of the parts used are procedural, such as fuel tanks, probe cores, batteries, etc, and most have  (or can have depending on texture) multiple sections. That results in the majority of my vessels having multiple sections. LazyPainter applies colors to every section, so after using it you need to go back and individually edit each part to update the other sections that were overwritten. So honestly I'm not sure LazyPainter is saving me much time with my RO save.

That said, I think it works great in my closer-to-stock game, where it does save a huge amount of time. So I get why you made the decision to focus on that. I tend to recolor more in RO, so if you do end up ever supporting that, I'd be grateful! I understand though that supporting a variable number of sections across parts would be pretty challenging / problematic, so I'd totally understand if you weren't wanting to take that on.

I can definitely see the use case there. How would you imagine it working from a UI perspective? I'm guessing that, between different mods and the stock game, section number, naming and order are arbitrary; so I don't feel like there's a really good way manage the section colours for multiple parts at the same time through the same window. Be good to hear how you think it could work.

Edited August 10, 2023 by Halban

[Zelda]

5 hours ago, Halban said:

I can definitely see the use case there. How would you imagine it working from a UI perspective? I'm guessing that, between different mods and the stock game, section number, naming and order are arbitrary; so I don't feel like there's a really good way manage the section colours for multiple parts at the same time through the same window. Be good to hear how you think it could work.

Thanks for considering it! The UI piece is challenging because of the variable number of sections there could be, depending on the parts selected. The only way I could think of to make it work would be to enumerate all the unique sections in the selected parts by their name (i.e., Core, End, Mount, etc), and provide that as a list in the upper section with a palette for each. Then, if colors were changed on the 'Core' palette (as an example), that would apply to every 'Core' section in the parts selected; same for 'End', 'Mount', etc. Not sure how easy it is to get a list of all the sections available, but something along these lines could be effective in allowing recoloring of multiple sections across multiple parts.

[Zelda]

Sorry, one thing you mentioned that I forgot to address is the variable section names across parts. That's an issue to a degree, as there are a few different types of parts that are similar (like Procedural Tanks and Modular Tanks), and have different sections. However, all Procedural tank-like parts (Balloon Tanks, Conventional Tanks, Isogrid, Service Module, etc) have common names - Sides and Ends. Modular Tanks (same types) have Core, Mount, and Nose. Procedural Wings and Control Surfaces have Surface, Section, Trailing Edge, and Leading Edge... etc. So you were right that could be a problem if multiple types of parts from multiple mods are selected, but I think even if you were able to color individual sections for all selected parts from a common family (i.e., Procedural, Modular, etc) that have the same section names, that would be a big help too.

Totally get this could get messy! I dabble a bit with code but I am not a programmer by day. However, I work at a software company and I recognize this as something that my engineers would likely push back on. So it's totally fine to say it's out of scope! I just appreciate the consideration and discussion.

[Yarnish Kerman]

Quote

The UI piece is challenging because of the variable number of sections there could be

Given it's not the primary use case, a less than perfect solution for the UI might be acceptable. Off the top of my head, I could suggest a more obscure modifier-key-combo that would bring up a menu that let you select which part if you don't want to clutter the main UI. Or a fold out section maybe. It would be totally acceptable to me that you could just chose 1st, 2nd, 3rd or all, names are not strictly required. Not a beautiful solution I'll be the first to admit, but it might be doable and provide a far-better-than-nothing solution for multi-section parts. Whether you feel like doing it is ofc completely up to you, I'm thankful for what you already did. It really makes a big difference for me.

[edusaraiva]

I was curious this works with other mod parts besides stock? like restock or restock+.

[Halban]

On 10/31/2023 at 2:53 PM, edusaraiva said:

I was curious this works with other mod parts besides stock? like restock or restock+.

Lazy Painter doesn't provide the painting function, it's just an interface around Textures Unlimited and whichever packs you have installed from TU Recolour Depot. If the depot has a restock pack then it should work, I don't believe it does though

Edited November 1, 2023 by Halban

[haydne]

mod doesn't work whatsoever when i click paint nothing happens. don't download this for the sake of your life because you might try hurt yourself or others after downloading this addon

[shelshok]

48 minutes ago, haydne said:

mod doesn't work whatsoever when i click paint nothing happens. don't download this for the sake of your life because you might try hurt yourself or others after downloading this addon

Did you install the dependency? It won't do anything without it. It also won't work on Restock parts.

[Halban]

20 hours ago, haydne said:

mod doesn't work whatsoever when i click paint nothing happens. don't download this for the sake of your life because you might try hurt yourself or others after downloading this addon

Standard disclaimer that Lazy Painter won't turn you into a mindless automaton with the insatiable urge to harm others, at least it won't until I activate the built-in kill switch.