Docs Drawing & painting

Brush dynamics

One row per parameter, a sensor on the row: how pressure, speed, tilt, stroke direction and randomness push a brush around as you paint, and how to reshape the response behind each one.

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Brush Studio ▸ Dynamics is a list of the twelve things a sensor can drive. Every row is the same: the parameter's name, a signed amount, a sensor dropdown and a curve button. The sensor is what switches the row on: at None the row is inert and the base value passes straight through.

All of it lives on the preset, so it travels with the brush.

The twelve rows

RowWhat the sensor drives
SizeDab diameter
AccumulationThe stroke's tone ceiling
FlowHow much paint each dab lays down
RotationThe tip's angle. This one row is angle jitter, direction-follow and tilt-follow at once: which of them you get is simply which sensor you pick
Scatter XOffset along the stroke's direction
Scatter YOffset across it
HardnessTip edge softness. Procedural tip only
ShapeRoundness of the procedural tip. Procedural tip only
HuePer-dab hue shift
SaturationPer-dab saturation shift
LuminosityPer-dab brightness shift
ImpastoHow thickly paint is deposited. Only alive on a Paint behaviour
Scatter has no fixed slider of its own. Scatter is only interesting when something drives it, so it is two dynamic rows rather than a number you set once.

The six sensors

SensorWhat it reads
NoneNothing. The row is off
PressureStylus pressure, 0 at no contact to 1 at a full press. A mouse or a finger with no pressure sensor reads as a full press
VelocityHow fast the pen is moving across the canvas, normalised
TiltHow far the pen is leaning
DirectionThe stroke's heading, running 0 to 1 over a full turn
RandomA fresh value per dab, hashed from the dab's position so the same stroke re-renders identically instead of shimmering on every redraw

On the Rotation row, Direction and Tilt rotate the tip BY the sensor itself rather than multiplying something by it, which is what keeps a flat nib perpendicular to the stroke or lying over with the pen. The curve there only shapes how strongly.

The amount is signed

The amount runs from -100% to +100%, and the sign is the point. A positive amount can only shrink the base value, toward 1 minus the amount; a negative one can only grow it, toward 1 plus its size. Pressure thinning a dab and tilt widening one are therefore the same control with opposite signs, rather than two separate settings.

An amount of 0 contributes nothing whatever the sensor says, which is a normal thing to want while you are tuning.

The curve

The button at the right of each row opens the response curve. A Linear tick at the top bypasses it entirely: the sensor maps straight onto the parameter. Untick it and the curve you draw shapes the response instead.

Under the curve sits a strip of ready-made profiles, Linear, Ease In, Ease Out, S-Curve, Sharp and Flat, so a shape is one click rather than a drag-the-points exercise. Picking Linear from the strip also re-ticks the Linear box.

Click empty space inside the curve to add a point, drag a point to move it, right-click an interior point to remove it. The two end points are locked to the left and right edges. The line drawn through your points is monotone, so it can never overshoot and double back between two points you placed.

A curve popup open beside a Dynamics row, an S-shape drawn through three points with the profile strip beneath it.

Stacking a second sensor on one parameter

A parameter can be driven by two sensors at once. Right-click a row and choose Layer 2: a second row unfolds under it, starting on Pressure at 25%, and you can point it at any other sensor. The pencils rotate the tip by stroke direction AND pen tilt together, which one row cannot say. Right-click again and choose Remove to take it away.

The second row stays put while you edit it, even if you set its amount to 0. Presence is the sensor, not the amount: only Remove takes the row away. Deriving the row from the amount meant typing 0 deleted it out from under the cursor mid-edit.

Layers compose by product, so two sensors both shrinking a dab multiply rather than fight.