Does PS provide a way to make a brush that can randomize what it paints?

[Douglas Quaid]

I'm making a map for a game I play and what I'd like to find a way to do is randomize buildings in a town that the map has. Ideally, it would be fantastic to have a brush that can "paint" buildings holding down the mouse button as I paint along a line or shape (i.e. - painting buildings along a roadway).

So for example, let's say my map has a road... I'd like this road to lead to a town. I'd also like to have some houses, buildings, etc. along the road. So it would be amazing to have a brush that I could use that, when holding down the mouse button, would "paint" the buildings in a randomized fashion. Some buildings would be painted facing North, some South, some between various angles of the directions, etc. Some being a bit bigger than others, some smaller, some farther away from others and some closer... Maybe a some color variations... Lots of attributes to randomize, so it's possible this might only be possible via a plugin? If so, where do I go to look up what would be required to make one? (I do have some programming experience, so I'd like to see what I would be up against to make it happen, like what API exists and what tools are needed to compile things, etc.)

Any insights into this would be appreciated and appologies in advance if this has been asked before.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

First off: Photoshop Brushes don’t even support full-color content so I think they provide no solution for you. 

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Here is a Feature Request on an image hose: 

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/photoshop/photoshop-image-hose-extend-clone-stamp-tool/...

I have dabbled with simulating »full-color-brush-dabs« via a Script »borrowing« some other tool in the past, maybe it could be useful to you: 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/full-colour-brush-dabbing-simulation-script/m-p/9397073?pag...

[Douglas Quaid]

Thanks, c.pfaffenbichler. That comes across as exactly what I'm hoping for! I'll check it out and see what I can get from it. 🙂

[Douglas Quaid]

c.pfaffenbichler, does that script you made work only in a specific version of PS? I ask because I'm using a pretty old version (CS3) and I'm running into some problems. I can get scripts to work in general, but the problems I'm seeing are API-based, as if pieces of it might not be supported with the version I'm on.

Is there a better way to output things instead of using a hodgepodge set of alert() calls? (I found a JavaScript-equivalent to a var_dump() sort-of-function, so that's helped at least but I wasn't sure if maybe you might know of any third-party tools that mesh well with PS and the API is uses.)

Any info on this is appreciated and thanks again for the tip / script.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

I started looking into Photoshop Scripts only after Photoshop CS3 was the current version, so I am not sure what was possible Scripting-wise in that version and what wasn’t. 

And it’s also been a while since the Script in question so I am not sure which features I used exactly; if the AM code is an issue it could probably be replaced for the duplicating and scaling but determining the selected Layers, I recall, was a very complicated issue a while back.

One could avoid that by simply »hard-coding« certain layers or files in the Script, but that would necessitate changing the Script if one wanted to change the number of items or the items themselves. 

(The alerts in the Script are not necessary by the way.) 

As Conrad mentioned you could look into integrating Illustrator into the workflow. 

[Conrad C]

If it’s acceptable to work in Adobe Illustrator, it has Scatter Brushes that can randomly vary what they lay down along a path, or the variations can be set to respond to stylus input such as pressure, tilt, etc., or to scroll wheel input. You can vary size, spacing, rotation, and more.

If you’trying to fill an area randomly, in Illustrator you can set up objects as Symbols, and then use the Symbol tools to distribute them in various ways. For example, you can use Symbol Sprayer to sort of “hose down” an area with objects, then use Symbol Scruncher to redistribute their density. Other Symbol tools let you vary the color, size, position, etc. of those symbols on the page without having to select each one. And again, you can vary how all of this happens using various types of input.

If the master document needs to be in Photoshop, no problem…Photoshop can import Illustrator documents as Linked Smart Objects, so that if you edit the externally linked Illustrator document, Photoshop can update itself with the latest revision.

[jane-e]

Like Conrad, I was thinking Illustrator.

• You could use Symbols and possibly the Symbol Sprayer.
  or
• You could create an Art Brush from your artwork and change the Color mode, then paint them using varying sizes and stroke colors

Once you create the original artwork of the building, you can then turn it into a symbol and different kinds of brushes quickly as you experiment to see what works best for you.

~ Jane