Table of Contents

Brushwave Settings

The following settings can be used to manipulate the brush strokes.

Global settings

Render particles only

Normally, the brush strokes are drawn directly over the Lightwave rendering. If you want to see only the particles, you can change that behavior here.

Render particles only = false Render particles only = true

Per object settings

Brush image

You can load any image format that is supported by LightWave; obviously, it should support an alpha channel, so a PNG-file would be a good choice. If you do not specify a file, a default brush image will be used.

Particle size

The meaning of this setting should be simple to grasp. The higher the value, the bigger the particle, with “1.0” meaning: it fills the complete frame.

Particle size = 0.01 Particle size = 0.02 Particle size = 0.03 

values (left to right): 0.01, 0.02, 0.03

Particle Density:

A high density results in tightly packed brush strokes. The total number of strokes, however, is also depending on the particle size.

Density = 5 Density = 15 Density = 25 

values (left to right): 5, 15, 25

Color variation:

The color of each stroke is varied slightly to add to the painterly effect.

Color variation = 0 Color variation = 2.5 Color variation = 10 Color variation = 25 

values (left to right):  0, 2.5, 10, 25

Particle Alignment

If particle alignment is activated, the strokes are rotated tangential to the objects surface. Otherwise, they are always normally aligned to the camera.

Alignment off Alignment on 

left image: alignment off; right image: alignment on

Color displacement:

This parameter is not that easy to understand – it's mainly useful to reduce flickering in animations in high contrast areas. Color displacement means that a particle is moved from or to the camera, depending on its brightness multiplied by the color displacement setting.

Color Displacement = 0 Color Displacement = -5 Color Displacement = +5 

values (left to right):  0, -5, +5

If you look carefully at the edges (you might have to open the image in full size), you see that the particles are sorted in different ways; in one image, the darker particles are in the front, in another image, the lighter ones are in the front.