9 SAI Brushes
How to make your own brushes
Photoshop has magic tool called 'Define Brush' that allows you to create a brush of desired shape in seconds. SAI can't do this, but process of creating custom brushes isn't too difficult.
1. Overall
There are two types of brushes in SAI. Each type has its own folder where your pictures must be placed to turn into brushes. These folders are 'Elemap' and 'Blotmap' in your SAI directory. The scheme is: make a picture -> place it in corresponding folder -> add a line in brushform.conf file -> save this file -> done.
2. Creating of 'Elemap' Brushes
Adress of these brushes in brushform.conf will be [2,elemap\Your Brush Name.bmp]
You need the a template (included in archive).
Choose desired brush shape and set its painting mode as 'Threshold'. With opacity variation you'll get different results. Than save your image as *bmp with standart settings Photoshop suggests.
Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that you can just transfer your favorite Photoshop brush shapes to SAI. For example, if your shape is star, you don't get brush that will be paint stars. Star shape gives something like this. To say the truth, the Streak shape of different thickness will be the most common result you'll get.
3. Creating of 'Blotmap' Brushes
Adress of these brushes in brushform.conf will be [1,blotmap\Your Brush Name.bmp]
Your image should be 512x512 px. Paint your texture in black-and-white, in final image black points will be transparent, white will be solid color.
Set mode for your image as Index (Image -> Mode -> Indexed Color) and save it as *bmp.
4. How to install created brushes
Give a name for each of your brushes.
Put the pictures to 'Elemap' and 'Blotmap' folders.
Add lines with names of your new brushes to your brushform.conf in SAI directory like it is written above .
If you don't want to write this manually, there is useful tool by BerolEagle that updates brushform.conf with all items from 'Elemap' and 'Blotmap' folders. This way, just copy your new brushes to corresponding folders, copy the tool in your SAI directory, and run it.
Your new brushes appear in drop down menu right under 'Density' option.
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Oh, thank you a lot for sharing this!! They work GREATLY
Thank you for such wonderful brushes!
Many thanks for sharing and for the tut! I wondered why my brush tries didn't work, and it was so simple~
You're welcome! Is is the first time I made brushes, so I'm glad (and amazed^^) that they work well.
Somehow I didn't catch this explaination...and since I used default brush all the time, I guess its time for me to try this one.
If I need any help, can I ask you later ;D?
Of course :)
my SAI turned to be so awesome
thx so muaaach~ >3<
Thank you very much for the guide, I sought some wor a while, but didn't find anything. Yours is very very helpful
@lishtar
I envy you, dear, because I cannot completely solve the trouble with Intuos4 pen speed and SAI, it it still slower than I need...
@Kimi
Not at all
@sairin hun...I didn't posses intuos 4 and just use my old wacom graphire 4 which the pen almost run out of the nibs. lol
I really need to change them soon