The Pattern studio

Use the Pattern studio to draw a pattern or any other kind of texture. Open it from the home screen’s Patterns tab: tap the New card, or tap one of your patterns to continue editing it.

The New pattern card

The card asks What are you making? Name it, then tap one row:

• Pattern: a tile that repeats forever.
• Tiling photo: a photo made seamless (grass, brick, fabric).
• Photo texture: a photo kept whole, to wrap a fig. The studio calls it a Photo wrap once it opens.
• Sticker: a cutout you stick on any fig. See Stickers .
• Mural: a cutout you hang on a scene wall.
• Wall texture: wall-shaped. The preview shows it on a real wall.
• Ground texture: for floors, paths, and land.
• Frame: a border for the camera lens, made for one shot shape. Tap the row and five chips open under it: 1:1, 4:5, 16:9, 9:16, and 3:2. Tap a shape and the studio opens on a canvas of that shape.

Tiling photo and Photo texture open the photo workspace before the canvas. Free accounts hold 5 patterns of any kind.

The canvas

The header holds the name field (24 letters), the size, and the background. Tap the size to cycle 16, 32, 64, and 128; the picture resamples to fit. A pattern starts at 32 across, a frame at 128, every other kind at 64. A wall texture is 64 by 96, taller than wide. A frame’s height follows its shape: 128 by 72 for 16:9. Undo steps back up to 50 times, and ↪ beside it redoes a step until the next stroke.

Paper ▾ sets the background. Paper is the cream color behind every stroke. See-through makes the unpainted part a hole, shown as a checker. Stickers and murals start see-through. A frame starts as a paper border around a see-through window, the middle 70 percent of the canvas. Everything else starts on paper. Switching to See-through opens every paper-colored texel; switching to Paper fills every hole with cream. Each switch is one Undo step.

On Pattern and Ground texture every stroke wraps: draw off the right edge and the stroke continues in from the left. A fill that crosses the edge floods as one region. The other kinds stop at the edge.

The tools are the same as the paint screen’s, with the same settings. The pen has Strength (Full, Soft, Faint), the Spray, Jumble and Blur modes, Mirror, and Above finger, which draws a touch stroke above the fingertip with a ring to show where. The eraser has Soft. Fill reaches Shape or the Whole pattern. Hold still on a spot for a moment and the pen takes that color.

The eraser follows the background: on paper it erases to cream, on see-through it cuts a hole. A Wall texture cuts a hole whatever its background, and the wall pieces in a building skip see-through texels (a barred window is open in 3D).

The See-through ink

Wherever holes are possible (a see-through background, or any wall texture), the Color palette starts with a checker dot, the See-through ink. Select it and every tool makes a hole: Fill pours one, Pen and Shapes cut one. The swatch shows the checker while it is selected. Select any color to stop.

The preview card

• Pattern and Ground texture: Tiled ×4 shows the repeat while you draw. Under it, SLIDE IT · WRAPS AROUND holds four arrow buttons that slide the whole pattern. Show the seam slides it by half, so the edges are in the middle and you can paint over the seam. Make it tile blends the edges into each other, so any drawing repeats with no seam. Each press is one Undo step.
• Wall texture: On a wall shows real wall pieces with your paint on them. Drag on the card to rotate the wall. Under OPENING, Plain, Door, Window, and Garage show the wall with that opening cut out. You paint one plain wall and the app cuts the opening. When the canvas and the card would overlap, the canvas moves left.
• Sticker, Mural, Photo wrap, and Frame: the picture shows once, and the card’s header names the kind.

Tap the card’s title bar to fold it down to the bar, and tap again to open it. On a phone it opens folded, so the canvas stays clear.

The tools

The toolbar is the same as Paint ‘s: Pen, Fill, Eraser, Shapes, Dither, Lasso, then Color and Photo.

• Pen at size 1 draws pixel-perfect lines.
• Shapes draws a straight line here.
• Dither stamps a screen of your color from four sets, Classic, Lines, Shapes, and Bricks. Under sets Keep or Paper for what shows between the dots.
• Color opens the 28-color palette and Grab a color from the drawing.

The lasso

Lasso lifts part of the drawing and moves it. Draw a loop and the texels inside are highlighted with a moving outline. Drag inside the loop to move them. Tap anywhere else to place them where they are. A tool change, an Undo, or a switch to another tile places them too.

The popout on the Lasso button holds the rest:

• Lift: Move lifts the ink and leaves its spot empty. Copy lifts a copy and leaves the original. Pressing either lifts an existing selection at once.
• Flip ↔, Flip ↕, Turn: mirror the selection, or rotate it a quarter turn around its center. It stays lifted.
• Clear: empties the loop, to paper or to a hole, whichever the eraser would leave.
• Let go: places the selection.

On Pattern and Ground texture a lifted selection wraps around the edges as a stroke does. Lifted ink is placed over the paint beneath; holes and bare paper in the selection never cover anything.

Pan and zoom

Two fingers on the canvas pan and pinch. A stroke the first finger began stops where it is. With a mouse, the wheel zooms from half size up to 4×, and a double click resets the view.

Photos

Photo opens the Add a photo popup: Take a photo, Camera roll, Type words, and Make a pattern sheet. Select a photo and Make it yours opens with Frame it and Warp it . Press Use this photo and it is placed on the canvas with a dotted frame and four corner handles. On a wall or ground texture it fills the tile; on the rest it is placed whole.

Three controls:

• Drag inside the frame to place it. The whole picture moves.
• Drag a corner to crop it. That corner of the frame follows the finger and the opposite corner stays. The picture itself does not move, scale, or stretch; what you trim stops showing.
• Size is in the Photo button’s popout, with Fit. Whole picture shrinks the picture until the cropped part fits inside the tile; Fill the tile grows it until it covers the tile. The Size slider runs from 10% to 400%, where 100% is that fit. A pinch on the picture, or a mouse wheel over it, resizes it too, around the pinch point, and never distorts it.

A small pill on the canvas above the toolbar repeats Whole picture, Fill the tile, and Done, so they stay reachable when the corners are off the screen.

The popout also holds Cut out: tap Tap a color to cut it, then tap a color in the picture and everything close to it becomes see-through. How close sets Exact, Similar, or Loose; Put the cuts back restores the cut areas. Re-crop the photo reopens the workspace with the dots where you left them. Under those are the dither panel (Original, B&W, Two-tone, Palette) and the colors to leave out. Press Done to keep the placement, or ✕ to restore the canvas.

On Tiling photo and Ground texture the photo is made seamless when it fills the tile: its lighting is evened out first, so a photo that was brighter on one side does not repeat as a stripe.

Saving and using

Press Done. A new pattern you never touched closes without saving. Plain patterns are saved to Your patterns on the Patterns tab; the rest are saved to Your stickers, Your murals, Your wall textures, Your ground textures, and Your photo textures. A wall texture’s card shows the wall piece from the On a wall preview, with the opening you selected. To move a saved pattern to another shelf, select it with Select on the Patterns tab and use Shelf ▾. See The Patterns tab .

A sticker also becomes a flat fig for Add’s Stickers… picker, 6 blocks on its long side and see-through where you did not paint.

Where each kind works:

• Patterns and ground textures: fig faces from the Color tab’s Pattern , the Pattern stamp in Paint, the scene ‘s floors and land, and the wells on Build.
• Wall textures: the wall wells on Build, under WALL PATTERNS.
• Photo textures: the Pattern stamp in Paint.
• Stickers: Add’s Stickers… picker.
• Murals: the Mural button in the header of a scene’s Build page.
• Frames: the scene’s Frame row under Atmosphere › On display, beside the built-in frames. Each chip reads the frame’s name and its shape. Select one and it is applied to the lens, and the Camera’s shot takes that shape.