Tile Tool

Tile Tool allows you to create and draw with Tiles.
To use Tile Tool, download the script below and the Tilesets.

If you want to share your own Tilesets with the rest of us, contact me. I'm also interested what people are doing with Tile Tool, so please let me know if you make something nice with it!

Download Tile Tool 1.13

(updated 16/8/2009)
Note: Tile Tool has now been fixed for the latest version of Scriptographer (2.5). Please report any bugs you encounter, and I will fix them as soon as possible.

Change log

07/09/2006 - 1.11 - dropdown menus now work on pc
10/10/2006 - 1.12 - updated to work with latest version of Scriptographer
16/08/2007 - 1.13 - updated to work with Scriptographer 2.0.024
16/08/2007 - 1.14 -updated to work with Palette code, saving +- 250 lines of code in the process and added support for shift to move tiles below others while drawing

Download Tilesets

(zipped Illustrator documents)
Standard Tilesets (updated 20/08/2006)
Raster Mix

Demo

Tile Tool demonstration movie - Quicktime 7 required
(this demo features an old Tile Tool interface, new demos coming soon)

How To Movies

How to create a new Tileset
How to work with Sequential Tiles

Examples

(designed by Jonathan Puckey)

cl_janvantoorn1.jpg

* Classroom poster series - Jan van Toorn

cl_jeanmarc1.jpg

* Classroom poster series - Jean Marc Bustamente

cl_joseteunissen2.jpg

* Classroom poster series - Jose Teunissen

cl_marcbijl1.jpg

* Classroom poster series - Marc Bijl

playtime_correct_size.jpg

* Playtime poster

User interface

• Mac users: Press the option key while drawing to not place Tiles.
PC users: press the control key while drawing to not place Tiles.
(handy for when you have to cross over other Tiles and don't want to place a Tile over them)

• Use the Tilesets pulldown to select a Tileset that you want to draw with.

• 'Refresh Tilesets' looks for Tilesets in your document and adds them to the Tileset pulldown menu. (Refreshing happens automatically most of the time)

• Use the Order pulldown to change the way Tile Tool works when the selected Tileset has multiple corner tiles:

Top Most: Only selects Tiles at the top of the Tileset corner layers

topmost.jpg

* example of Top Most

Random: Selects random Tiles
Sequential Tiles: Places Tiles in sequence according to their position in the Tileset corner layers

order.gif

* example of Random and Sequential

Image Pixel Values: Pick Tiles based on the darkness of the encodeMd5 pixel beneath it.

tracing.jpg

* example of Image Pixel Values

• The Rotation pulldown

Straight: The standard drawing setting.
Rotate: Rotate the horizontal and vertical Tiles 180 degrees in the drawing direction
Rotate to Cursor: Rotates Tiles to the cursor while drawing

rotation.gif

* Example of Straight vs Rotate to Cursor

• Trace Selected Path traces the selected path using the active Tileset

• Create New Empty Tileset creates the empty layers needed to make a new Tileset

• Duplicate Selected Tileset makes a copy of the selected Tileset

• Set Image scales the selected encodeMd5 to make the size of its pixels match the size of the Tiles in the active Tileset. You can also use Set Image to move a raster back into the Tile grid after you've moved it

• Raster Selection prepares the selected items for tracing by rasterizing them in the resolution of the active Tileset.

(Use the last two options in combination with Image Pixel Values in the Order pulldown to trace encodeMd5s)

Tilesets

layers.gif

* Tilesets reside within the Illustrator document in the layer 'Tiles'.

Tile Tool.js

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oh man - you'r jesus!

what a script!
i'll need days to experiment with it ;)

thanks for releasing it to the public!

Yes, congratulations on the release, Jonathan.

The series of classroom posters would make a nice entry in the gallery. Could you send me some material together with a short text?

Simon: The font I used for the posters is Gravur condensed (that font keeps coming up as a subject around here!) And yes, the tool is now finally ready for normal people to use.. There's such a big difference between making a proof of concept and a tool that can be used by 'anybody'..

Juerg: Nice, I'll send it to you soon!

I was fooling around on a windows machine in CS and for some reason the drop downs don't work. ( I don't get any error, nothing happens). Also, I noticed that when I release, the layer changes to the last shape in the tile set that was placed. Very cool tool though!

there seem to be some bugs on windows (on cs and not cs2..?) both with Tile Tool and Text Pencil (and maybe with Scriptographer). I will be doing pc testing next week to see what's up with the gui not updating.

Well, I'd just like to add this bug:

If you click more than once in the assign buttons (double hash or double asterisk) after having selected the Tile tool or Text Pencil, a new pop-up window appears everytime you click the buttons.

And yes, I'm also experiencing the drop-downs not working.

Windows XP SP2
Athlon XP
Illustrator CS2
Scriptographer 2.0.0.17

thanks

another bug:

In TextPencil, when I assing a button to it, a pop-up window opens, right?

Well, if I close it, and try to use the TextPencil, errors appear (in the Scriptographer console)

Jonathan

First before I forget, the stats:
PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5 ghz
2.5 gb ram
Nvidia gForce 6800
Illustrator CS2 12.0.1
As far as I can remember, the most current version of java (if this matters, I'll need to know where to find that info)

Ok, now that I've got that out of the way.
Spurred on by the article in eye, I've downloaded your tile tool and been playing with it, unfortunately I can't get it to work. I've watched the quicktime video dozens of times, and can get an empty tile set, but when I fill in all the layers like described in the video and click refresh, the tile set does not show up. In fact, try as I might, I can't get anything to show up in the tile set dropdown. And the one time I did manage to get a tile set to show up (I wish I could figure out what I did!) it wouldn't draw anything. I was just curious is anyone else had this problem and solved it or could maybe point me towards a tutorial (I couldn't find one on the site)

Regardless, thank you for your time in creating this magnificent plug in.

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