Better gradient matrices / textured pressure brushes

Hello, dear Aseprite community! :3

Since yesterday, I’ve been fiddling around with gradient dithering matrices, trying to create my own textured brushes. Here’s a link to my “research” process: [Feature Suggestion] - Change dithering matrices from RGB to grayscale · Issue #2573 · aseprite/aseprite · GitHub
Long story short, I did succeed, to an extent:
(Documentation on how to do this is in the 3rd link below.)
Example

However, the implementation of these can be significantly improved. I’ve created 3 feature suggestions on the github page, related to these pressure brushes:

  1. [Feature Suggestion] Pressure sensitivity falloff towards brush edges · Issue #2575 · aseprite/aseprite · GitHub
    First suggestion is to implement some sort of “pressure falloff”, similar to photoshop’s basic soft brush. This would help avoid sharp edges when drawing with these brushes (like the ones you see in the gif above).

  2. [Feature Suggestion] Tickbox to invert dithering matrices · Issue #2576 · aseprite/aseprite · GitHub
    My second suggestion is to add a tickbox that would allow the user to instantly invert the matrix (painting in the heavy-pressure areas with light pressure and vice versa). I’ve achieved a similar effect in the gif above by manually inverting my brush - it’s 2 brushes now. This takes too long and is too complicated for the average user though.

  3. [Feature Suggestion] Make gradient pressure brushes (using dithering matrices) more accessible · Issue #2577 · aseprite/aseprite · GitHub
    Which leads us to the third suggestion. The whole process of creating these brushes and making them work is WAY too complicated for users - it took me over a day to figure out everything, not all users have the know-how or nerves to go through this. Beside a tutorial, their implementation could be seriously improved (see my points in the github page)

I would love to see more people make, share and use these brushes, because I think they have the potential to be very powerful and speed up pixel art significantly in some cases. Currently, I could only find one person who made some brushes (but they are more similar to dithering matrices, than brushes) - it’s like a feature no one knows about. I’d like to spread the word, so do share this with your fellow Asepriters!

Thanks for reading.

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Convenience links:

  1. Falloff towards edges
  1. Tickbox to invert metrices
  1. Make dither matrix creation more accessible
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