FA Nexus v0.3 — Layer Manager, Paths v2, Scatter Brush & Scene Export

v0.3 is a big workflow update: a first-pass of new Layer Manager panel, a major Paths overhaul, a brand-new Scatter Brush for asset placement, plus much better flatten/export tooling and more consistent “editor session” UX across tools.

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Introducing the Layer Manager (MVP)

The new Layer Manager lives in the right sidebar (directly under Scenes) and lists every tile in the scene, grouped by Elevation. It’s the foundation for managing larger builds without losing track of what’s happening where.

Highlights:

• Tiles grouped by Elevation, with per-elevation visibility and lock toggles

• Selection sync between the list and the canvas + multi-select (Ctrl/Shift click)

• Canvas selection rules: set selection min/max elevation, skip hidden/locked tiles, and an Ignore foreground toggle — direct slection, selection box + Ctrl+A respect these rules

• Elevation nudging for selected tiles via Alt + scroll wheel (with Shift/Ctrl modifiers)

• Visual markers: Scene Background, Scene Foreground, and “Foreground starts at Elev…” separator

• Asset placement + premium editors now default elevation to the highest currently selected tile

Layer Manager preview:

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Paths v2 — major rework

Paths got a significant upgrade: you can now draw multiple paths in one session, even across different elevations, each with their own textures/settings — and you can edit everything placed during the session via Edit Shapes.

What’s new:

• Multiple paths per session, including different elevations

• Foundry Walls toggle (spawns walls following the path centerline; configurable per-path)

• Draw Mode (freehand) with simplification/optimization

• Merge on Commit (merge paths at the same elevation into a single tile)

• Double-click ends current path; Close Loop is now a toggle

Paths v2 preview:

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Asset Scatter Brush

A new tool for quickly “dressing” scenes by scattering selected assets onto the canvas.

• Controls for size, density, spray deviation, and spacing

• Respects random scale/rotation/flips

• Can scatter across multiple elevations in one session

• Commits as a single Scatter Tile per elevation

Performance note: Scatter tiles look like one tile, but still draw each scattered asset individually. If you spray thousands of assets, consider flattening afterward.

Scatter Brush preview:

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Texture Painting improvements

Texture painting got a lot more control in v0.3:

• Height Map Texture Painting: generate a height map per texture so you can paint only specific “height ranges” (with a preview). Great for painting bricks while leaving grout transparent so an underlying background shows through.

• Expanded brush settings (tip size, density, spray deviation, spacing — not just scale)

• Polygon lasso supports Arc segments (Shift click)

• Solid color painting option (handy for manual shadows/touch-ups)

Texture painting preview:

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Flatten improvements & Scene Export

Flatten/export is now much more capable and accessible directly from the Layer Manager.

Layer Manager → Flatten:

• New Flatten button at the bottom of the panel

• Output Snap (round output to half/full grid squares for clean snapping)

• Live output bounds preview + Padding Adjust (trim/add padding while adjusting bounds)

• Persistent options (PPI, quality, etc.)

• Deconstruct offset respect (flattened tiles deconstruct where they currently are, not where they were created)

• Chunking for very large outputs: split in the background and stitch at runtime (debug split lines available if debug is enabled)

Scene Export / Flatten Scene:

• Export or flatten the whole scene, cropped to scene bounds (no padding), accessible when no tiles are selected

• Optional split by foreground elevation (separate background/foreground outputs) + optional chunking

• Exports saved to fa-nexus-assets/exports

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Undo/Redo + Session UX unification

Most premium/editor workflows now behave consistently as “sessions,” with history and predictable commit/cancel behavior.

• Undo/Redo: Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) in Paths, Texture Painting, Building, and Scatter

• Auto-commit on tab change or closing Nexus

• Tool options values are remembered; sliders can be right-clicked to reset to defaults

• All sliders now have a numeric input box for exact values

• Unified Undo / Redo / Commit / Cancel controls in panels

• Cancel via Esc or Cancel button, with confirmation (double-Esc to cancel quickly)

• Tool Options sliders: Sliders no longer respond to plain scroll wheel (except Subgrid Density) to avoid scroll interference. Use Ctrl + wheel, drag the slider, or type an exact value and commit with Enter.

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While this is all still in development and there are plenty of improvements to be made still, I believe that FA Nexus is now fully capable of building large scale maps directly in foundry at high quality and fiddelity.

Example scene snippet built entirely with FA Nexus:

Feedback

FA Nexus is still Beta, and v0.3 expands a lot of surface area—especially with Layers, Paths v2, Scatter, and the new export/flatten pipeline.

This update touches and modifies A LOT of things so I'm sure there will be bugs popping out everywhere, so please do let us know here, on discord or better yet through Github Issues if anything behaves oddly or you have any workflow/improvement requests!

There are more changes in this update than highlighted here,
Full changelog can be found here:

https://github.com/Forgotten-Adventures/FA-Nexus/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md