Material Painter

Overview

Customize your base by painting walls, floors, and ceilings with any material in the game. Syncs real time in Multiplayer.

Lag / stutters on paint improved drastically in 1. 0. 1.

Controls

• []B - (while aiming at a base surface) Open material picker[/]

  []E - Paint with selected material[/]

  []Z - Undo last paint[/]

Installation

• []Install UE4SS for Subnautica 2[/]

  []Extract the PaintBrush folder into Subnautica2/Subnautica2/Binaries/Win64/ue4ss/Mods/[/]

  []Launch the game[/]

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  Drawbacks

  This mod was mostly experimental at first. I wanted to know if I could stare at a wall, grab its material / vectors and change it to something else entirely. I made it much further than I ever expected to, but that doesn't mean everything works perfectly.

  That said, I was still excited to ship this mod as it felt unique and still gives players options to customize their base in singleplayer or with friends. Here are a few things worth mentioning / setting expectations early on:

  • []Stutters when painting - these have been significantly improved in 1. 0. 1, however they will likely still be noticeable if you're playing on a lower end device[/]

    []Different materials behave in different ways based on their UV mapping, and lots of materials will paint over / block your windows. That said, you can still get away with quite a few that don't (and add those to favourites!)[/]

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  Features

  Material Picker UI

  Browse all ~1000 materials the game currently has, organized into categories. You can paint your floors with the same material used for your pioneer's teeth!

  I curated a list of ~100 materials that I thought looked the best since the full list is overwhelming at first. Includes glass, emissives, glossy surfaces, solid colors, dynamic textures, and more.

  • []Favourites system exists to save your go-to materials and persists across worlds/sessions![/]

    QoL | Eraser, Undo, and Toggleable Brush Size

    • []Toggle between Small (1x1) and Large (3x3) brush for fine detail or broad strokes [/]

      []Couples with the eraser to remove paint and restore the original surface material[/]

      []Full undo stack - revert up to 50 paint actions![/]

      Multiplayer Sync & State Persistence

      • []Paint syncs between all players in real-time, so you can paint your base with your friends![/]

        []All painted surfaces save automatically and reload when you load your save. In multiplayer, the host holds the material mapping file and is the single source of truth[/]

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        Changelog

        • []Significantly optimized the paint logic & improved initial load stability. Paint applies incrementally instead of doing full base repaints, and network traffic is optimized. Per paint averages reduced as follows:[/]

          []   SP: ~20ms to 5-6ms (3. 3x faster)[/]

          []   MP host: ~66ms -> ~30ms (2. 1x faster)[/]

          []   MP client: ~38ms -> ~24ms (1. 6x faster)[/]

          []   3x3 brush (+undo): ~20ms -> ~5-7ms (3x faster)[/]

          [] Paints disappearing when swimming far from your base then returning[/]

          [] Hosts paints sometimes not relaying to clients[/]

          [] Paints missing after exit-to-menu + rejoin[/]

          [] Crash on exit after having opened your paint selector at any point[/]

          • []Initial Release. Material picker, painting, undo, eraser, persistence, multiplayer sync, yada yada[/]

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            Requirements

            • []UE4SS for Subnautica 2 (install this first)[/]

              Source on GitHub

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              Known Issues