Material Painter

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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[/*]

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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

[1.0.1]

• 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)[/*]

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

• [Fixed] Hosts paints sometimes not relaying to clients[/*]

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

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

[1.0.0]

• 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

• Initial lag spike when opening the paint menu - should only occur the first time as all widgets are cached after first load[/*]

• Some materials render differently on walls vs floors due to UV mapping. this is inherent to how the game's material system works[/*]

• Some materials from the full browser may appear blank or unusual. The curated list contains only tested materials[/*]

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Check Out My Other Mods :heart:

• QuickStack: Quick-stack items to nearby containers[/*]

• InstantFabricate: Skip crafting wait times[/*]

• SleepThroughTheNight: Skip to dawn from any bed[/*]

• Database Terminal: Browse, search, and pull items from every nearby container through a custom UI [/*]