Quick Start
Here's a quick rundown of the main features of Ratio and how to use them.
To draw blocks, you need two things:
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A layer to draw to
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A tileset or palette to draw with
To create a layer, click the plus icon in the upper right side:
To rename the layer, simply click the layer's name and change the text. Confirm the new name with enter.
To create a palette, click the "Create Palette" button below the layer list:
This will open a prompt for the palette name. This can be anything you want. Now, a default palette with four (rather ugly) colors will appear. You can select palette entries by left-clicking the colors, and edit them using right-click. Palette entries can be changed even after drawing with them; all blocks drawn with the entry will get re-colored automatically, which makes it reasy to try out new colors and see how they work in their context.
Now that we have a layer and a palette, either click the block tool icon in the toolbar or press D on your keyboard. Now you're ready to draw blocks! Simply click around the grid to draw. Blocks are drawn either in the horizontal grid, or next to existing blocks if you point a face of another block.
You can erase blocks by selecting the eraser tool icon in the toolbar or by pressing E on your keyboard. This will turn the block tool's color to red and will target only existing blocks in the selected layer.
If you want to draw only horizontal quads, you can use the floor tool (hotkey F).
With paint tool (hotkey B), you can paint existing blocks with the selected palette entry or tile from a tileset. Simply select the paint tool and the color you want to use, and click away. This tool paints single face at a time.
Ratio Editor supports abstract objects as well. These serve little purpose in visualization, but are powerful when using Ratio as a level editor for games.
To create a new object, click the "New Object" button on the "Objects" tab. This will create a new object at (0, 0, 0) and with a size of (1, 1, 1). You can change the properties of the objects by selecting the object on the list and changing the parameters.
Custom properties can be added as well. Currently supported types are integers, floating points, booleans and strings. NOTE The custom property UI is bugged at the moment and it might be difficult to set the values.
By default, objects are rendered as wireframes. You can cycle through three modes (wireframe, solid, none) by pressing O on your keyboard. To toggle see-through mode, press P. This will make objects visible through the voxel geometry.