Here you will find a clear explanation of how the mod works, it's features and options, as well as some hidden tricks which you will definitely want to know about to use the mod to its fullest.

The first step is to subscribe to the mod on the workshop, if you haven't already. And while you're there, don't forget to leave me a thumbs up and/or a fav if you think you will like the mod. Once the game is started, make sure to enable the mod.


There are a few mods I would suggest you get that go well together with Forest Brush.

• Tree LOD Fix
  You really should get this, trust me. It will make your forests look much better from a distance.
  
  
• Tree Movement Control
  This one you need in order to stop or even just reduce the exaggerated swaying of trees in the wind.
  
  
• No Radioactive Deserts and More
  This mod is very important. The feature we are interested here is that it prevents trees from turning ugly when planted near or in water. The rest of the mod's features are also great.

In order to make the most of this mod you should have a healthy selection of trees and plants to use with it.

• MrMaison
  There are hundreds of amazing plants on the workshop but I am going to give a shoutout here to MrMaison who's trees are of exceptional quality and who's collection cover almost everything from pines, to deciduous, to palm trees and tropical plants, etc. You really can't go wrong.
  
  His trees are of great quality and beauty and are perfect for prominent spots where you want to show off some garden or park, or a small woodland.
  
  Visit his workshop or download all of them from his collection.
  
  
• pdelmo
  Another prolific author of great-looking, if slightly less "HD" trees and plants is pdelmo, which I also highly recommend especially for his great selection of low poly but nonetheless beautiful assets.
  
  His are especially well suited for planting in large quantities due to being less heavy on the poly count and texture size.

There are many other great plant and tree creators out there, such as Lost Gecko or Breeze, but there is no room to list them all so I encourage you to go out and explore the Trees section of the workshop.

Once you're in, the mod is accessed via the forest brush button on the main toolbar.

You can also toggle the panel via ALT+B hotkey.

If you prefer another hotkey, or have other mods that use the same hotkey, you can change this preference in the Forest Brush section of the game's options menu.

This panel is designed small so that you can have a free view of your city or map while using the brushes you make to paint forests, without obnoxious panels in the way.

The brush selection panel consists of:

• "Select brush" dropdown
  This is where you access all your saved brushes.
  
  
• "Toggle tree list" button
  Press this to toggle the tree selection section.
  
  
• "Toggle brush options" button
  Press this to toggle the options section.
  
  
• "Toggle brush shapes" button
  Press this to toggle the brush shapes section.

In this section, you can add or remove trees to your brushes as well as add new brushes or remove/rename existing brushes.

The trees list section consists of:

• "Rename brush" textfield
  
  This is where you can change the name of your brushes.
  
  
• "Create new brush" button
  Click this button to create a new brush.
  
  
• "Delete current brush" button
  Click this button to delete the current brush.
  
  
• "Trees List"
  Scroll through this list to add/remove trees to your brush. Tree List-Items are explained further down this guide.
  
  
• "Search" textfield
  
  Type here to search for specific trees according to the "search criteria" explained further down this guide.

In this section I'll briefly explain how to create, rename and delete brushes.


To create a new brush, click the "Create new brush" button.

By default, newly created brushes will be empty.

Set the "When creating a new brush" option to "Keep trees from last brush" in the Forest Brush section of the game's options panel to copy trees from the previously selected brush when creating new brushes.


To rename a brush, click on the "Rename brush" textfield.

Type the desired name for your brush here. If another brush using the name already exists, the text will turn red and you wont be able to use the name.


To delete a brush, select it, then click the "Delete current brush" button.

When you attempt to delete a brush, a confirmation window pops up, asking you if you really wish to delete the brush.

Beware! After confirming deletion, there is no way to recover a deleted brush!

In this section, I will explain the trees list, the items in it and how to use them.


The tree list is where you will find all the trees that are available for you to use with the mod.

This is where you can scroll through and select various brushes to use in your brushes.

The list is made up of rows which represent tree items.

To add or remove a tree, toggle the checkbox.

To add or remove all trees in the list, hold CTRL while toggling any checkbox.

To change the probability of a tree, use the slider, or type into the text field.

By default, the trees list is sorted by tree name in ascending alphanumerical order (0 - 9 and A - Z). You can change this option in the Forest Brush section of the game's options menu.


Each row has a thumbnail, a checkbox, a name label, a probability slider and a probability text field.

The thumbnail displays a preview of the tree.

The checkbox determines if the tree is included in the current brush or not.

The name label displays the name of the tree.

The probability slider and text field let you assign a "weight" for the tree in your brush.
The higher the value the more this tree will appear when you paint with the brush.

Probability values don't represent percentage points. They are proportional.

If your brush has 4 trees and each one has equal probability value, then each one will have a 25% chance to appear, regardless of what the actual probability value is.

Probability controls are active only when the tree is added to the brush.

There is a limit of 100 trees per brush.

In this section I will explain how to use the search bar and the various ways you can filter the tree list to find your desired trees.

Use the search field to quickly find a specific tree.

You may search trees by:

• Tree name
  Search trees by matching their names, eg. "pine"
  
  
• Tree author
  Search trees by matching their author names, eg. "mrmaison"
  
  
• Texture size
  Search trees by texture size, eg. "512px"
  
  Type a number followed by the word "px" (no space) to show trees with a texture of which the largest dimension is equal to or lower than the specified pixel size.
  
  For example, a search for "512px" would show trees which are 512x512px, 256x512, 512x128, 512x64, etc. But not 512X1024 or 2048x512.
  
  
• Triangle count
  Search trees by tri count, eg. "1000tris"
  
  Type a number followed by the word "tris" (no space) to show trees with a triangle count equal to or lower than the specified tri count.
  
  For example, a search for "1000tris" would show trees that have 1000 triangles or less.

You may combine search modes, eg. "pine pdelmo 512px 200tris" is a valid search query.

Additionally, you may search for "+" or "-" (without quotes) to show only trees that are in the brush, or trees which are not in the brush, respectively.


With AND search logic, all terms in your query must match for the tree to be shown.
With OR logic, any term in your query that matches will add the tree to the results list.

Let's assume you have the following trees:

1. Green Aspen
   
2. Green Oak
   
3. Oak
   
4. Brown Oak

In this scenario, an "AND logic" search for "Green Oak" would return only tree number 2.

Conversely, an "OR logic" search for "Green Oak" would return all 4 trees.

By default, the search field uses "AND logic". You can change this option in the Forest Brush section of the game's options menu.

In this section I'll explain the various brush options and how to use them.

This slider controls the size of the brush area.

You can also hold ALT and move the mouse sideways to change size.

Reduce size to 1 to enter Single Tree mode.

This slider controls the strength, speed, or "flow" of the brush when you are painting or deleting trees.

You can also hold ALT and move the mouse vertically to change strength.

This slider changes the distance between trees.

Beware! High density values means you will reach the tree limit much faster.

It is recommended to use low density values or auto-density in most cases.

The auto-density option uses the tree size to automatically calculate optimal tree density.

You can also hold CTRL and move the mouse vertically to change density (this doesn't have any effect when auto-density is enabled.)

If you wish to go back to default options, press the "Reset" button.

In this section I will explain the brush shapes section and show you how you can add your own brush shapes.

To change the shape of the brush simply click on one of the shapes in the "brush shapes" box.

The mod comes with 12 predefined shapes which should cover most needs.

You may add your own brush shapes if you wish to.

To add a brush shape, simply place it in the Brushes folder located in your steam library installation directory at:


The brush shapes must be black on transparent background, and 128px by 128px exactly, with at least 1 totally transparent pixel along the edges on each side, ie. the brush shape must not touch the edges.

If you don't follow these requirements, the brush shape will "bleed" into the surrounding area and trees will be painted on the bleed areas too.

In this section, I'll quickly explain how to use the brush as well as some useful tips, tricks and shortcuts to make life easier.

Once you've created some brushes you're all set to go:

To paint trees, simply left-click in an appropriate area.

Right-click to delete trees.

• Hold CTRL while moving the mouse sideways to rotate the brush.
  
• Hold CTRL while moving the mouse vertically to change brush density.
  
• Hold ALT while moving the mouse sideways to change brush size.
  
• Hold ALT while moving the mouse vertically to change brush strength.
  
• Hold SHIFT while deleting to delete only trees that are in your currently selected brush.
  
• Hold SHIFT while painting to ignore water and prop collisions.
  
• Hold SHIFT while painting in single tree mode to ignore water, prop, building and network collisions. It also lets you place trees closer together than normal.
  
• While holding down ALT or CTRL, a useful infobox appears on the top right side of the panel where you can see the size, strength and density of the brush at a glance, as well as see how many different tree types are in your current brush.

In v1.2.8 I added Single Tree mode
Here I will explain how it works.


To use single tree mode, reduce brush size to 1.

While in single tree mode, you will see a rendered preview of the tree that will get plopped next out of all the trees in your brush. This mode allows precision placement of trees including ignoring collision by activating...


The mod has bundled in tree anarchy feature while in single tree mode.

To use it, hold shift while plopping to place trees on top of roads, buildings, or other places where you normally wouldn't be able to place them.


Click and drag to draw lines of trees as with Extra Landscaping Tools tree tool.

Brush Density and Size settings affect how close to each other you can place trees and also the gap between trees when you click and drag.

Here's I'll try to mention anything that didn't quite fit in the other sections.


The UI state is saved between sessions.

Things saved are:

• Selected brush
  The last brush you used will always be selected the next time you open the mod
  
  
• Panel position
  The UI will appear where you last moved it to when you open the game
  
  
• Open sections
  The various sections of the UI will retain their collapsed/expanded state

There is an option to prevent vanilla trees from showing in the list.

You can set this in the Forest Brush section of the game's options menu.

Make sure you have custom trees installed before you enable this or your list will be empty.


The mod has a brief tutorial which you see the first time you open the mod.

This can be read again by clicking the Advisor button in the main toolbar while the mod is open.


The mod is fully localized and currently includes English, German, Spanish and Russian translations.

If you like this mod and would like to contribute there are a couple of ways in which you can do so:

• Translations
  If you are a speaker of one of the game's supported languages which this mod doesn't currently provide a translation for you can easily contribute a translation by visiting this link[github.com].
  
  Simply copy the text and translate it then send it to me at tpbsworkshop at gmail dot com, or you can also create a pull request.
  
  
• Improve the mod
  This mod is open source and you can at any time contribute improvements or bug fixes on github[github.com].
  
  
• Donations
  All my mods are free and always will be, but you can if you desire, contribute with a donation[www.paypal.me] which is always greatly appreciated.