A surface painting module is present in Anatomist. This tool allows to draw textures on a mesh, using several drawing tools. This module has been primarily developed in the specific aim of drawing sulcal constraints to build a 2D coordinates system on the brain (see the Cortical Surface toolbox in BrainVisa), but can be used in a general way to draw any texture values.
A demonstration video is available here: Surface Paint movie.
To use this module:
Load a mesh.
Select it and click on
in Anatomist main window.Click on the Ok button on the new popup window. The options in this window are useful only to build a 2D coordinates system on the cortical surface.
A new 3D window containing the mesh opens.
A new control
should be available in the 3D window. Select it.Several new icons and parameters are now available in the 3D window to allow drawing on the surface.
The following table shows the meaning of the buttons and actions in this tool:
Table 10.1. Surface paint module actions
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
 | Manual drawing on the mesh (unconstrained). |
 | Texture value picking tool. Click on the mesh to select the texture value at the selected position. This value will be used in the following drawing operations. |
 | Erase a drawing. Restores the initial texture values at erased positions. |
 | Fill a closed region. The points included in the region are computed and shown to the user who must validate the drawing. A tolerance may be set to adjust the selected region boundaries on continuous floating point textures. |
 | Draw the shortest path between 2 points. The tool suggests a path that must be validated with |
| Draw with anatomical constraints. The drawing path is computed trying to follow the depth of the sulci. |
 | Draw with anatomical constraints. The drawing path is computed trying to follow the top of the gyri. |
 | Magic brush. Draws on the mesh, in the same way as the draw tool, but draws continuous lines by adding junction segments as needed. |
 | Validate a drawing suggested by an automatic tool like the magic wand or the constrained paths. |
 | Cancel a drawing suggested by an automatic tool like the magic wand or the constrained paths. |
 | Distance maps tool. Click on the mesh: it will fills the texture with the geodesic distance to the click point. position |
 | Save the drawing in a texture file. |
| Texture value | Change the current texture value used to draw on the mesh. |
| Tolerance | Determines the tolerance on velues selected by the magic wand tool. |
| Tension | Changes the smoothness of curves drawn by the geodesic path tools (with constraints). |