Imported Affinity Designer brushes unusable in Affinity Designer

[Sunil Wu]

I'm using Affinity Designer 2.1 on Mac.

I found a thread in the forums linking to a brush collection:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gkm6n0lopdon4yk/AAB6MiiGaSzrSDG6k7ug0bnda/Pixel Brushes?dl=0&subfolder_nav_tracking=1
Apparently these brushes are from a previous version of Designer.

I've imported them into designer.
In the pixel persona in Designer I've opened the brush tool. 
I gesture across my canvas and nothing happens.

When I re-open the brush panel I can see that the brush that I've selected has a red outline and a red dot next to it.
This seems to be flagging *something*, but I can't figure out what.

How do I use these imported brushes?
And what is the red outline in the selected brush within the brush panel telling me?

-- update --

It seems like I cannot use any brushes at all.

I've checked the opacity for both the tool and the layer: they are both at 100%.
Some of the brushes in the panel do *not* have the red outline after I start trying to use them, but they leave no visible traces on the image anyway.

[firstdefence]

They should work and do on Mac in Affinity Designer v2.1 

The red dot...

 

[walt.farrell]

A screenshot of the complete application workspace, and the Layers panel showing the layer you're working on, might be helpful.

One possibility: Do you have Protect Alpha enabled in the Context Toolbar. If so, try disabling it.

[Sunil Wu]

Hi Walt.

I'll link to the workspace below.

I assume that the toolbar item 'Lock' refers to a "lock alpha" function?
In my case this is unchecked.

[GarryP]

In your screenshot you have the Erase Brush Tool selected; is that the tool you want to use?

22 minutes ago, Sunil Wu said:

I assume that the toolbar item 'Lock' refers to a "lock alpha" function?

From the Help: Lock—when checked, prevents the symmetry line from being moved.
 

[Sunil Wu]

Quote

In your screenshot you have the Erase Brush Tool selected; is that the tool you want to use?

Hey Garry.
Sorry. I should have made sure that the Paint Brush tool was selected in that screenshot.
Other then that, all the settings in the screenshot are the ones that I'm using.

When I have the Paint Brush tool selected, 'Protect Alpha' is not checked.



 

[Sunil Wu]

Screenshot of current workspace with Paint Brush selected.

[carl123]

You are trying to paint on a pixel layer that is inside another pixel layer called dragon

I don't think that will work in this situation

Move those sub pixel layers outside the dragon pixel layer then try painting again

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Sunil Wu said:

Screenshot of current workspace with Paint Brush selected.

Thanks. In that one you can see the Protect Alpha toggle in the Context Toolbar. But as Carl mentioned, your problem will be that you have your pixel layers nested, which is not what you want.

[Sunil Wu]

3 hours ago, carl123 said:

You are trying to paint on a pixel layer that is inside another pixel layer called dragon

I don't think that will work in this situation

Move those sub pixel layers outside the dragon pixel layer then try painting again

Thank you!
That must have been the issue.

When I create a new pixel layer at the top of all other layer, I was able to use my brushes of choice on it.

I'm coming from Gimp and Inkscape. Layers are different in both of those programmes. But it seems that layers in Designer have aspects that I have yet to learn about.

Thanks again.

[walt.farrell]

41 minutes ago, Sunil Wu said:

But it seems that layers in Designer have aspects that I have yet to learn about.

Here's a start on that: https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/Layers/layerClip.html

There's a good older tutorial on it, that I can't find right now  

In particular, for pixel layers, the nested (clipped) layer is only visible where the parent pixel layer's pixels exist and have a non-zero opacity.