forgottenadventures
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FA Nexus v0.3 — Layer Manager, Paths v2, Scatter Brush & Scene Export
🕑 Added 2026-01-28 14:45:07 +0000 UTCv0.3 is a big workflow update: a first-pass of new Layer Manager panel, a major Paths overhaul, a brand-new Scatter Brush for asset placement, plus much better flatten/export tooling and more consistent “editor session” UX across tools.
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Introducing the Layer Manager (MVP)
The new Layer Manager lives in the right sidebar (directly under Scenes) and lists every tile in the scene, grouped by Elevation. It’s the foundation for managing larger builds without losing track of what’s happening where.
Highlights:
Tiles grouped by Elevation, with per-elevation visibility and lock toggles
Selection sync between the list and the canvas + multi-select (Ctrl/Shift click)
Canvas selection rules: set selection min/max elevation, skip hidden/locked tiles, and an Ignore foreground toggle — direct slection, selection box + Ctrl+A respect these rules
Elevation nudging for selected tiles via Alt + scroll wheel (with Shift/Ctrl modifiers)
Visual markers: Scene Background, Scene Foreground, and “Foreground starts at Elev…” separator
Asset placement + premium editors now default elevation to the highest currently selected tile
Layer Manager preview:
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Paths v2 — major rework
Paths got a significant upgrade: you can now draw multiple paths in one session, even across different elevations, each with their own textures/settings — and you can edit everything placed during the session via Edit Shapes.
What’s new:
Multiple paths per session, including different elevations
Foundry Walls toggle (spawns walls following the path centerline; configurable per-path)
Draw Mode (freehand) with simplification/optimization
Merge on Commit (merge paths at the same elevation into a single tile)
Double-click ends current path; Close Loop is now a toggle
Paths v2 preview:
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Asset Scatter Brush
A new tool for quickly “dressing” scenes by scattering selected assets onto the canvas.
Controls for size, density, spray deviation, and spacing
Respects random scale/rotation/flips
Can scatter across multiple elevations in one session
Commits as a single Scatter Tile per elevation
Performance note: Scatter tiles look like one tile, but still draw each scattered asset individually. If you spray thousands of assets, consider flattening afterward.
Scatter Brush preview:
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Texture Painting improvements
Texture painting got a lot more control in v0.3:
Height Map Texture Painting: generate a height map per texture so you can paint only specific “height ranges” (with a preview). Great for painting bricks while leaving grout transparent so an underlying background shows through.
Expanded brush settings (tip size, density, spray deviation, spacing — not just scale)
Polygon lasso supports Arc segments (Shift click)
Solid color painting option (handy for manual shadows/touch-ups)
Texture painting preview:
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Flatten improvements & Scene Export
Flatten/export is now much more capable and accessible directly from the Layer Manager.
Layer Manager → Flatten:
New Flatten button at the bottom of the panel
Output Snap (round output to half/full grid squares for clean snapping)
Live output bounds preview + Padding Adjust (trim/add padding while adjusting bounds)
Persistent options (PPI, quality, etc.)
Deconstruct offset respect (flattened tiles deconstruct where they currently are, not where they were created)
Chunking for very large outputs: split in the background and stitch at runtime (debug split lines available if debug is enabled)
Scene Export / Flatten Scene:
Export or flatten the whole scene, cropped to scene bounds (no padding), accessible when no tiles are selected
Optional split by foreground elevation (separate background/foreground outputs) + optional chunking
Exports saved to fa-nexus-assets/exports
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Undo/Redo + Session UX unification
Most premium/editor workflows now behave consistently as “sessions,” with history and predictable commit/cancel behavior.
Undo/Redo: Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) in Paths, Texture Painting, Building, and Scatter
Auto-commit on tab change or closing Nexus
Tool options values are remembered; sliders can be right-clicked to reset to defaults
All sliders now have a numeric input box for exact values
Unified Undo / Redo / Commit / Cancel controls in panels
Cancel via Esc or Cancel button, with confirmation (double-Esc to cancel quickly)
Tool Options sliders: Sliders no longer respond to plain scroll wheel (except Subgrid Density) to avoid scroll interference. Use Ctrl + wheel, drag the slider, or type an exact value and commit with Enter.
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While this is all still in development and there are plenty of improvements to be made still, I believe that FA Nexus is now fully capable of building large scale maps directly in foundry at high quality and fiddelity.
Example scene snippet built entirely with FA Nexus:
Feedback
FA Nexus is still Beta, and v0.3 expands a lot of surface area—especially with Layers, Paths v2, Scatter, and the new export/flatten pipeline.
This update touches and modifies A LOT of things so I'm sure there will be bugs popping out everywhere, so please do let us know here, on discord or better yet through Github Issues if anything behaves oddly or you have any workflow/improvement requests!
There are more changes in this update than highlighted here,
Full changelog can be found here:
https://github.com/Forgotten-Adventures/FA-Nexus/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
Comments
Weston Fiala
One thing I would love is the ability to look through the tokens and be able to copy the link to where it is saved without having to place it on the scene. I use tokenizer for setting up my tokens and having the path in the clipboard would be quite helpful.
Forgotten Adventures
There are plenty of incompatibilities with 'Levels' module so I woulnd't recommend using the 2 mods together. tiles related to the building are linked in the background (walls, texture fill, windows etc.) so they kidna act as a group for deletion. I havent tested how it interacts with the duplicate copies, as copying buildings like that is not really an intended workflow right now (since it wont copy the foundry walls anyway so ... ) but seems like it all remains 'grouped' together. So I would say that works as intended. If this is a bug-report about undoing building deletion than yeah, Undo-ing a deleted building as a whole is def more tricky and not really handled well at the moment, I'll most likely take a look at it in the future updates. If this is jut a frustration venting post, not sure I can offer anything but my condolances?
jseeley150
I copied my main building Outer Walls (single) asset because the shadows from the outer walls were bleeding down to the Level below the Level it was on. Everything had been applied, and the FA Nexus window was closed (e.g. everything had been applied, I was tweaking to see if I could figure out how to turn off the shadow that was bleeding down to the lower Level). Using the FA Layers tool to select just the single copied asset, I deleted the copy. When I deleted the copy, it deleted the copy, and the original, and all of the internal walls and doors I had spent 30 minutes on. Tons of "undo" restored the Foundry Walls, but not the internal drawn walls.
Rob Leonard
Such amazing work...great job! I can't wait to use it.
Raphael
A few months ago I suggested something like a tile browser similar to your token browser regarding foundry and you said you might do something like that.... oh boy was I rewarded after tuning back into the TTRPG hobby after a few months. You guys rock. Literally the best tool for me right now and you are not even finished.
Hungry Goblin
Insane work, instantly replaced my previous map builder. The only thing missing feature is a recoloring tool now! Your name is the first one I drop when people ask for assets.
Thierry Zeller
Endlich eine Alternative zu ClipStudio
Brennen
FA really puts in the effort, I appreciate you guys so much
