Hi,

There are a lot of things I like about Krita that I can't get from other software but the biggest thing that makes Krita really stand out for me is something simple: the wrap-around mode. I use it to make tileable sprites and textures for games.

In the near future I plan to begin designing graphics for hex-grid games, and I want to create tileable textures that I can apply to the hexes. There are currently a few hacks I can use to apply square tiles to hex-based maps, but I think it would look much better, be easier to read, and be more visually interesting if I could make the visuals match the map tiles.

Basically I would like to have it so that I have a hexagonal canvas, and if I run off the bottom-right edge of the canvas, the mark is repeated on the top-left edge of the canvas. Likewise, if I run off the top-right edge of the canvas, the mark is repeated on the bottom-left edge of the canvas. The other axis, which would be either vertical or horizontal depending on the orientation of the hex grid, would be the same as in the existing wrap-around mode.

See figures 1 and 2 in this Google Drive folder to see what I mean about the orientation of the hex grid. Each includes arrows to demonstrate what I mean by marks running off the canvas:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2OSWSNkGSUKc2h5Qmdqd2loTlE

The canvas wouldn't actually need to be hexagonal for this, neither in Krita nor in the exported file. Obviously that would be very difficult if not impossible. It would simply have some extra transparency around the edges (if exported in a format that supports transparency; the edges could just include a redundant repeat of the pattern otherwise). Another possibility could be to allow the user to export the image in the smallest possible rectangle that would look the same as the hex grid when tiled--see figure 3.

Hopefully I've done an ok job of explaining this. Let me know if you have any questions. Given the increasing popularity of hex-grid games, particularly in the 4X and strategy RPG genres, I think this is a feature that many other graphic artists could find useful as well. It could also be used to create rectangular tiles that would simply have more variation and irregularity than rectangular tiles currently have. The closest I can currently come to doing this is to create on hex-shaped base and generate 6 clone layers and position them around the center. It works... okay, but as you can see in figure 4, since the clone layers overlap each other it gives different results depending on which edge you are drawing on and which clones are overlapping which others. The only way to really make this work is to be constantly shifting the layers up and down as I work on each different edge of the central hexagon.

This doesn't require anything special, I think. At least some patterns can be achieved with the current system.

You can crop the image so that there is one hexagon in the middle and four quarter hexagons in each corner.

Alternative: Crop is so that there is one full hexagon in the middle and one half hexagon left and right and two half hexagons at top and bottom.