rdPalettes Manual version 1.00
Last Updated: 6th June 2026
Starting rdPalettes
Starting rdPalettes is as simple as running UE – the rdPalettes plugin is enabled by default, so you should see it’s menus and toolbar icon straight-away.
Concepts
As far as rdPalettes is concerned, a “Palette” is a floating toolbar that lives in the Levels Viewport.
It contains “slots” which are settings for the Landscape or Foliage mode details (brush, selection, layers etc). These slots can be “All settings”, “Selection”, “Brush”, “Tool Mode” and “Tool Mode + Brush”.
It supports up to 240 slots for settings along with 10 brush slots and 14 utility button slots (total 254).
The palette is all handled from a texture and a mask (a skin). You select/use or create any layout you want for your palettes – creating them from a paint program, just draw them.
The mask texture is a 1-1 layout with the main texture but with the buttons as simple (non-antialiased) masks.
The color of the mask for the button dictates the ID for the button – slots for saved settings and selections start at 10 and go to 240 (it makes sense to increment main settings by 10 to allow sub-settings to occupy IDs that can be easily hidden in other skins.
The Close button has a color of 254, the settings button 253. The drag-gable area for your palette should be 255.
Using with Keyboard Shortcuts
There are 10 assignable and mappable Keyboard Shortcuts you can use with settings slots, by default these are ctrl+F1 -> F10 and shift+ctrl+F1 -> F10 to assign them. You can assign whatever you wish from the Editor Keyboard Shortcuts section (search for rdPalettes).
To use them, from Landscape Edit mode or Foliage mode – set up the tools as you’re wanting to save them, then just hit the save-slot combo (e.g. shift+ctrl+F1) – by default this then opens a window where you can assign a tool-tip and specify what settings to save.
The Type setting allows you to restrict what is saved and applied. It can be any combination of the categories.
Using Slots with the Palette
To use the rdPalettes to save and apply your tool settings – simply open the palette with either the toolbar icon or the shift+1 shortcut and left-click in a slot to apply that slot (empty slots will appear dark when highlighted) and shift+ left-click to save the tool settings to that slot. The same Slot Settings window opens when saving this way.
Configuring rdPalettes settings
There’s quite a few things you can configure for both palettes and shortcuts.
Open the rdPalette Settings window from either the Tools->rdPalettes menu or from the cog icon on the palettes themselves.
The first sections options are quite self-explanatory:
- Show Settings Window on Create shows the Slot Settings window when saving the slot details – when this is disabled, the slot type defaults to “All”.
- Show Toolbar Button, when un-ticked doesn’t show the rdPalettes Toolbar option, although it’s still possible to show/hide the palette with the shift+1 shortcut.
- Save Palette Position keeps track of where the palette is in the viewport and opens there the next time.
- Close on Select closes the palette after you click on a slot/button.
- Show Notifications on Shortcut press – displays the slots tooltip briefly in the Notification area when one is applied.
- Show Overwrite warning – when ticked, a dialog is opened asking if you’re sure you want to overwrite existing slots.
- Show Tooltips on Palettes – when ticked the slots tooltips are shown when the mouse is hovered over the slot.
The next 2 sections are for choosing the palettes to use for the Landscape and Foliage Tools. These are saved on a per-project basis.
You can select the skin to use, the size to display it in the viewport and its opacity.
The Fade Section describes the settings you can use to have the palettes automatically fade out once the mouse has left it’s area. The FadeIn speed is a lot faster than the FadeOut speed.
The Keyboard Shortcut Mapping section gives you the ability to assign any slot to the shortcuts, in both Foliage and Landscape Edit modes.
The Misc section can copy the Palette Settings to the clipboard as a text file, and import those files from the clipboard – so you can easily copy the settings to other projects and computers.
Creating custom Palette skins
You can easily create your own palette skins to use in your projects, they’re simply textures you create in an image editor such as Photoshop. The main full-color texture is what displays on the palette, the second is a grey scale mask of the buttons, the color denotes the ID of the button.
For more info check out the Custom Skin tutorial.
There are templates (and more skins) available in the skin download section.