GIMP Generated Brush File Format Version 1 (.vbr)

Updated August 24, 2006.

The VBR format is used for “generated” brushes, that is, brushes specified by a set of numerical parameters rather than a bitmap or pixmap. This format dates back to at least 1998, although it has been tweaked several times. The most recent tweak, in August 2004, added support for variable shapes. Prior to this, the version number used was always 1.0. The version number used for shaped brushes is 1.5.

VBR files are plain text tiles, consisting of a set of fields separated by line breaks. The number of lines is variable, 10 if the brush is “shaped”, 8 otherwise. All numerical fields are in float format, with a dot as decimal separator, except the number of spikes (for shaped brushes), which is an integer.

Non-shaped brushes:

Line 1: Must always contain the magic string “GIMP-VBR”.

Line 2: Version number, always “1.0”.

Line 3: The name of the brush. This is a UTF-8 string, with a maximum length of 255 bytes.

Line 4: The brush spacing.

Line 5: The brush radius, in pixels.

Line 6: The brush hardness.

Line 7: The brush aspect ratio.

Line 8: The brush angle.

Shaped brushes:

Line 1: Must always contain the magic string “GIMP-VBR”.

Line 2: Version number, always “1.5”.

Line 3: The name of the brush. This is a UTF-8 string, with a maximum length of 255 bytes.

Line 4: A string giving the shape of the brush. Currently “circle”, “square”, and “diamond” are supported. The possible shapes are defined by the GimpBrushGeneratedShape enum in core-enums.h.

Line 5: The brush spacing.

Line 6: The brush radius, in pixels.

Line 7: The number of spikes for the shape.

Line 8: The brush hardness.

Line 9: The brush aspect ratio.

Line 10: The brush angle.