[Eskil]

Well I have been thinking a bit about "3D painting" One way of doing it is doing it like in Maya paint effects. They have a Z-buffer, and that makes it possible to draw over and under other stokes. have shadows and so on. It looks really cool, and the demos are great, but I haven't sean any one ever do any thing good with it. Some times i think the reality is that Painters do like to paint, they don't like the painting apps do the painting for them. The painting app should help them but not take over.

So im thinking in other directions, One direction i have been thinking about is surface normals, I have scaled down the ideas a bit but you are going to see a tool where you can light a ball with a number of lights. the when you draw is selects the color from the ball depending on the angle of the brush stroke. It is something we are going to have to see if it is use full or not....

When i wrote Loq Airou a lot of things turned out to be better or worse then planed so I made a lot of changes during to course of time. (have you tried it yet?)

Loq Airou was also designed for people who are used to traditional drawing, so it has a one hand interface. I may try that again but i think i will want a few keys this time. I will try to keep the special case only.

E

[Light]

I couldnt get it to work.. oh well. I'll probaby have to study it some. good luck..

[Ian Jones]

I think you need to consider a lot of digital artists have become used to using selection tools and methods that help them paint in a particular area, like Eyewoo for example. If you could make some really advanced selection and masking tools, like Procreate Knockout, then you would save us a lot of time cleaning up edges etc... The trick is to not let a user get sidetracked from painting. All these amazing tools may be really cool, but they cannot get in the way of a creative process and concentrated train of thought.

[Jin]

Eskil and others,

You guys have some great ideas, and I'm going to love seeing how this develops.

I think you'd do well to learn what Painter is already doing and that will take considerable time unless you're halfway there already.

It would seem a shame for you to do all that work, thinking you're creating something new and different only to find out it's already done, people love it, and aren't interested in your "new" thing. In other words, in order to create something new, it seems that one needs to really know what's "old".

For example, one of the things you mention wanting to create is a Canvas that remembers.

In addition to many, many controls available to create almost any kind of brush you can dream up (maybe any), Painter has the Brush Looks feature.

Painter's Brush Looks are not only the brush variant's settings (either as they come out of the box or custom settings done by the user to create and save a new brush variant), but also the chosen Paper and Paper settings (Scale, Contrast, Brightness, Invert box checked or not checked, etc.), the chosen Pattern and its settings, the chosen Gradient, and Color.

The Brush Look is saved in a Looks library and with a single click on the particular Brush Look icon, the brush Look is built. (Or, if you prefer, the "tool" is built).

Brush Looks, like Papers, Patterns, brush variants, and other Painter items can be shared with other users, easily, even across platforms.

In Painter's Brush Controls palette sections, controls available for a single brush variant include (and this doesn't refer to additional settings optional for a Brush Look):
_______
General

Dab Type (23 options)
Stroke Type (4 options)
Method (8 options)
Subcategory (6 options)
Source (6 options)
Opacity
Grain (amount of Paper texture applied with Grainy brush variants)
____
Size

Brush Dab Profile (6 options)
Size
Min Size
Size Step
Feature (bristle density)
_______
Spacing

Spacing
Min Spacing
Damping
Continuous Time Deposition (more paint when brush is held still/moved slowly)
Cubic Interpolation, Points
_____
Angle

Squeeze
Angle
Ang Rng
Ang Step
_______
Bristle

Thickness
Clumpiness
Hair Scale
Scale/Size
_______
Impasto

Draw to (Color, Depth, or Color and Depth)
Depth Method (5 options)
Invert
Negative Depth
Depth (amount slider)
Smoothing
Plow (how much one stroke cuts through the depth of another stroke)
__________
Expression (each of the items below can be set to one of nine options: None, Velocity, Direction, Pressure, Wheel, Tilt, Bearing, Source, Random and each has an Invert checkbox):

Size
Jitter
Opacity
Grain
Color
Angle
Resat
Bleed
Flow
Feature
Depth
Volume

(for the Image Hose category only):
Size
Jitter
Opacity
Grain
Angle
(for the following Image Hose items - the options for each are None, Velocity, Direction, Pressure, Wheel, Tilt, Bearing, Source, Random, and Sequential):
Rank 1
Rank 2
Rank 3

_____
Well

Resat
Bleed
Dryout
Brush Loading

________
Airbrush

Spread
Min Spread
Flow
Min Flow

____
Rake

Contact Angle
Brush Scale
Turn Amount
Bristles
Spread Bristles
Soften Bristle Edge

______
Random

Jitter
Clone Location:
Variability
How Often
Random Brush Stroke Grain
Random Clone Source

_____
Water

Wetness
Pickup
Dry Rate
Evap Thresh
Diffuse Amt
Cap Factor
Grn Soak-In
Accurate Diffusion
Wind:
Direction
Force

_______
Cloning

Clone Color
Clone Type (includes Normal, Offset, Rotate and Scale, Scale, Rotate, Rotate and Mirror, Rotate/Scale/Shear, Bilinear, and Perspective)
Obey Source Selection
Copy Source Selection
4-Point Tiling

_____
Mouse

Pressure
Tilt
Bearing
Wheel

__________
Liquid Ink

Type (includes Ink Plus Color, Ink Only, Color Only, Soften Ink Plus Color, Soften Ink Only, Soften Color Only, Resist, Erase, and Presoftened Ink Plus Color)
Smoothness
Volume
Min Volume
Rand Vol
Rand Size
Bristle Frc
Rand Br Vol
Rand Br Size


In Painter's Art Materials section, not only Paper, Pattern, Gradient, and Weave choices and settings can affect how a brush variant paints.

This palette also includes the Color section with its obvious uses, the Color Set section where Color Sets can be made by picking each color or instantly from an existing image and used as the color Source when painting, the Color Variability section where we can choose to paint HSV, RGB, or paint using Gradient or Color Set as the source (as mentioned above). When set to paint in HSV, the Hue, Saturation, and Value sliders can be adjusted individually to control the degree of HSV variability in the brush stroke. With some brush variants, the brush can be made to paint with different colors on each bristle, paint with two colors in the brushstroke, or with different colors (within a range) in each new brushstroke.

Once any brush variant is set up, it can be saved in a new Brush Category and that Brush Category's icon placed in a Custom Palette so, again, with a single click on the icon the brush variant (or "tool") is available to use.

In reference to the Canvas that remembers, and in addition to Painter's Brush Looks and saved Custom brush variants, there's another Painter feature that can be used that contains every setting used in Painter while a painting is done. That is, the Scripts feature.

If the option to Record Script is chosen at the beginning of the painting, then the option to Stop Recording Script is chosen at the end of the painting and the Script is saved with a unique and descriptive name, it can be played back at a later date.

In addition, since it can be exported as a text file, it can be opened and studied to recall how everything was set up. It can also be edited if the user knows what he/she is doing.

A Painter Script can be played back into a Framestack (movie frames), then saved as a QuickTime, AVI, or animated GIF.

I don't recall if anyone mentioned this already, but you can download a 30 day trial version of Painter 7 from the Procreate site to become familiar, hands on, with what it contains:

http://www.procreate.com

If you do take time to download and play with Painter 7, since you mention interesting ways to apply Patterns, take a look at the Pattern Pens brush category and Cloning options. You can paint a Pattern, for instance, on a perspective plane, among other things. For an example (ignore whether or not it's a pretty image.. it's not):

http://www.pixelalley.com/brushstrokes/brushstrokes-pg5.html

[Rinaldo]

Eskil-

something simple would be nice, that doesn't get in the way of creating. that doesn't take liberties in deciding what the user wants to create (like painter). simple to start with but with enough customsiation of the main brush tool to go anywhere.

in terms of interface. I prefer 1 hand to be always able to draw. not clicking on shit all over the screen. 2 hands is not as bad as it sounds.
in current applications, every time my drawing hand has to acces a menu is time wasted. concentration lost. I don't care if my off hand is all over that keyboard like a piano. as long as I can keep drawing with my drawing hand.

"Some times i think the reality is that Painters do like to paint, they don't like the painting apps do the painting for them. "

bingo,
this is maybe one of the differences between a lot of 3d and 2d artists. style is much more of a comodity in the realm of 2D art. speed is more important in 3D.
if you want to make an app full of cool new features that are fun to use and mess about with. then go for it.
but if you are wanting to make it for "digital artists" / matte painters / concept artists, then it's a different story. you can't just go and dictate what is needed. it's all very grassroots stuff. like it or not. it's not the same as 3D art. there are applications and procceses that actuialy do work. they are tried and tested. 3D apps are utter shit for the mostpart, cumbersome, clunky etc. there is no history for 3D interface and feature set.
with a 2D app you really just want something that's not gonna get in the way. it doesn't have to be ultra special. most of the end result stems from the users knowledge of drawing/painting.
it's the little things that matter. like how the brush feels. how the pressure sensitivity works. and it's totaly different for each and every one of us.
neither PS or painter have really got it right. they are both clumsy at best. but somehow people get around the faults, make peace, and get on with drawing.

to be honest it does sound like you are more interested in satisfying your own urge to create something new and revolutionary. as opposed to seriously catering for the needs and wants of potential users.
which is fine. but not practical for actuial real world use.

they are different things, trying to make a new app that is like nothing we have seen before, and creating something for a specific user base. and they will not always go together.
_________________

Dailyscribble

[Eskil]

Jin:

An other huge post with lots of good stuff, I have so much feed back to read I don't have time to write any code...

Its a really good idea to take a good look at painter, I will.

"looks" will be stored in the system, My goal is that the user should not spend much time configuring tools. once he or she has configures a number of pencils the way they like it, they should just use them and not be in contact with any menus, config pannels or any of that it should be 100% drawing.

Much of your post is just very informative and not much to comment...

Rinaldo:

You are spot on what I am trying to create.

One hand is best, 2 is ok, static panels, menus and pull down menus are bad.

3D apps have rarely a clean design, and contain a million little knobs that do all kind of things that get in the way of creating. My hope whit my 3D apps is to try to get away form that.

> to be honest it does sound like you are more interested in satisfying your own urge to create something new and revolutionary.

Well, yes that is true. I do it because i want it. But that is how i think things should be done, wouldn't it be great if the people who make TV would make shows they would like to watch themselves? I think this is true for many things you can easily set if they where made by people with passion for it.

Im going to make it my way, and if everyone thinks i should go in one direction, and I don't, then i wont. It doesn't mean that you and every one else are not siting on some great ideas that i may like, so it would be stupid not to ask.

So will it be useful? I don't know, we will have to see. Whit my last app i had an idea, and many people didn't like it and wanted me to take amore traditional rout, It turned out that many people really liked the end product, and started asking why others didn't do it like i do it. Maybe that will happen again or maybe it wont.

E

And in the end, I did it my way - F. Sinatra

[gekitsu]

i didn't read the last few posts but here's a small list of things that did pop into my mind while reading:

-versatile brush engine - not supersimple but not too complex. we don't need another corel painter, there already is one.
it should be able to feature tool presets for both drawing and painting purpose, i.e. drawing lines with different marks (like the difference between pencil, ballpoint and pen nib line marks, for example. softer marks, harder marks, controllable line width, dead-weight, etc, etc...) but also applying color in areas and shapes, not lines. here, too, we'd need diferent possibilities. the marks, a brush makes, the brush tip shape and -very important- the way the painted color interacts with the underlying color. covering the underlying imagery, "pushing the existent color more & more towards the paint color" (like washing watercolor wet in wet), apply color via a seperate structure file, darken image as if you were layering several thin washes of ink, same thing but vice versa...
also, don't underestimate the factor that a certain amount of chaos offers. no program gives you the life that accidential ink splotches or spreading brush bristles give you. you don't need to simulate this but give it a similar uncontrollable chaos factor that prevents from working "too clean"

the menu should be easily customizeable, maybe even saving menu presets and access them via hotkey.

i guess what is most important:
make the program easy, so that you can start painting/drawing right away
and make it fast.

i guess you can't replace the large apps for their purposes but you can make a supportive app that everyone likes to fire up inbetween for letting creativity flow.
no one needs to use your app fpr painting large-sized poster paintings or something like that, most ppl will use either painter or photoshop for that.
but aim for the quick market. sketching, fleshing out rough ideas and such.

other features would be:
sketchbook ability to flip to a new page quickly.
also, the ability to switch back a few pages. (maybe the ability to give "bookmarks" to certain pages so they don't get lost when flipping 20 pages further)
a quickly acessible menu style would be neat, too. anyone seen the interface of alias|wavefronts sketching app?

oh my... lots of wishes but that is what you asked for

[zak]

that is true. a quick sketching proigram might be a slightly more appropriate starting point. from there you can develop it and take it wherever you want. as for the ui, as much as i hate floating toolbars, i cannot imagine a life without them, i would strongly advise on heavily customizable toolbars. so the user can choose for themselves what they want. like in photoshop, there are so many tools i dont need, but yet i cannot get rid of. that sucks. also is there a way of using the colour selection tool on areas outside the prog itself, like colouselect from a movie that you have running over all apps, that would kick ass. also being able to paint over the net like in oc is really cool to have.

[makototaramoto]

[Eskil]

Yeah I think a sketch book style app is a good start. In my opinion I think a good app should be like a toy, you shouldn't have to create any thing whit it it should be fun enough just to play around with. (although i don't think apps should be like Kais stuff, that is more or less only toys...)

You give me some good stuff, here let me ask you: what do you think about Alias SketchBook ( http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/products/sketchbook/info.shtml )?

To me it is like ok but I just cant believe they charge money for it! I guess i have this problem about charging money at all, but this i just don't know.

Its going to be great to get a beta and get you the chance to pay whit it and get me feedback.

E

[plastikman]

wouldnt something like this require being a wiz in C++?

[makototaramoto]

[Eskil]

plastikman:

Well, you need to be a fairly good programmer, but more important you need to be good at graphics programming. I don't use C++ I use C. C is smaller, cleaner, "less is more"....

makototaramoto:

I would never set a hard limit like that, but im not going to limit my self by saying it must run well on a C64. The requirements are going to be that you need a OpenGL graphics card (well you can run it in software but that will be just too slow). Requiring Wacom is just stupid mice are good too.

Let me tell you a bit about my setup. I am alone (but i program fast) Right now im starting up a one man software company. I rally do want to make the software i create free but i need away to make some money to support myself, what i could do is get some venture capital and go large but I don't want to do this because then I would end up with a company runned by biz people who know nothing about graphics and I don't want that.

So one thing i can do is to start up a small time sales biz and sell CDs online, or I could raise money voluntarily form the community (like Blender). Im working with the blender foundation and they may support me in the future. On thing I would like to do is to work with companies to customize and support my software for them. It all depends , if I at one time do get lots of money i may hire some help.

Right now I don't know, It depends on what opens up. what do you think?
Would you consider donating say 100USD to a free software developer?
For now the best thing any one can do to help me is to give me free lands work. if you need a good CG programmer drop me a line.

E

[gekitsu]

eskil:
my thoughts on the slias wavefront app:

the interface is "sweet"
it features some nice ideas like you just flick over an item without waiting for the menu to appear to choose it but i feel uncomfortable in it.
less is more but here, it IS far too less.
the key is about finding the balance between offering enough information to be flexible enough and not cluttering me with stuff i don't need.

the tools aren't really good. you can't customize them and they are very limited in their use. it seems to me that they really focus on people wanting to take notes and not sketching or doing concepts.

my favorite until now in this genre is opencanvas.

[makototaramoto]

[tayete]

The only thing I haven't seen in a standard app (PS, Painter) is a colour mixing feature.

I mean, I am tired of using my eyedrop to choose directly the colour I wish. I want to take one colour, choose another one, mix them, and see what is the result. Yes, I know that with a deep knowledge of how RGB-HSB-CYMK work you can "emulate" that and choose directly a colour..

But I want to mix two colours, not supposse how's the colour once mixed.
_________________
_ _ _____ _ _
http://tayete.blogspot.com

[Eskil]

Gekitsu:

That was about my opinion too, I guess it was made for people with limited requirements, but still....

makototaramoto:

That is pretty cool, I guess that would work. I must say that i have been really encouraged by this tread so I think im going to start earlier then i originally planned.

tayete:

interesting feature... Im going to try to see if I can get that in in a good way.

E