Suggestions


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Post Sun Mar 16, 2014 12:11 am

Re: Suggestions

I've just been working with the new version. I think last night I was not being subtle at all and was thrashing the settings (to find what the extreme values would do).

But I think I have a better grasp of some of the other brushes. Brush 3 with a low bristle size and bristle count setting is good for getting some of that fine-grain turbulence I was seeking.

finegrainsplash01.jpg
finegrainsplash01.jpg (8.17 KiB) Viewed 15376 times
finegrainsplash02.jpg
finegrainsplash02.jpg (7.79 KiB) Viewed 15376 times


I sort of wish that Brush 4 could be toggled to use the stylus azimuth to affect the angle of the brush (rather than drag direction)
brush4.jpg
brush4.jpg (3.3 KiB) Viewed 15376 times


And if only there was some way for me to hook up either a MIDI message (0 -> 127) or a joystick axis(-32767 -> 32767) to brush size and the mouse smoothing.

For most people, a single dimension of brush pressure is enough. But for an idiot like me, there are times when I use a Spacenavigator to control brush rotation, one footpedal to govern brush size and another footpedal to govern brush smoothing, and finally, brush pressure to control opacity, all DURING the stroke, rather than having to stop the stroke and adjust sliders or hit hotkeys.
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Post Mon Mar 17, 2014 11:50 am

Re: Suggestions

Naturally, I think you know well that you're getting a bit carried away with the controls there, hehe. ;)
I love the twist feature and wished I had that, but beyond that I value simplicity to focus on art rather than performance art, really. It's not that I wouldn't see the point in having a helicopter-like cockpit to put color on a screen, it sounds like good fun, but- uhm... it also sounds like some kind of an addiction to me to find more and more ways to involve your body for painting digitally.
That is not to say that we couldn't work out some way of involving more of your controls, but I have only limited access to such inputs as I'm still using BlitzMax to develop Verve.

Also, there's a new version up again with a bunch of improvements and the brushes 7 and 8 act much nicer now, I believe.
I also regarded your linearity issue with the fluidity dial and changed it for ya'! :D

I'll make a new video later today to show what I've done. By then I may have done even more, actually, hehe...quite likely.
Here to help! :D
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Post Wed Mar 19, 2014 1:59 am

Re: Suggestions

Hi there!

I'm really impressed by the software, and I cannot understand why this forums has not received yet tons of new users and feedback, after all the sharing that happened on facebook last month.

I have a couple suggestions, some of them I'm not sure if are possible or if are already on Verve (I had not yet played enough with it):

- Backdrop texture (maybe some defaults or the ability to import/convert images).
I'd really like to emulate real life painting on Verve, but traditional painting on canvas, without previous treatment (base layers or plaster), usually shows signals of the fabric if you paint with a thin layer of paint.

In this image for example, you have dry paint accumulated on the pores of the canvas, and a very thin layer, also dry, covering the fabric lines.
Image

- Brush/Stroke independent fluidity and dryness controls
In real life, it is possible that I take a bunch of oil paint straight from the tube (therefore, pretty thick, viscous) spread it on the canvas, then right after that dilute another bunch of paint on thinner, and spread it on top, above or right next the previous thick paint stroke. This real life scenario creates a unique interaction between viscous and diluted paint on a same layer.
Maybe I haven't played enough with Verve, but as far as I know, this is not yet possible on Verve, as I believe you can only change fluidity and dryness on a layer-independent basis.

Also, I have now seen, but can I determine how long will it take for the paint to dry? Or is it just an on/off thing?
Sometimes IRL it is useful that I can take this factor into account, because it determines how much a certain amount of paint on the canvas can still be carried by the brush, and get mixed with other strokes...or if I need to thrown some thinner in to mix things up.
This should work together with the independent brush fluidity, because the amount of time it takes to dry is directly related to the amount of solvent (fluidity) a paint has been mixed with. A thin layer of raw acrylic paint dries faster than if it has been thinner dissolved. Oil on the other hand takes years to dry, with or without solvent. :)

If you take this suggestions into account, and also consider the gravity or canvas inclination suggestions, Verve could also become a great watercolor emulator!
Watercolor is nothing more than pigment dissolved on water (instead of thinner, and I'm not sure it it also has an agglutinator agent, like oil or acrylic), caracterized by the paper it is painted on, which usually have pretty evident fibers (not a flat surface), and with the pigment having a tendency to clump on the edges of the wet area. But for this one would also probably have to take into account surface tension mechanics, etc.
Image

Regarding the copyright issues, I'd suggest releasing Verve under GNU, it can protect your work from being claimed by some big company and then shelved for life, to avoid it competing with their proprietary software, which is the worst case scenario (it happened recently with Autodesk buying 3d software Softimage and then discontinuing it). The creators of the open-source software Blender, have released it under GNU licence.
Well, I wish you the best, Verve is already great as is.
Regards!
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Post Wed Mar 19, 2014 11:45 am

Re: Suggestions

Welcome to the forum, Arkhangels! That's a wonderful post with fantastic close-ups, thank you!
Yes, I have planned canvas texture and interaction, but didn't get to it, yet. There are still a number of things I'm developing, which could be vital to knowing how best to implement that, you know. One of my ideas is to allow the linking of layers such that the bump (structure) of the underlying linked layer influences the behavior of paint properly in the one above. I'd then do the same thing against a canvas surface of your choosing.
I'm a little worried about the speed impact this will have, but that's also why I want to keep this an option instead.

As for natural watercolor behavior, that's another thing I've been thinking about early on already and this, too, may very well become a feature. Once I have that figured out, a whole world of wild things may open up to what you could do with the fluids, of course. But it's still some time away for sure.

Again, I love your example pictures, they're awesome! They inspire me a lot to play a bit with it right now, I think.

I have no idea what's been going on on facebook, I'm not on it, but I know that many people can't run the app on their systems, which is naturally a let down. My focus with Verve was on Verve itself, you know, but it's currently shifting to the people a lot more than before. That's a good and a bad thing, because there's only so much I can do and Verve only exists because it is hardware based. Take that away and you got "just another painter", I'm afraid. Sooner or later most people will have to have a current system, while I may well have a look at some pad coding, whether it's ipad, android or win8. I think they have very powerful graphics in them and this could be great fun. I just don't like gadgets in general and therefore never had any of those things. I don't even have cellphone, haha. :o
That would be a reason to make an exception. :roll:

But, yeah, I'm sure that's why. And people are quite hard to move, too, especially with "art supplies". :|

Oooohh, almost forgot: The drying princple allows a little bit of what you were describing with thick vs. diluted paint, but it's all very simplified, of course. The speed of the drying is hard to control for me, as weird as this sounds, I'm still working on it and will hook up a parameter for the time for sure!
However, I don't think it will happen anytime soon that I have two independent fluid systems work on top of each other, haha, that seems a bit excessive in terms of what hardware can accomplish. Not sure, yet, who knows, but from where I stand that would be ambitious.
I did say at some point that I really don't mean to do a simulation of real paints, but rather a digital paint medium inspired by reality. Verve is it's own kind of material, you know, as though you'd pick up a new kind of tool to create. It's not just a lame excuse of mine, really, it's a reality-check. It is in my ability to create unique ways for painting with the computer, but it's most likely over my head to do a physics implementation that would get me a PHD at Stanford, haha. Even then they would merely be an approximation, if they should act responsively.
I don't want Verve to feel like a compromise or be looked at as such. If you pick up a graphite pencil, you don't want it to act like a fine-liner. If you use watercolor, you know you're not painting with oil. I want the same dignity for Verve, but at the same time I want it to feel somewhat familiar, workable and exciting, of course.
I do understand, though, why something that feels like coming so close to the "real thing" inspires desires to have it act perfectly so. Ah well...I'm doing my best to make it as versatile as I can, that's for sure, too. And your inspiration helps me focus very much and motivates me a great deal!

Thank you, again, very much! I'm looking forward to seeing some paintings of yours in the Gallery!?! Would be sweet! :D
Here to help! :D
System Info: AMD Radeon RX Vega 10, AMD Ryzen 7 (2.3 Ghz), Windows 11
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Post Sat Mar 22, 2014 8:00 pm

Re: Suggestions

What a marvelous program. It already feels complete.

Only few things come to mind.
1. Color Palettes (with the ability to save and reload)
2. Being able to save and load a set of Brushes (at least the Parameters).
3. Fluidity Presets (least important since experimenting is the best teacher)

Congratulations and nice seeing what you're up to.
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Post Sat Mar 22, 2014 8:22 pm

Re: Suggestions

THANK YOU, Greg!

1. check (coming up with a little bonus idea from my friend R0mer0: Color History! It records each color you were using and you can go through it to pick from there)
2. check (absolutely! There will be far more than just that and I can't wait to hook it up!)
3. hmmm...eh...yah, that one's a little funny, considering it's really subjective, you know. I wouldn't know what to base such preset off, because there's little physical about it, aside from what it feels like. :) ...but I totally welcome suggestions! :D
Here to help! :D
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Post Sat Mar 22, 2014 9:43 pm

Re: Suggestions

Maybe I should have said Swatch instead of pallet.
Being able to save/load something like this is what I meant.

Image

Regarding Fluid Parameters:
I don't know if you can do dropdowns, but if you can, an XML file could read to populate the dropdown.
Selecting a preset would simply set the Fluid Parameters for that Color.
Here's a sample XML file (just done by hand).
  Code:
<FluidPresets>
   <FluidPreset>
      <FluidPresetName>WaterColor</FluidPresetName>
      <Fluidity>.25</Fluidity>
      <FluidSharpness>.50</FluidSharpness>
      <FluidSmudge>.50</FluidSmudge>
      <FluidDrying>On</FluidDrying>
      <FluidDryingSpeed>.50</FluidDryingSpeed>
      <MouseSpeed>.75</MouseSpeed
   </FluidPreset>
   <FluidPreset>
      <FluidPresetName>Oil</FluidPresetName>
      <Fluidity>.25</Fluidity>
      <FluidSharpness>.50</FluidSharpness>
      <FluidSmudge>.50</FluidSmudge>
      <FluidDrying>On</FluidDrying>
      <FluidDryingSpeed>.50</FluidDryingSpeed>
      <MouseSpeed?.75</MouseSpeed
   </FluidPreset>
</FluidPresets>


User could use an editor to creating their own flavors and share them.

On second thought, having each Fluid Preset in separate files would make them more shareable.
A file called WaterColour.fpst with this structure might be better:
  Code:
<FluidPreset>
   <Fluidity>.25</Fluidity>
   <FluidSharpness>.50</FluidSharpness>
   <FluidSmudge>.50</FluidSmudge>
   <FluidDrying>On</FluidDrying>
   <FluidDryingSpeed>.50</FluidDryingSpeed>
   <MouseSpeed>.75</MouseSpeed
</FluidPreset>
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Post Sat Mar 22, 2014 10:08 pm

Re: Suggestions

Cool, that's neat! I'll probably make my own format, just as easily editable, but we shall see. I like it!
The swatches I think I'll keep more organic, except the color history. But maybe I hook up all of that, not sure. What ever will feel right. :)

Thanks, man, that's good stuff! :D
Here to help! :D
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Post Sat Mar 22, 2014 10:56 pm

Re: Suggestions

Going into Layer transform is awesome. I hope you are planning on adding Rotate & Scale functions to that.
It would be fabulous to be able to export all visible layers as separate jpegs.
It can be manually done by toggling layer visibly but that's a little tedious.

I have a far-out idea but I'm hesitant to mention it.
This is such a creative program, I don't want to suggest anything that's probably impossible anyway.
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Post Sat Mar 22, 2014 11:35 pm

Re: Suggestions

Oh no, no, no... layers export has to be 16bit png only for sure! That includes a 16bit png depth layer export separately. That can be chosen either as combined depthmap or you can go as crazy as asking each layer to export both components (color & depth) separately. What on earth would you want with lousy jpgs? :P

You can always suggest away, don't hesitate. I'll tell you when I think you'd be out of your mind :D ...but I guess wildly I'm far more out of mine! :D :D :D
Here to help! :D
System Info: AMD Radeon RX Vega 10, AMD Ryzen 7 (2.3 Ghz), Windows 11
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