Hey there,...

[Taron]

(Wow, I was hoping that one day I'd have a reason to start this sub-forum "Community". I may be jumping the gun already, but I feel like it's ok to start with it now.)

...I'm Taron.
I'm a digital artist across various disciplines from 2d pixel wrangler over 3d generalist to programmer, musician and a bit a philosopher, too, I guess, but aren't we all. I've been doing all this for over 25 years now, but never really focused on programming as much as I did in recent years. I'm originally from Germany, but feel at home everywhere else in the world, haha. I spent over a decade in Los Angeles, working in visual effects houses on movies mostly and some commercials and such, too. Eventually I decided to turn my back on those and dedicate myself to more progressive and useful areas, while every now and then I still work on themepark rides with a great deal of pleasure.

This is my first real approach to share a stand-alone experiment with all of you and start a forum for it. A lot of all this is still new to me, so bear with me, please, and forgive me, if things are still a bit rocky.

However, I'd love to hear from you, who you are and learn about actually anything you'd like to share. It's easy to imagine how much I appreciate you joining here, because you give me reason to keep pushing myself and letting Verve grow into what it very well deserves to become. It's already quite precious to me and so are you!

So, yes, this is the thread for you to introduce yourself

Hi Taron,

My name's Mark. I used to work in 3D visual effects years ago. Since then I took up drawing and painting digitally and hacked my wacom driver.

I make software and games for Android and do concept art for Redwood Pixel Games. I remember a program called MoXi which did a similar thing (it was more like chinese watercolours).

I just got Verve. It works rather well on my ex-gaming workstation. Dammit, now I have to get MORE HDMI cables so I can route this through my tablet and broadcast experiments with it on justin.tv, but it's really quite amazing what you've done. Ugggg not looking forward to making a new nostromo profile either. Oh well. It's too cool not to at least try.

Looking around, I recognized some names. Nezumi is the guy who made lazyNezumi/lazymouse. Dr.Petter is of SFXR fame. Nice to meet you guys.

[Taron]

Awesome, happy to have you on board! I love your enthusiasm, watching your youtube video on hacking the wacom, hahaha, that is wicked!
A $200 foot pedal? My goodness, hehe...
Anyway, could be bizarre fun to have the foot pedal hooked to the fluidity, hehe. Currently you can use the left/right cursor keys to control fluidity. If you need other access to anything, just let me know! Gotta check out MoXi then, sounds interesting!

So you're a musician, too? That's sweet! ...I'm really happy you've joined and that it runs on your machine. Looking forward to your first Gallery entries, too, please do post some!

Oh, your video reminds me, I already have a stroke delay (smoothing) in Verve, but didn't make it parametric, yet. As the interface grows I was already planning to hook it up, of course. Nice reminder, though! Thanks!

Oh wow, just saw a MoXi teaser on youtube. Yeah, darned, they went where I was gonna go with watercolor like effects, too. I love the brush they hooked up, I thought it would be a bit too much to have a big old brush in your face, but what they've done looks really sweet. Hmmm... ah well. Thanks for the tip, though!

Awesome, happy to have you on board! I love your enthusiasm, watching your youtube video on hacking the wacom, hahaha, that is wicked!
A $200 foot pedal? My goodness, hehe...
Anyway, could be bizarre fun to have the foot pedal hooked to the fluidity, hehe. Currently you can use the left/right cursor keys to control fluidity.

The pedals are MIDI expression pedals -- they're musician's gear that's both very rugged (I've had them for years) and reliable. They're meant to take a beating and they're ergonomically sound, and meant for live performances. The left one adjusts size, the right one adjusts smoothing. Painting and drawing without them is tricky.

I was thinking that most wacom tablets these days have touch sliders on them. It'd be great if one of those could adjust fluidity, but as far as I know, the Cintiq 12WX (old) has only 15 nonzero states, which isn't much!

If you need other access to anything, just let me know!

Most excellent. Right now my setup is a horrid mishmash of MIDI, virtual joysticks and HID controllers, all tied together with spackle, duct tape and AutoHotkey scripts. I absolutely love hardware controllers. I also use a nostromo to manage most of my hotkeys and a 6D 3DConnexion Space Navigator to do things like apply brush twist in TVPaint. I'm a beta tester for TVP, which is a bitmap-based animation program. Incidentally, I also have a WACOM 6D stylus which not only reports azimuth and altitude, but also twist.

In any case I would be happy to answer any questions regarding my setup.

So you're a musician, too? That's sweet! ...I'm really happy you've joined and that it runs on your machine. Looking forward to your first Gallery entries, too, please do post some!

Yep, I have a teeny bit of music on SoundCloud. I was able to test it with a secondary Intous 3 tablet and things seemed to check out OK. Verve comes along at a time when I'm looking for a more 'analog/natural' look in my illustrations. I imagine that I'll be using it along side TVPaint soon.

I especially appreciate Verve's minimal interface and hotkey-dependent operation. Makes it much easier for me to hook up my gear.

Oh, your video reminds me, I already have a stroke delay (smoothing) in Verve, but didn't make it parametric, yet. As the interface grows I was already planning to hook it up, of course. Nice reminder, though! Thanks!

Fantastic. Nezumi would definitely be the guy to talk to about smoothing. My smoothing algorithms that I use in my footpedal are merely a crude 2D lerp with a t-value adjusted by the foot pedal (which has only 127 levels, but is interpolated over time to smooth it out).

[Taron]

Interesting, I'm sure we'll have some great exchanges!
The "smoothing" I was talking about is a simple "spring like" filter, that accumulates input into velocities, which get constantly damped. As a result your brush coordinates follow your mousepointer (or pen) at a softening delay.
But all of that only gets really interesting once I finally get to my planned brush solution, which is a lot more sophisticated than the simple solution I have developed thus far. I'm sure it'll be good fun!

Checked out your music a little bit, will listen to more later. It's nice, a bit dry somehow, but really nice. Did you get to listen to some of my tracks, yet? (OH, like any of this is Verve related, hahaha, but the more we get to know each other, the more it'll be about all of us here anyway and not just Verve, of course.)

Interesting, I'm sure we'll have some great exchanges!
The "smoothing" I was talking about is a simple "spring like" filter, that accumulates input into velocities, which get constantly damped. As a result your brush coordinates follow your mousepointer (or pen) at a softening delay.

Just tried the smoothing in the new version. It's really good. Feels very familiar to what I use in TVP so there's no learning curve for me.

But all of that only gets really interesting once I finally get to my planned brush solution, which is a lot more sophisticated than the simple solution I have developed thus far. I'm sure it'll be good fun!

Checked out your music a little bit, will listen to more later. It's nice, a bit dry somehow, but really nice. Did you get to listen to some of my tracks, yet? (OH, like any of this is Verve related, hahaha, but the more we get to know each other, the more it'll be about all of us here anyway and not just Verve, of course.)

I've been listening for a while (I'm at song #16) - mind if I play it at the next live demo of Verve? Also, if you have a particular time that's good for you I can let you know in advance. My peak hours are between 8 PM EST -> 4 AM EST on weeknights.

PS: Sadly, 19+20 (Synthillia & Sternenthaler) wouldn't play (download error)

[Taron]

Funny, plays fine now! ...uh, nice, haven't listen to those in a long time, hehe.
But, YEAH, wow, yeah, sure, that would be sweet! THANKS!

I'm +1 GMT, I think, so...if you go 8pm that should work fine for me, for sure! I'm a little twisted anyway..eh...not like ...more like (damn RedBull!)

Oh, I've just released a brand new version, by the way... hooked up the wacky fractal noise brush. It's not really brilliant, although I'm kinda proud of that shader, but it's fascinating already, I believe. You'll see!

By the way, I think you'll get a good kick out of "Sternenthaler"!

Funny, plays fine now! ...uh, nice, haven't listen to those in a long time, hehe.
But, YEAH, wow, yeah, sure, that would be sweet! THANKS!

By the way, I think you'll get a good kick out of "Sternenthaler"!

Indeed, it does play now. I blame my internet service provider (they suffer from various hiccups and glitches)

You were right about Sternenthaler, I have a great liking for symphonic/orchestral overtures.

I'm +1 GMT, I think, so...if you go 8pm that should work fine for me, for sure! I'm a little twisted anyway..eh...not like ...more like (damn RedBull!)

Oh, I've just released a brand new version, by the way... hooked up the wacky fractal noise brush. It's not really brilliant, although I'm kinda proud of that shader, but it's fascinating already, I believe. You'll see!

Is that Brush 8? I think that one will come in very handy for texturing surfaces, I should've been using that one when I was painting water waves. I think it will also kick ass for quickly making cirrus clouds and perhaps rocky textures.

[Taron]

Absolutely! That and more, of course... And with the fluids you can dial in this beautiful distortion that hides the fractal nature somewhat. I'm thrilled to see what people come up with, especially you, hehe! I think I'll record another video later on...eh, tomorrow. 2:30am here.
Thanks for making me listen to my own old songs, haha, it's quite nice, nostalgic. Actually one song didn't play for me now. I think soundclick.com has some issues. You can always go on my page there: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=108043

Hey there!

I discovered Verve last night, and I'm preety excited!. Let me explain:

Fast flashback to 15 years ago. I'm a computer engineer student who always liked to draw, so also plays with Photoshop, Truespace, 3DSMax.. participates in Sijun, Eatpoo, Conceptart forums, and demoscene parties.. and then, in one of them, discovers Ligthwave 5.5, and falls in love with it. Among all the artists that use Lightwave, there is one that excels the software, and does amazing and incredible images of alien eyes and crazy creatures.. very inspiring stuff. Instant and inconditional fan. This guy was Taron, of course. Younger me follows his next artworks, his incredible work with Messiah (crazy setup software used by crazy guy, they seem to match perfectly!), and then he seems to go to hollywood or somewhere to work, stops submitting new artwork, and time goes by..

..until yesterday!!* Taron is back.. with an amazing painting program? does he code? Amazing stuff! It's really great to see you again (and hear you in your videos!), and find out that you are quite multidisciplinary like me (I'm starting a pixel painting program too, hah). Verge looks terrific and I'm eager to try it (I have to boot a windows machine). It has lots of amazing features that makes it very appealing, apart from the fluid painting system. Small size, procedural ui, a decent (at last!) perspective grid, shortcut oriented.. amazing!

I'll come back with my experiments! Greetings from a big fan!

*(I should come back to taron.de more frequently these years, I see you did many stuff like the gnomon dvd, other software, sculptris models.. )