Project Dogwaffle Howler
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It does much more than Photoshop. It can for example do video editing and can add effects to a clip. It can create animated movies.
The in several of the various tutorial videos you can see the things Dogwaffle can do that Photoshop can't do.
http://www.youtube.com/user/pdhowler/videos
{ Note to DAZ: See? This is how it is done. :coolhmm: }
Dartanbeck has definitely raised my curiousity about Dogwaffle and what it can do. Kinda like how he infected me with the Carrara virus (achoo!). He's good that way. :-)
What I have not been able to figure out yet is where a tool like this fits in if I already own Photoshop. Is this more than just a paint program with some cool image filters?
Man... Check out this sample I just finished. 1280 x 720 backdrop animation for use in Carrara animation renders. It is simply an example of how Howler and my new Carrara product (not yet released) can work together to dramatically increase your animation rendering speeds.
The previous one that I've shown with Rosie walking in the rain has gone much further, but is still in "For my eyes only" status, unfortunately... I really want to show it off!
Here's my choked down and watermarked Woodlands - SunRays1 504 frame backdrop. With such length, you'll have many possibilities for various FX for 2 - 3 second action shots. But it's the idea that holds the worth. Unlike the Storm1 backdrop, which was made using a Carrara animated render, this animation was created entirely in Howler from a still image. This one:
Nice work Dart :)
Hi Garstor, good question. Oh I'd say it was more hands on, more "painterly". It's just a matter of workflow and knowing your keyboard short cuts and getting your head around the layer mixing (which I have not yet).
Will tell you in a few weeks!
My question today is: so I am happily painting over my rendered image and I screw up in a small section.
But I don't realise it straight away. So I can't just hit "undo."
I'd like to get that small part of my original image back.
But leave the rest as I have "painted" it.
What would be the best strategy to achieve this?
Secondo Question. :) I want to make a passage in an image slightly lighter or darker, or more contrast.
Is there a brush for this or do I need to select the area and eg "enhance" it.
Thanks in advance!
PS Dan Richie, that plugin you linked to is wonderful thank you.
You should be able to achieve this is several million ways. One would be to select the passage that you want to darken, and go to the red "X" in the toolbar, right-click and go "Clear to Black" and then use the interactive undo to get the proper effect. Or you could use Values adjustments on that selection.
Now... when I say selection, I better explain something really cool about Dogwaffle, that I've not seen anywhere else:
Dogwaffle selections are basically stored as what's called the alpha channel. Alpha doesn't mean invisible as it does elsewhere - it means selected vs. Deselected - and when you "Selection > Store Alpha", you get your current selection in a popup so you can see what is selected, and what isn't, which can be ultra important to know. White = Selected.
Now, you can have gray scale too!
Once you have a selection, you can blur its edge and other things before using it for anything. Remember: u is undo. k is killer plugins ;-0
Here's the part that blows me away with glee:
You can go to "Selection > Paint in Alpha"! :) This means that you can chose black or white as your color, use anti-aliasing or soft edged brushes... whatever, and paint what you want selected. Use white to add to your selection, black to deselect. Very powerful.
I don't have enough space in this post - or time in the week to tell you about the things you can do with the cool curve tool... but the videos will make you imagination keep you from sleeping for weeks. Trust me. I got so excited after watching the curve tool tutorials... and then they show up again in the rotoscoping videos... oh...
No man... Thank You!
Heh, thanks Dartanbeck,
I will have to sit down and digest the answer to the secondo question with my breakfast!!
Ahh, unfortunately I didn't explain myself very well with the first question.
If I use Undo or fade last action then I am basically undoing my last few actions or fading the last action.
But I need a way of getting part of my original image back from a zillion steps ago.
In PS
If I want to change soemthing I always make a copy of the layer and work on this new top layer.
then if I make a mistake on the top layer I can erase the mistake area on the top layer to expose
the underlying layer which has the original image,
So I am guessing it has something to do with the swap layer in dogwaffle?
thanks again ;)
Just so you know what I am trying for. This is what I have been upto with dogwaffler. It's early days with Dogwaffler for me,
I am doing a series of Bosch derived creatures. This is the Helmeted Bird on the bottom right of the right Panel of Garden of Earthly Delights. It started as a 3d render in Carrara. Those things in it's beak are an ink well and a brush holder - or rolled parchment protector. In the original painting there is a pig dressed as nun dipping her pen into the well, but I received some 'hate" mail last week about my renders so I haven't put her in!
I used a lot of different processes and a few image programs, Dogwaffler was the main post processing software.
staigerman said:
thanks very much for the offer.
these carrara renders are what I am trying to achieve in post - the pencil effect.
any workflow suggestions appreciated.!
[quote ]
What I have not been able to figure out yet is where a tool like this fits in if I already own Photoshop. Is this more than just a paint program with some cool image filters?
[/quote ]
It is much more than a paint program.
Which version of Photoshop do you have? Is it the Extended version, with 3D support?
Dogwaffle has a few 3D tools too. It's not totally comparable. It's different in a number of ways. Layers are not opaque. If you depend on that, PD Pro is not an alternative. it is however still a companion.
PD started as a paint program, not as a photo editing program. It has been much more brush centric. For example, it got bristle brushes years before Photoshop did.
PD can load an image sequence or an AVI clip into the brush, and it can paint that video over the current image or across frames of an animation. Dogwaffle can be used for postwork on animations, 3D renderings that are in AVI or image sequences.
A good way to see what Dogwaffle can be used for is to see what was added over the years: www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatsnew
Some of the very cool and useful things are
- lens flares that are to die for
- image stabilizer
- tracking mattes
- One of my favorites: the Motion Estimation capability of the Motion Prediction module: http://thebest3d.com/howler/7/motion-prediction-mania.html
- particle brushes,.... with image-based force fields
- 3D terrains from elevation maps, with distance fog and ground (elevation) fog too - see www.thebest3d.com and click the 8.2 gallery for many examples
- rules-based foliage brushes... draw a full free in one brush stroke.
- in-application re-calibration of Wacom tablet
- Lua scripting to make your own filters
- open programmer's interface (use Delphi, Visual Basic, C++, etc... Dogwaffle runs as an Active-X server, pretty much any OLE-enabled dev system can communicate with Dogwaffle. Examples: Curvy3D, Pixelan AnyFX for PD, and other 3rd-party plugins seen at www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/3rdpartyplugins
and extended list of features can be found at http://thebest3d.com/howler/the-dogwaffle-main-feature-list.html
Also have a look at bthe numerous tutorials.
www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/tuts
www.youtube.com/pdhowler
-Philip
Hello Staigerman!
I do have the latest Photoshop CS6 -- but in spite investing in various books, I have barely had the time to scratch its surface. No doubt, I'd be in the same predicament with Dogwaffle too! :-)
For 3D terrains (which I love doing), I often use Daylon Graphics' Leveller to export a PNG (it does many other formats too). I sometimes tweak the PNG in Photoshop and them plug it into Carrara's terrain primitive.
I did see the gradient grabber feature of Dogwaffle -- that's very cool and I don't think PS does that. It would be a trillion levels of awesome to be able to export the gradient to other programs (LightWave comes to mind for my uses...but Carrara could make use of it too). I tend to use very simple gradients and this would help build more complicated ones.
Ah yes, the Gradient Grabber. I originally wanted to call it the Color Sucker, vacuum cleaner style :-)
Of course you can use its results outside of PD. One thing you can do is render a filled rectangle with the gradient you picked up, and then save that as a lossless PNG image or similar. That can be used in other programs if they know how to build a gradient from an image. There's also an export capability, or save, of the gradient, so I suppose you could find that file and extract the RGB values from it, assuming it's in ASCII readable text format and not binary.
Building a gradient is one thing, and PD offers several ways to make gradients, and then what you do with it is yet another universe of possibilities in itself. It could be used in the evolution of colors for particle brushes, or for layering of sediment colors in the slopes of terrains created with the 3D Designer module, or for filling rectangles, ovals, and text, to name a few possibilities. In PD there are a number of tools that can make use of a gradient. The 'Frame your work' tool is another, adding a wooden or plastic looking frame around the image.
What formats do those other programs have or use when importing gradients, if they can?
Hi Staigerman or anyone.
Just a quick question I without any of my software on tjis machine so can't check at the moment.
In dogwaffle is there anyway of extracting a palette from an image?
cheers
H'lo Head wax!
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/help/PDHelp/index.htm
Choose, Exploring Color and scroll down about 3/4ths of the way down to The Color Wells and Color Related Tools.
There is a section on how to generate a well (palette?) from an image.
Happy hunting!
H'lo Head wax!
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/help/PDHelp/index.htm
Choose, Exploring Color and scroll down about 3/4ths of the way down to The Color Wells and Color Related Tools.
There is a section on how to generate a well (palette?) from an image.
Happy hunting!
Yes indeed you can find several tools that build a Color Well from the colors in the current image. I assume the reason for asking is that you then want to use these colors as clickable color selections in the color picker? If that's the case, another method also is to simply store the image (Image->Store Image copy). Once you have that small thumbnail of the stored image, locate the icon in its lower left corner. That is a toggle to turn that stored image into a color picker. You can also resize the thumbnail somewhat. It makes it a convenient color picker straight from the image.
Other techniques exist, some involving the current gradient. And with the new Gradient grabber tool you could see using that to get a gradient from some of the colors in an image, and then turn that to color wells. AT least I think that's possible, I'd have to check the exact steps.
Perhaps you can describe in more details what it is you need? Such as, what you want to do with that palette, once it's extracted from the image?
I have added a screenshot of PD Howler 8.2d showing the steps to build a color swatch from the image in the main buffer.
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/faq - has a new item on creating a color palette from an image
There are other techniques. I might add some there later. Depends a little on how you want to use it in the end. If you want to just get to the colors with a color picker, you may not have to build a color palette (swatch) since you can just use the stored image as such as a color palette.
DaRkWyNdE thank you so much for the prompt and very helpful reply :)
And also to yourself Staigerman !
Firstly thanks for the quick answer with the images and mini tut!!
Why do I want the palette? Just for quick access for the colours that are already in the image. Theory being that I want any painting I do to sit well with the present image (so I need to work in that restricted colour range)
I've been a traditional painter for a longtime, so it's just an experiment to see where I can go with different software to turn my Carrara work into more traditional images.
I'm still trying to figure out the best workflow. I can do it all in Carrara if I build a scene in scratch but that makes it "set" in stone - so to speak. Postwork is what I need to be able to fine tune images for the market. Dogwaffler looks like it is one of the ways that will help.
An example of one style I will approach in the future might be similar to Barbara Lehman
http://www.barbaralehmanbooks.com/barbaralehmanbooks.com/books.html
At the moment, I have plenty of time during the day but cannot watch your tut videos as having the sound on in my area would be a no no. :(
Any suggestions are always welcome.
Thanks again for the quick answer!
You're welcome!
H'lo Head wax!
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/help/PDHelp/index.htm
Choose, Exploring Color and scroll down about 3/4ths of the way down to The Color Wells and Color Related Tools.
There is a section on how to generate a well (palette?) from an image.
Happy hunting!
I've never done it yet, but it's really cool how you can then (can't remember proper terms, here) smoothen the range between two colors in the well. Dan Ritchie does a neat tutorial about it. Probably described in that link, eh?
Yo Dart!
Have you got a download email for 8.2d? I did get a email saying it was coming but never got the d/l email.
I bought 7.x through DAZ.
Hi there,
if you have PD Artist the latest is 8.2c
If you have Howler 8, probably not through here at DAZ, we're working on getting v8 here but not here yet.
If you got an earlier Howler and are entitled to the v8.2d, or if you got v8 from us directly at www.thebest3d.com (which when ordering goes to the BMTmicro store), then you may be indeed entitled to a free update to 8.2d. In that case, check first if you have any messages from us in your spam box from the last 2 weeks. If you still can't find a download link, contact us directly. Tell us which version you have exactly (look for details in lower-left corner under Help->About Dogwaffle...) , and also when you bought it, how much you paid, (was it full price or a launch promo/fastgrab...?) etc... so we can honor free upgrade to you if qualified. Contact Philip - www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/about
And show us what you do while you're at it, we're always looking for cool artwork to tell others about :-)
I might add: if you bought Howler 7.2 here at DAZ recently, and paid full price, you'll get a free upgrade to v8. But you must contact us with proof of purchase because we don't see who ordered what when ordering at Daz.
This free upgrade to v8 is still good if you order v7.2 Howler now, good for a few more days. Howler 8 will soon arrive here too, at that point v7.2 will be cheaper and v8 will be the latest
oh and here's something short and simple done completely in PD Howler 8 (well apart from the soundtrack, that was added in youtube).
Could probably do the same in 7.2, just faster in 8.2 with GPU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UstUzhuXZjA
thanks very much for the offer.
these carrara renders are what I am trying to achieve in post - the pencil effect.
any workflow suggestions appreciated.!
What I see is greyscale fence and kid, so it's not colored pencil, just grey or black and white, right? But either way, you might want to toy with the 'Graphic Pen' filter in the Artistic filters category. Careful, it can be quite taxing, heavy computation and memory use.
You can run the filter across animations too.
There's another filter in the 'Artistic' category that might be useful too, in order to apply the bristled look. It's Filter -> Artistic -> Brush Strokes.
Again, careful, especially if using the last mode (Brush), as it can take a long time to render with your current brush. Make the brush small initially while testing the waters.
Now that's great service! See why I love these guys so much? Thanks Philip!
Yeah... I'm running the latest and greatest: 8.2d, and it Rocks!
Still a total noob - but luckily, Howler puts out great stuff, even for noobs! :)
7 is an incredible Howler as well. But 8.2 takes full advantage of GPU and many more cool features:
8.2d new features - with links to the rest of "what's new for Skyock's Egret" (PD Pro: Howler 8)
What I see is greyscale fence and kid, so it's not colored pencil, just grey or black and white, right? But either way, you might want to toy with the 'Graphic Pen' filter in the Artistic filters category. Careful, it can be quite taxing, heavy computation and memory use.
You can run the filter across animations too.
There's another filter in the 'Artistic' category that might be useful too, in order to apply the bristled look. It's Filter -> Artistic -> Brush Strokes.
Again, careful, especially if using the last mode (Brush), as it can take a long time to render with your current brush. Make the brush small initially while testing the waters.
thanks!
Ah, the greyscale kid was a lot of work to get it like that to render out of Carrara.
I've explored the artistic filters a fair amount thank you.
Ironically enough I did not see the colour selection box on the bottom of the graphic pen.
I took one path and should have taken the other. And that makes all the difference :)
The graphic pen filter in colour is getting me there thank you. :)
My question for today....
Below is a render straight out of Poser.
What I am interested in is:
in the pig the pen pattern often follows the contour of the pig.
at the edged there is denser hatching
or lighter hatching
depending on whether it is highlighted or shadowed.
The flat surfaces of the wall and ground are delineated by straight hatching.
I wondered what would be the best way to achieve this in dogwaffler?
thanks again.!
Andrew Finnie
edit that plugin Gertrudis has possibilities but once again the effect is very good for smaller images.
I've tried out the GMX as well. One thing I havn't tried is breaking my images into smaller pieces then processing them then rejoining them.
If you had a zbuffer image of your piggy, you could probably get some really nice contour following lines with either the graphics pen filter in crayon mode, or even the brush strokes filter. Then getting straight lines in the other places, well, that would depend on your zbuffer as well I suppose, if those parts of the zbuffer were flat (all at the depth)
Sorry I'm not up on Poser.
Thanks so much Dan. Great idea.
I'm not up on Poser at all, just exploring different avenues at the moment.
The Depth pass in Carrara I've always thought pretty useless when I try to use it as a mask for blurring in Photoshop
But I will revisit it thankyou.
Cheers from here.!
I'll have to think bout this one (the piggy) a little. Probably multiple rendered/compositing. One with the shading towrds the edges. The other with the cross hatches. Then some combining of the two. Perhaps also an alpha mask.to keep it inside the pig's contour.
Sometimes it's ok to get there with filters. Sometimes it's good to go back to the roots and 'paint' it with cross hatch brushes stamping it down in places desired. (I call it assisted painting)
Unrelated: someone on LinkedIn group (After Effects) was wondering how to do lite animation of Hair on a person. not sure I got the right view and scenario but still, here's a few steps in PD Howler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWSBovA0YT0
I hope it inspires
-Philip
Ahh thanks so much Philip!
Here is a small play with the graphite pen just then.
The white outlines come from ToonPro renderer in carrara.
I inverted the graphic pen filter results to get this.
I have to have a play and rettrace my steps!
Thanks for the vid link. I'll watch it when I get home from the painting studio.
cheers!
Looks really nice.
Thanks :)
I had another play today. Rendered out depth channel, shadow channel, ambient channel, etc - plus made a mask of the creature then fiddled in the graphic pen filter. Very impressed! Of course he needs a ball to play with... :)