Any Filter Forge users?
EmotionalOutlet3D
Posts: 243
in The Commons
I have been looking at Filter Forge for awhile and since it is currently on sale just wondering if anyone uses it and if it is worth the buy or will I just be stuck with more software? I'm not a Photoshop user (use GIMP) and just interested in making some textures, etc.
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Comments
Best filter ever!
Could not recommend it more.
I got it and use it all the time. I use it to create subdermal textures for skin transparency, noise for skin specularity. A whole library of premade filters textures to create pretty much any floor, cloth, ground texture etc at high or low resolutions. Some of the textures have options for Bump and transparency maps too. The textures are procedural and customizable so if you find something close to what you want you can edit the variables or create your own from scratch. You don't need photoshop or gimp to use it since it has its own independant interface. It also has actual photo filters for post work on renders.
One thing you might want to know is that Filter forge always has varying discounts, the lowest I've seen was 80% off. Which is what it is currently I got it when it was 40% but it was still worth it. You don't need to get the physical cd, all the textures filters are available on their website.
It's currently listed at 80% off 'for one day only,' which I'm tempted by.
Where are you seeing it at 80% off? For me it only shows 40% off. :(
Will, it was listed yesterday at 80% off on the filter forge website but that seems to have changed to 75% today. Anyway DAZ has it in their sale and if I have it right it works out to less if you buy two other items in the sale. Assume it is the same as on the filter forge website pro version 4.0?
Thanks for your feedback. From my short time playing with it, it seems to very much what I was looking for but it is good to hear from actual users.
Sounds like I should shell out the $$$. My poor CC but I've really not bought a lot at the PA sale this year. Not a fan of Gen 3 so not much to buy.
Oh, they have a separate homepage. I see it now.
It's funny that the DAZ product does not mention it's for photoshop. Is that the same product? If it is, it should at least mention that it's for photoshop, and not a standalone application.
you can use it as standalone or as a plugin for PS
It's apparently a floor wax AND dessert topping!
Er, plugin and standalone.
I just bought it. After getting excited and then disheartened by Terragen, I'm eager to get something spiffy and cool to enhance what I'm doing. And I love playing with filters, so... yay!
(I don't have Photoshop, and alas this doesn't seem to do anything with GIMP, but standalone should already be very cool, so hey)
Be aware that Version 5.0 is just around the corner, and I'm not sure if they will honor recent purchases for a free upgrade. Check the forums there for any info on this. Otherwise, the "early bird" upgrade price is $60, so add that to whatever 4.0 costs.
They claim to, and I suspect that version 4 will keep me busy for a while. SO hey.
Make sure you get the CD with the content!
Oh. Their "tagline" was a little misleading for me, saying it's a photoshop plugin. The standalone version looks great! :)
Ehh, there goes part of the money I was saving for the PC month. :D But it also solves my big dilemma I was having recently about how to get good textures... :)
I just bought the Pro version for 80% off. YAY!
Agree. Love it, use it all the time. Well worth the money
Wow. Now I feel kind of stupid with all the work I did trying to make a cartoon style.
(Although only kind of, because I actually really like my recent post approach)
Another good program that is a good compliment to filter forge and textures in general is Mindtex which is on Steam. It basically genearates a bump, normal, specularity, illumination, and ambient occlusion from one texture and gives you dials to tune how bumpy, specular etc the maps are. It is $15 but if you wait for a steam sale you can easily get it for half that or even 75% off.
There is a Beta you can try before you buy.
http://frozenflamecorp.com/site/pages.php?page=entryview&category=products&entryid=2
Thanks everyone. Have bought FF. A new toy! I'll be up early tomorrow to play. :)
That's the thing... I should already be sleeping (1AM here), but...
It's going to be a godsend for rock and wall textures, if nothing else. 'make a big texture, make it seamless tiling' Bam.
Quick tip: Filter > Render maps > leads to all the bump, normal, etc. maps
I've also finally bit the bullet and subscribed to Photoshop. FINE.
Sick and tired of seeing all this 'well you expose the flerbjet with the bamf filter in Photoshop, and that makes your artwork sixteen percent more awesome.' "I don't have Photoshop." '... oh.'
I've been half-kicking myself having already spotted where Filter Forge could have produced just the same outcome as other products that I've paid good money for in recent months (photoshop plugins, textures, effects etc), but am consoling myself with the thought that I can do all this stuff for myself now and can do it even better, since what I create will be tailor-made to suit my own needs. In addition, I know that I would be properly kicking myself had I not spotted this thread until tomorrow when the '80% Off' sale was over!
I'm currently in 'Wow! Will I ever be able to stop playing with this product?' mode, but I can already tell that not a working day will go by when it's not fired up properly. I love it. Thanks to everyone who brought the sale price to my attention.
Just in the past week I keep hitting points where I cleverly cobble together textures to make ground or other large spaces, and while my friends wouldn't notice, I can see the subtle edges where it's tiling and grimacing.
One of my big issues with this program is nodes. I never will get used to that. I hated it in Poser, don't even look at the shader bricks in DS so I guess I have to dive in and see what I can do to really work my last nerve! lmao
What's in the CD that isn't on the site?
I use these filters all the time. They are really time savers and some of the filter makers are damned clever. You can also learn to make filters and earn points for free upgrades and such. I know Rawn and I both have filters in the library (mine's under crispalomino).
Oooo, fun. I'll look for yours then Cris!
It also shows up under effects in Paint Shop Pro. In 7 and 8 anyway. Most of the earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro don't work in Windows 10.
I know X3 doesn't work. I installed it only to have it bomb everytime I tried to launch it and then I searched online and found that it wasn't compatible.
All the cd has is a copy of what is already in the website to download.
I already got enough practice with nodes trying to get a decent shader with all the features I want for 3delight. Luckily for me the Iray shaders has all those features by default. The good thing about filter forge is that you can look at filters that are already made and see how they did the effect. You can then take that and apply it to your own filter.
You can think of Nodes as a timeline of filters that are being applied. For example if you were in photoshop and you applied noise, blur, levels in that order you could do the same with nodes. A filter that replicates all those steps would be a image node>noise node>Blur Node>Levels Node> output node and you get the same effect but with the filter but now you can now apply that effect to any image you load without going through all the photoshop steps.