Project Dogwaffle Howler
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Thanks, I'm looking for a 3D object painter program. I'm an old pro with corel draw photo paint, I started with it back on very 90's but it's not 3D object friendly. I love Carrara when I used a trial version but it's out of my price range at this time.
Thanks
Blacksmith 3D may do what you want. There are two versions, Standard and Pro. The standard version is on sale right now for about $70, with a max texture resolution of 4096x4096. The Pro version is also in sale for about $140. It's sold at Renderosity, but you can find a comparison of the two versions at the Blacksmith website (just google "blacksmith 3d"). There is a trial version available on the website as well - you should give the trial version a good test before buying to make sure it does what you want. I bought it a couple of years ago, and am quite happy with the purchase. It's not as good as zBrush or 3dCoat, but it's a very easy to use 3D painting tool. You can directly load CR2's or .obj files. It includes some good basic sculpting tools as well.
Some inspiration towards using Howler along with Carrara.
While this is not DIRECT inspirational tutorial, it certainly can help to get some additional ideas flowing, and to help illustrate some of the power of Howler all by itself. Art like this can then be used in conjunction with any of your CG work, but I tend to feel that it lends particularly well to Carrara endeavors, hence the thread.
Potpourri 140610 - The Living Planet, Part1
Potpourri 140615 - The Living Planet, Part2
Thanks for these inspirations go out to the Dogwaffle team, Philip Staiger and developer Daniel Ritchie
Oh yeah!
For those whom may not be following the pdhowler YouTube channel, Dogwaffle developer, Daniel Ritchie, just uploaded a demonstration of the new Ambient Occlusion that has been added to the Foliage Particles system: Even more realistic - using Ambient Occlusion with Foliage Brushes
As he mentions, it's still in it's implementation phase and needs some finalization within the program. Even at this stage it's an amazing new possibility for scenery/landscape artists!
On an entirely different note, check this out for fun!
This is Philip Staiger's brother, Olivier, who is a Fiddler in the Wind!
Too Much Wind ( To Play Violin )
This doesn't have much to do (directly) with Dogwaffle or Carrara, but is very cool, very interesting, and could prove to be inspirational in your artistic endeavors! I hope you enjoy it.
Also, notice how he sounds just like his brother, Philip! ;)
Howler 9.5 is coming!
Check out this list of Features!
Of particular note that I am extremely hyped about are the Cloud Modeler (particles modeler) and new enhancements to the 3d rendering aspects!
Already out in Howler 9 is Puppy Ray, an amazing height map/sky map/terrain texture ray-tracing playground with full animation features, global illumination, and more. Puppy Ray is enormously cool! This new Particles Modeler is super hot!
Now under development are the new enhancements to the 3D Designer! Ambient Occlusion being added to foliage (particles) brushes and the 3D Designer is aggressive and super-cool!
Daniel Ritchie is on Fire, and Philip is a total die-hard, testing every new thing - pushing it to its limits and beyond... just jammin!
ROCK ON!!!!
Have you ever wished that you could simply paint particles into a scene?
Welcome to the Particle Modeler coming in Howler 9.5! Ouch-Cool!
Early Preview: Cloud Animation - on pdhowler at YouTube!
Earth to Dartanbeck! The good news is that after a long search, I became somewhat convinced that PD Howler is the needed toolkit for effects and editing as a more handy and affordable alternative to the adobe suite, judging from all the capabilities its got under the hood. The bad news is that I'm stuck, trying to do simple things with the demo version of vs9.2 I downloaded has been a bit frustrating. I've watched tons of videos (and thereby burnt so much in bandwidth, those videos go on and on and on, Dan and Philip (great guys for putting out so much work I must say) could have done with some editing......I know you get that way with your videos too! lol!) but it seems my brain is wired differently from how the logic behind PD Howler's UI. I find it quite odd not being able to translate stuff I'm working with using manipulators, if you bring in an image to a new layer for example, you can't just grab nodes to resize or reposition it, you have to go into a translate tab via the filter pulldown and then toggle some weird controls, which is all so cumbersome. I'm used to working with a crop tool from previous years using Corel Draw and other tools, I can't find anything like that. I'm trying to do a simple texture map for a face like its done here using photoshop, I'm trying to replicate the process in Howler a definitive test before I commit to paying for a license. No luck so far. I'm sulking because everyone else seems to be having howling fun but me! End of rant.
Add to that the fact that images placed on layers come in with some transparency by default and you can't really remove this, Dan or Philip mentioned this in one of the tutorials, it's such an issue, but surely with all Howler is able to do, there must be some way of making good progress despite these issues?
Lastly, (I'm remembering these things in bits, brain is frazzled) no pick tool. Found that very weird. Sorry if I'm sounding very grumpy, that's not the intention, I just want to know if there's a brand of coffee I need to take first before getting into the Howler groove.
you need a brand from the 90's
the interface is from then .
just like Blender !
Okay, perhaps I am an odd duck?
I have found the learning of the Dogwaffle ways to be an honor and a pleasure.
Learning of Daniel Ritchie's background as a special effects artist, I started seeing the interface more as, much like Carrara, an seemingly endless variety of pulling off anything you can imagine.
True. When I started off trying to do things that I've become accustomed to doing in photo editors, I found myself a little out of place, not knowing what to do.
I don't have bandwidth limits and find the entirety of the "pdhowler YouTube Channel" to be a very entertaining way to learn.
The power of Howler is still working its way in. Since I've been finding it so beneficial to my Carrara work, I'll be illustrating some of my workflow via my YouTube channel as well, showing how well the two work together, keeping both open and sending files back and forth. It's fun and it opens the whole operation into an insane amount of "Everything is Possible", at least for making and tweaking animated renders.
It's really exciting me more, with Daniel being a constant developmental maniac! The tools he's developing into this thing... it's been coming since long before I became a canine digital manipulator with the 3d designer, as one example... but this new PuppyRay ray tracer was a really good step in a new direction. This whole new particle modeler is going to be an animation blast! But when I finally realized and learned to recognize the animated brush system with the brush keyframer, I really start to realize that I'll be able to do some really cool things that would never have even become a thought without it.
When I first went in and fixed an issue where one of my super-flexing tree trunks was flicking in and out of visibility during the render, otherwise the rendering looked fantastic. Just seeing the video, days before, about using the rotoscoping capabilities of the curve tool to track a moving target with a moving selection. So I used it to draw the outline of the trunk where it was visible, and keyframed its location, shape, and size across the animation, as the camera was also in motion, So I had a moving selection even where the trunk was missing from a few frames here and there. Then I just filled the selection with a sophisticated gradient across the animation with a click!
I don't mind learning new software if it's something that gives me what I want. I used to enjoy just learning different software. But now that I really am set on Carrara with Howler, I haven't really been looking for other options. "At", maybe... but not "for".
I love Photoshop, but don't have it right now, using PaintShop Pro instead, which I'm getting used to more and more. I still like to use photo editors for some things. But I must admit that it's been a long time since I've fired it up - favoring just using Howler, because the workflow eventually becomes very clear, and with many more possibilities at my fingertips.
One thing though:
In some of the videos, it is discussed about how we don't really have the same type of layers as popular image editors. So we need to use green screen (or blue or pink, or any color of your choosing) to set transparency for each individual layer, where needed. But that's using layers - that way.
But Dogwaffle is incredibly "Brush-Centric" making it work out much easier by storing layers as brushes, rather than layers. Capture your layer image - whatever, and store it as a brush. Make your layers as brushes and store them wherever you want, anywhere on your monitor. You can also store 'selections' in the same way. A selection in Dogwaffle is the Alpha layer. To further add or subtract from or to any selection, you can use any shape tools, even brushes, to assist in getting the exact selection (alpha) that you want. Those store in little windows that can be dragged anywhere on your monitor, same as brushes, but the brush manager that comes with every stored brush has many more options. But we do have an entire menu and tweak tools for Alpha, as Alpha, in Dogwaffle, is just as important as the brush. So just like using a height map or bump, etc., we can do that gray scale information in our Alpha selections as well.
This works amazingly well. Especially in Howler, which allows for animated Alphas! Ouch-Cool!
Okay so I've just hinted that we have all sorts of things that we can do for Alpha - tweaking out our selections in multitudes of ways.
Brushes can have incredible variables added to or taken away from what is currently stored as a brush, which can be anything from a single point to an avi movie file. I have yet to truly start taking advantage of the particles brushes, which work in real-time, by the way, but have found some of them to be real time savers for me, so I'm getting to know a few of the simple presets really well for adding controlled smears where I need them. One is a globby, large oil paint brush, but it doesn't add new hues. It simply alters the position of the pixels currently existing on the image. The one I am really new with is called an Orbicles brush, which uses particles contained in a 3d shape, bouncing around within according to many settings available. As the 'orbicles' pass through the dimension of the original image, they pick up their size and shape from the image, and paint it back down the next time it comes in contact with the plane of the image. This all takes place withing a set 3 dimensional shape that we get to set up, and alter quite a few parameters. But Dogwaffle has a sophisticated particles brush engine, and it gives us full control over the engine's parameters, if we feel adventurous enough. Otherwise, like most of us, you just select a preset and tweak its settings. You can even open the engine from there and really change what it does!
Oh my... that long already? There's still so much to say! But if I truly have left Earth... I'm content to stay out here! :ahhh:
Lol, okay, thanks Dartanbeck, I will read that bit about alphas like 15 times and watch the howler tutorials like 150 times till something clicks!
@ bigh......yes, like Blender, lots of power locked behind an 'unusual' workflow. It appears people are complaining less about Blender these days since they overhauled the UI. Howler deserves all the funding and whatever that can allow an interface upgrade without breaking the software. Guess we can't ask for everything all at once right?
be careful out there - space worm
Okay, I know that I am being far too absent from the forums of late... something that is currently beyond my control... but I have just started watching this video about the new Howler 9.5 release, and I had to come and tell you all about it!
This one is performed and narrated by the developer, Dan Ritchie, whom begins with a wonderful overview of "What is Howler, and why is it so different?" introduction before heading into the new improvements.
This is very cool for many people:
- Those whom have always been on the fence towards buying it
- Those whom may have bought a copy, whatever version, and just couldn't quite get to grips with its differences to other editors
- Those whom may just wonder: why does everything have to be So Different?
Personally, I have embraced the differences and used a couple of more common image editors when I really felt the need. But the more I use, and get used to, the Dogwaffle way of doing things, the more I find it to be more organic and natural as something to be used beautifully alongside Carrara, for both stills and my animation work. I am digging into my other editors less and less these days, not because one is better than the other... I'm not belittling anyone... but because I am growing so adept at how things are done in Howler, that I'm just finding it to be natural and very artistically limitless. Besides all of that, I love supporting this fast-growing small band of excellent app creation wizardry! In truth, Daniel Ritchie is the developer and master of all things Dogwaffle. But Philip is the most thorough and immediate tester of new things and how they interact with everything from the past that I have ever experienced! I truly wish that I could begin to hold one of his candlesticks... but alas... I'm just too slow! LOL
Now... I'm getting back into this video to see his presentation of the new Howler 9.5 and dig into this collection of artistry bliss at my earliest available slot in time!
Cheers, all! Happy rendering!
What's New in Howler 9.5 Part 1
What's New in Howler 9.5 Part 2
Here's the What's New? page, and
here's the latest Dogwaffle Newsletter
These guys ROCK!!!
I really have missed a lot lately. Very cool, bigh... love your art, as always!
Wow! Part 2 (above video link) has some great info on the new Particle Modeler (cloud modeler)!!!
But I've failed to report that Daniel also has a second video for new Howler (or Dogwaffle) users regarding the GUI: GUI Notes
Helpful to have these videos that explain how to think in Howler......still learning...
" But I’ve failed to report that Daniel also has a second video for new Howler (or Dogwaffle) users regarding the GUI: "
the GUI looks better now - like the new stuff - think it would be fun play with .
just don't see how it fits in with Carrara .
and it cost more then C8.5 ( on sale ) - which is often .
just don’t see how it fits in with Carrara
For me, it's invaluable for fixing quirks that can sometimes occur in animation sequences. At least that was my initial plan. Now I just love how I can add effects, paint through the animations, adjust my values either across the whole of each frame, or over just a selection or even an animated selection, and I can even apply effects to the selections themselves, like box or Guassian blur the edges of the selection, etc.,
I have found that I can take my rendered animations from Carrara and bring them into Howler and then bring them back into Carrara. For example, I can make an image sequence of an animation, open the sequence in Howler and paint on it, tweak it, whatever, then open it in the Carrara Render room again and save it as an animated GIF, avi, etc., or even run it as a backdrop and render volumetric cloud fog over portions of the animation, fire, up close shots of faces, whatever. The fact that this can all be done so easily is what totally has excited me as an Howler/Carrara workflow.
Since the Carrara/Howler connection has been so fun, I have been working within Howler a lot more. So obviously I just got a better handle on working in it. The more comfortable I got in Howler, the more fun I started having! Particles brushes are amazing. I still do all of my landscape rendering in Carrara, but I must admit that Howlers ability to do so, so very quickly, as far as fly overs and such, is a lot of fun to mess with. Most of this type of thing is now GPU optimized so, with my powerful graphics card, I can do a lot in no time. But I still find more joy in just painting around and enhancing renders and such in Howler over what I used to be so comfortable in. It just feels to me like it has a lot more to offer.
Daniel Ritchie was involved in the special effects of many movie projects. Maybe he still is... I don't know. But I really like how, rather than simply following a Photoshop type of program, he decided to be different. More of a compliment to PS, dedicated more towards the motion effects side of things. So he created the Timeline Editor, which allows us to keyframe in how our filters are applied across the timeline of a sequence. This is what I use most often for color grading, applying animated motion blurs, sun ray blurs (called Mystic Vision in Howler), and subtle lens flares to bright, shiny objects. It's just so simple to animate this stuff, and it's FAST. Much faster than trying to capture this sort of thing during the raw rendering phase. I no longer try for post effects like Motion or Depth blur in Carrara. Too taxing on time and my patience. In Howler, if I get it wrong, I can quickly load in the original (or the last save) and try again in minutes, not hours or days.
For some folks that are going for the new Ultra High Resolutions, Howler may not be ready yet. Very large resolution video footage can be entirely unworkable at this stage. But I use 1280 x 720 (low-end HDTV) and don't have any problems at all.
Howler is also set up for traditional cartoon animation artists, using "Sprite Sheets", where the individual sequences are displayed on a single sheet, and each cell gets animated according to the frames per second output. Philip has a few video tutorials on the subject, which is quite interesting. Daniel has another demonstration video on yet another method that he used to lip sync a cartoon horse talking, using some of the powerful tools for animation in Howler. I still haven't tried some of these techniques, but they all add up to making Howler into a wonderful Paint Shop for animators and traditional painters alike. I used to paint traditionally and I just like the Dogwaffle way over PS, Gimp, and Paint Shop Pro for my 'painting' needs, as well as my animation editing prior to final production, where I go into Vegas and splice everything together.
I am using TwistedBrush Pro Studio now - got a great deal !
Wow what a program - going to have fun now .
edit to add - using
Adobe Premiere Pro
HitFilmExpress
and more .
Cool!
I haven't used any of those. I was simply looking for a 'different' sort of image editor and remembered Project Dogwaffle catching my eye here at the DAZ 3D store time and again. I poked around in the site at "The Best 3D" dot com, watched a few tutorial videos, and thought to myself: "This software looks perfect for me, and these guys are outstandingly cool!" and, as it turns out, I was absolutely correct on both counts. It did take a learning curve, but I never really learned all I wanted to know about any image editor yet... so I was totally up for learning.
I consider Howler to be an outstanding value. Photoshop and Premiere have always resided outside of my budget, being the casual hobbyist. But as I got more into things, I'm still a struggling artist trying to make my way as inexpensively as possible. Going by route of the CoolCreativeBundle, I was able to score Howler and a whole lot more for only sixty bucks! Philip sent me a coupon immediately (I contacted him ahead of time via TheBest3Ddotcom) allowing to inexpensively upgrade that version of Howler to the latest version. They are more than fair when upgrading... and I totally love supporting this cause.
"Project Dogwaffle" has become more than just software to me now... more like a family of cool artists with a code-man that continues to respond to us in remarkable ways. The Howler Yahoo group has been more than fun. You don't see me post on that one much because I'm on the beta team one. I consider the whole team to be good friends, and the software a faithful companion.
bundle would be a good deal - except its all old version and I have most of them
all ready .
but if some body wanted to have fun , go for it .
so you are beta testing Howler - guess its free to you then - nothing wrong with that
got a lot of my software that way .
Here's a promotional price for Howler 9.5 directly: Removed Off Site Commercial Link
Was surprised to see, that today howler 9.1 costs 3.50$ at another Render-site.
Where???
we can't say !
start with a Render......
Sad, it's back to $89.
Maybe it's just me, but that seems like a screaming deal! I am admittedly biased, however, now that I've grown to love the software.
I love all of the new stuff they've put into this, and I've loved it without all of that, too. To each, their own, though.
For anyone interested, for a limited time you can get Howler 8.2 free. You can find the link to the link in the Freestuff Forum over at Renderosity in the thread titled "2014 Time to Howl gift page".
You're absolutely right Dartanbeck, even at $89 it still is a screaming deal, but when one runs out of software tool-up reserves, you shamelessly start deal hunting in earnest. And am I grinning from ear to ear now that I've followed Dustrider's tip and downloaded Howler 8.2 for free! Now I can take my Howler experimentations further knowing I can save my work unlike when I had just the demo. I've sent Phillip a mail asking how to upgrade to Howler 9.5. Great thanks to him and Dan for keeping this great software within the reach of common folk like me. The great thing is I can always come back to say thanks by hitting the donate button on their site! Two thumbs up to the Project Dogwaffle team!