Hello again,
here is another update from the "Dogwaffler of the
Moment" newsletter.
See more and learn
more in recent online editions with HTML
formatting, with images and links to related
videos. Start here to see all past newsletters:
As recently announced, PD
Howler 9.6 is now also available on Steam, www.steampowered.com
- Steam is a popular gamer's and game developer's
portal. If you're an avid gamer or a game
developer, there is no doubt that you already knew
about Steam, where you can find a number of other
great software tools made for game development, in
addition to many popular games, especially indie
games.
As a reminder, this is where you can see us on
Steam:
Now, if you already have PD
Howler, you might also want to get Howler 9.6
through Steam.
Perhaps you have an
earlier version of Howler or Artist, such as
version 9.2, 8.2 or older, and are
interested in upgrading to Howler 9.6 on
Steam? We currently don't offer an
upgrade path directly for purchase the
upgrade on Steam, but you can contact
us to request a discount coupon for
the upgrade through us, and then request a
Steam key from to also enable access to
Steam Discussions, Artwork, Forums etc....
Or, you might look at the price on Steam
which is somewhat discounted already, and
just buy the full product there. It may be
a better deal than the discount you'd get
for example when upgrading with us from PD
Particles 1, or PD Pro version 4 or 5,
even 6 (Howler or Artist editions).
Or perhaps you already
have Howler 9.6, and just want to be able to
post artwork and participate in the
Discussions on Steam? We can help you with
that.
Or perhaps you have
Howler 9.5, and want the free update to
Howler 9.6 through Steam? We can help you
with that too.
Keep an eye on the Steam offer also because
occasionally, you may see some extra promotions
there too. Today, for example, it is down
another 10% off, part of a 1-week long
promotion. It might be the last day though.
"Unexpected Error:
Quitting" - seem familiar?
One thing that may happen on occasion is that
you may want to uninstall and later re-install
Howler through Steam. Or, you may want to jump
back and forth between the non-Steam product and
the Steam-served PD Howler 9.6. When you do
that, you may need to re-run it once again as
Administrator, just once, so that its components
may get properly registered again. OWhen you do
that, the Steam version may now be the disabled
one. So, you may need that one run as
Administrator the next time you wish to run it.
Again, just once.
Generally speaking, the most recently installed
product is the one that will work, while the
others may display the "Unexpected error:
Quitting" error message and fail to launch.
To help you work around this possible issue,
we've set up a Steam-focused page here:
Bookmark and look for news and tips and tricks
as well as tutorials there in coming weeks and
months.
For Example, here is a new video that shows
where in fact Steam installs its copy of Howler
9.6 by default, and how you can uninstall and
later re-install it, or what you may need to do
after re-installation (or after installing a
non-steam version), since Steam may not run
Howler as Administrator automatically for you
the first time after re-installation.
Uninstalling
and reinstalling Howler 9.6 under Steam
And finally, last but not least, you will find
a bunny or two amongst the many 3d sticker
images provided for free to users of Project
Dogwaffle by Michel Agullo:
We've had PD Artist 9.6 on
sale for a few weeks, to celebrate its recent
launch. It was going to expire end of March, but
seeing that Easter is around the corner, we've
decided to extend that sale through Easter
Monday, April 6.
PD Howler was also put on
sale, to celebrate the launch of Howler on
Steam. This sale will also be extended through
Easter Monday.
We're taking a look at an
artist who's been using PD Howler for a few
years now, and been quite vocal and supportive
on the DAZ3D forums about its merits: Dartenbeck
Dartenbeck uses Carrara for
3D work, such as character animation. He uses PD
Howler for post work, and then some. He has a
few tutorial on his YouTube channel, mostly on
Carrara work, but some and more to come on
Howler as well. Here are two tutorials that show
how he uses Carrara and Howler together, with
rotoscoping and other tricks.
To learn more about
Dartenbeck, visit his YouTube Channel here:
This one shows a motion
trails effect for a sword swing using
rotoscoping tools. The first twenty or so
minutes shows him tracking the sword motion by
hand. Then he smears the motion with Mystic
Vision, using the Timeline editor to change
keyframed settings that evolve over time.
You will also
find Dartenbeck in the Carrara Forums at
DAZ3D.com. In fact he also offers some items for
sale that he has created for Carrara users.
Here's his store at Daz:
Here's another final
rendering, done with the Sky Render filter but
with additional slight displacement for added
noise on the clouds. There are also a few things
flying softly from left to right, done with the
snowfall filter, to make it look like pollen and
such carried in the summer wind. And of course
there's the grass waving in the wind. Overall,
not too shaby, don't you agree?
The methods and results vary a lot depending on
what's needed, case by case:
- are you standing on the
ground and looking up at the sky?
- or are you in orbit and looking down at a
planet?
- should the clouds be animated?
- do you want them to look realistic, or to the
contrary, stylized? cartoony? different in other
ways?
You can paint them, you can
render them in various tools, even by abusing
the 3D Designer and turning mountains upside
down to make them look like clouds on a sunset
sky. You can even use the Particle Modeler to
create shapes like bunnies and faces, and use
them during renderings in 3D Designer.
We thought this would be a good opportunity to
see a collection of some of the many ways to
make clouds of different types for different
reasons. To that effect, we looked through all
the videos and tutorials we have on our YouTube
channel, and if they had some sort of clouds
inside, we listed them in a new PlayList.
Here's that playlist: Cloudy
with a chance of waffles
Total Howler - 3D modeling
of terrain, clouds, rendering, postwork,
animation
And that's it for this
issue.
Thanks for waffling and
howling!
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