Happy penguin loves to waffle and howl

This is issue #127 of the Dogwaffler of the Moment, a sporadic, artsy newsletter for and about users of Project Dogwaffle.

Water Caustics for Thanksgiving



Hello again,

here is another update from the "Dogwaffler of the Moment", our sporadic newsletter about digital painting and animation as well as visual effects and exploring 3D creativity with Project Dogwaffle. If you want to catch up on recent or prior issues of our newsletters and announcements, start here:

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter
This specific newsletter issue is here:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter/127-water-caustics-for-Thanksgiving

In this issue:
 
 



Tutorials: Working with Vector tools to create assets such as callouts


There are a few new videos and tutorials in our YouTube channel:  http://www.youtube.com/pdhowler

Project Dogwaffle is primarily a raster paint program. Some things are better than with vector tools. We do have a Curve tool, that behaves much like what you see in vector tools, with control handles and editing options. But eventually, you'll render a brush along the curve's path, and that makes it go into the world of raster.

If you need to create some graphic assets, a vector drawing tool might on occasion be a better solution for it, even if you do so only to ultimately import it to Dogwaffle as a raster asset, such as a PNG image with transparent background, to be used in a custom brush, for example.

Dan has recently created a collection of callouts. These are graphic elements often seen for use in comics and illustrated cartoons: bubbles with a leading pointy end, to point at a character in the scene and hold some text of what the character is saying or thinking. Imagine also a starry blob for use with impact words, such as "POW!" or "BANG!" in a fist-fighting scene.

Here are two tutorials that show how to create some of these callouts, with two free programs for vector drawing: Inkspace and OpenOffice's Draw. We like these great two options for a variety of reasons. We think you might find them equally rewarding and useful for additional creative explorations. For example, if you create 3D comics with Carrara or other tools, you might find these interesting to add the text bubbles, the callouts.

Vector editing with OpenOffice, Inkscape or similar tools to create callouts

https://youtu.be/seG-TC5qZEE

Introduction to Inkscape, and creating assets, including callouts

https://youtu.be/BQThlz1tdLs


Once you've created a callout, save it in the EMF file format. Dogwaffle can import it. You can then set transparencies, if needed, resample it, use it as brush to stamp it down in the desired place, etc... Here's what that might look like after batch converting. In this folder we see a bunch of EMF files next to their PNG conversions. Windows shows the thumbnails for PNG but not EMF in this case.




Of course, what you do with those callouts in Dogwaffle can be very different from the original intent. Here's a scene created with just one callout, a circular gradient, some stylized lighting, a lens flare, and text. A missed call,... out.









Freebies: Water Caustics, a plugin for Howler (and possibly more)


 
Here is a new plugin, made available for free as an addon. We created this one for use in PD Howler, and tested it there. It will likely also work wih earlier versions, Howler 9.x, and possibly v8. It uses a 3D API that was first introduced in v8 or thereabouts, so if you can't make it work with an older version 7 and before, that's why.
The filter is able to produce animations, or still images. If you use it in PD Artist, or even PD Particles, it may work for still images. We did not test it for that, but if you have PD Artist or PD Particles, why not give it a try and let us know?

If you'd like to upgrade to Howler 10, use the promotion shown below for a limited time, or contact us for a discount coupon if you missed it.

To learn more, read this:

http://thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/download/water-caustics/index.html







Sale: Thanksgiving / Cyber Monday at 59% off(!) through December 4


It's the season to be thankful, for the things that enrich our lives and shape our future as much as they have forged our past and present.

In celebration of Thanksgiving, we're offering this very special time-limited promotional discount: 59% off the regular price.
 
Learn more here:   http://www.thebest3d.com/sales





Game Dev:

Beginning the road to Cityscapes for Dogwaffle



More game engines and game development tools are mentioned here:  http://www.thebest3d.com/gamedev

If you are a game developer, you probably received your copy of PD Howler or other Dogwaffler editions on Steam. One user had recently asked about brushes to paint cityscapes. Something like procedural brushes would be nice. But that's a long, long(!) development effort. PErhaps in the future, if there's enough demand. For now we see an opportunity to make animbrushes, loaded with city blocks. This may also lead to the realization that we need new features and more powerful controls in the frames that make up a custom brush. Stay tuned.

This also means we need pictures of city blocks that we can distribute as part of the program, or even separately, but still, royalty free.

You might find some of interest in various image collections, some of wich are free and royalty fre for even commercial use. Check the fine print on the license.

One site that might be useful is www.morguefile.com - they may not be the very best top quality pictures, but some of them are definitely good enough for this and other purposes.

We recently were in Boston and New York, and took a few pictures that may be suitable for this type of project too. We also have interesting skylines in downtown San Diego, so more images will be added. We'll be releasing images of our own collections over time here:

http://www.thebest3d.com/cityscapes

The collections may start small at first, but please be sure to come back regularly to discover more. In time we'll also have animated brushes that you could use to quickly paint a whole city. We also intend to add tutorials that show some of the techniques for building the individual images with translarent background, and collecting them into a animbrush, and painting with them, with a variety of tricks such as auto-scaling based on 'distance'.




 


And that's a wrap, for now. Thanks for waffling and howling!  






the goddess of sadness, painted with Project Dogwaffle by nBT
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