This is issue #148 of the Dogwaffler of the Moment, the sporadic newsletter about Project Dogwaffle.

 July Surprise

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This newsletter can also be found online:

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter/148-july-surprise/

To catch up on earlier issues of our newsletter, start here:  http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter

In this edition, we introduce a few new features with a new build.

Here we go....


- Announcing Howler 11.3

- Scripting with VBscript

- New Renderings: compositing an airplane with a background scene

- Tips and Tricks, and fun Facts

- The Dogwaffler of the Moment:

- July Promo

- The Last Draw

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New Build: PD Howler 11.3

Summer Splash II: Look What the Tide Washed In

 
 
What's new?

• Tweaks with Color Theme
• Enhanced Interactive Gradient Tool
• Layer Preview
• Scripting with VB script. Here's an example which draws random circles
  

• added clarity in the plugin browser

How to get v11.3

If you ordered PD Howler on our Bmtmicro store, and your original email with download links is less than a year old, you should be able to re-download the latest version as a free update from 11.x to 11.3, full installer. If your links don't work anymore or have misplaced the email, contact Philip (www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/about) to get a new link email, or contact Dan if you ordered through him.

How about Steam, Daz and other places?

We don't want to see you wait too long. It may take a while, perhaps too long, to get it updated on some of the other resellers. If you're interested in getting it now, contact us to request a full installer at 80% discount via a discount coupon for ordering on BMTmicro.  

	To learn more about v11.3

	http://www.thebest3d.com/howler/11  has more details.






        

More about VBscripts

 

Scripting with VB scripts.

We're releasing new scripts, samples of what you can do. If you're a programmer, perhaps a game developer, this should appeal to you too.

Check the ever-growing documentation here:
http://squirreldome.com/API_And_Scripting.htm

We mentioned the circles script earlier. Here's the code:    Circles.vb
 




Here's another use of it, rendered over a pre-existing gradient background (click preview image for full size image). We've added some lighting thereafter, and the two lensflares were added in post after that.



And of course, it always makes an interesting starting point for 3D rendering in PuppyRay GPU.



Stay tuned for more scripts in the future. You may also want to experiment by copy/pasting the sample scripts from the documentation into your own variants.

New Renderings

We're preparing for a presentation next month at a Lightwave 3D user group on Twitch. Here's one of the challenges we'll try to address:

You have a 3D model of an airplane. You render it. Now you'd like that to be quickly combined with a background scene, a landscape that can be statis, oer even better, animated. Using Puppy Ray, we'll render the animated background. Then we'll render the airplane over the landscape, using the brush keyframer. Other techniques to explore are motion tracker, compositing, and animated keyframing for various filters.

For the airplane, we might have something created in Lightwave 3D, or perhaps acquired and rendered there. Here's an example of a 3D model done by Dave Devoe (see him in the Dogwaffler of the Moment - http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/dotm/Dave ) - this is just a small jpeg preview, the image we'll use is either against a blue or green screen background for easy compositing, or even better, it is in PNG format with alpha channel for transparent background.


 
Here we create the terrain in 3D Designer, adding erosion and sediments as well as colors based on slope and elevation.



After saving the heightmap and the color map (texture map), we render it in Puppy Ray.

Here are two versionsof the heightmap if you want to try from it:

eroded heightmap:  (click image for larger original)



with extra erosion:




simple texture:



better texture map:




What do we do with this?  Check this video on youtube:  https://youtu.be/PhZAgLqqiWM




Here is a first of several tutorials for more details on how to do all this:

https://youtu.be/rK4iRT9Dih8





 

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Tips and Tricks: (oh and some Fun Facts)

Did you know?

• Project Dogwaffle is now over 20 years old.

• About 9 years ago, this video was posted  - https://youtu.be/VdHLOww3PrA  -  it has been seen 93k times. Will you help promote it to make it over 100,000 views before the end of the year?

• More recently, this video was posted in support of a new community of users for PD Howler on Steam. -  https://youtu.be/BZtyqcWjUu4  - are you a game developer?

• Over the years, PD Howler has grown to include more and more content, such as brushes, background skies, and 3D content for trees. You'll need around 564 MB of disk space to install, and may want at least 700-800 MB disk space available, to be more comfortable. Extra space may be needed when you use Howler, for temporary storage of images, frames of an animation, and videos. A good starting point is with a few GB of free disk space.

• From the creator of Project Dogwaffle comes a series of books with adventures of a little squirrel. http://squirreldome.com/Silver.htm

• There's a new book in the making. See the review further below

• Quote of the day:   If you can't paint on the computer, paint a picture in your mind - read!

• PD Howler can work on video clips and find duplicate frames (aka dropped frames). Not only that: It can also remove those frames, or blend them, or even transition them with motion estimated interpolation. The video frame repair toolkit was introduced in Howler 9.6. http://www.thebest3d.com/howler/9/what-is-new-in-the-Howler-9.6-Keep-it-cute.html
  

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Dogwaffler of the Moment:  Kathie Berry - Spring-Fed Art Community

   
https://graphicberry.net/

        If you have been using Project Dogwaffle for a long while, you may remember her reviews on PD Pro 3 and 4.
        Kathie recently took a fresh look at PD Howler 11.

               https://graphicberry.net/reviews

       (scroll down that page to find the section on software reviews)




So you like to paint. Do you like to read? 
Looking for something to read this Summer?
Check Kathie's book reviews

     https://graphicberry.net/reviews

    Kathie is taking a close look at the newest volume: 

July Promo:

See this for information on this month's promotion:
  
http://www.thebest3d.com/sales

  
 
 

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The Last Draw

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

Team Dogwaffle.
squirreldome.com / thebest3d.com

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