Mid-January 2023
Read more about it online at https://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter/191-Mid_January_2023
Did you try the new brushes yet?
Here we go: (not necessarily in the same order)
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The mid-January Super Sale
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Inflation is a bad reality for many of us: food, natural gas for heating, electricity and many other items we want or need. To help a little, we're running a special promotion from now through the end of January.
Save 55% off the regular price of PD Howler or PD Artist
This is an automagic discount, no discount code needed. It will however expire on January 31st.
Order here:
https://www.thebest3d.com/sales
>>> order PD Howler 2023 or PD Artist 2023 to get the discount.
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New Builds (#71) for PD Howler 2023 and PD Artist 2023
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We have new builds #71 coming for both PD Howler 2023 and PD Artist 2023
If you're already using either of these, you should soon be seeing an email with the new downlaod available to you.
Upgrading to Howler if you have Artist - get 44% off
If you have the Artist edition, this is a good time to upgrade to Howler. Use this discount code:
44HOWLINGS
This will get you a discount of 44% off the regular price to grab PD Howler 2023.
There is no expiration date for this coupon. You can use it to upgrade to Howler from erlier versions of Howler as well as from Artist editions.
Order here: https://www.thebest3d.com/sales
and select PD Howler 2023 and then don't forget to enter the above-mentioned code.
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Howler 2023 is now also available on Steam at steampowered.com
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We are very pleased to announce the released of Howler 2023 on Steam. It's taken a long time to get to this point, in part because of COVID and RSV, but we are finally here. Happy to say that all involved made it.
You can see Howler 2023 here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2083130/PD_Howler_2023/
You may recall that we had earlier versions, including Howler 2021, but had skipped version 2022 (v15) on Steam. Now we have re-released version 16 aka PD Howler 2023.
For more about our release on Steam check this starter page:
https://www.thebest3d.com/howler/steam
We're also (significatly!) dropping the price of earlier versions still found on Steam. Great way to test the waters until you get your tax refund ;-)
You may also want to check the developer's website directly, as he's been running special promotions here:
https://pdhowler.com
These little sales really help support development directly, so if you already have Howler, then please let your friends know. If you play video games on Steam, you may see mentions in curator's pages, and on Twitch streams.
Also of note is that we have several new videos on our Youtube channel including how to paint lava and how to view OBJ 3d geometry files in Howler.
https://www.youtube.com/@pdhowler
Now, we invite you to join us on our Facebook page and get in direct contact with us and users to see the latest news and art in Howler.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/83248621949
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New tutorials and Videos
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Painting Progress (short animation through several stages)
https://youtu.be/288ByFMwN5k
Racoon painting progress (short animation through several stages)
https://youtube.com/shorts/Le2mteUrN-M
Quick notes: OBJ files for 3D, and fixing a bad frame inside an animation
https://youtu.be/RgJb2KxJkik
Tunnel vision, and Blended vs. Refracted Water, and both together.
https://youtu.be/q7F_XXhJn5Q
Dark Water
https://youtu.be/3QITs_Rhr50
LAVA - painted Rocks in a Hot Spot
https://youtu.be/UwLMv-kktmI
Welcome back to PD Howler on Steam!
https://youtu.be/Mjk4STNkSrE
New Brushes for Xmas 2022
https://youtu.be/M1Su5Rj8B0M
What's new in Fractals?
https://youtu.be/SNTN04AGjFY
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Artstation, anyone?
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Do you have an account on Artstation? Do you show your art?
There are a few samples of Dan's artwork here:
https://www.artstation.com/danritchie2
We would love to see yours, perhaps you'll join the Facebook group and post there too?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/83248621949
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What is your OBJ'ection?
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PD Howler and Artist do support 3D content in several ways. There's the 3D Designer, for creating elevation maps with erosions and sediments. It also exports it to the 3D Wavefront OBJ format as a set of triangles with color per vertex and/or u,v texture mapping addresses, so you can load it into your other favorite 3D tools such as Blender or Carrara, even Photoshop.
You can of course also work from the elevation map. For example to take that into Bryce.
If you need quick rendering, 3D Designer may be good enough for your needs win some cases:
Or you might prefer Puppyray GPU, for added effects in the atmosphere and an animated water plane, animated skies (custom animbrush), bump maps and ground fog to name a few extra details in rendering:
But what if you need more? What if it's meant to go into a game, and your physics engine will have a dune buggy crash-land on your terrain? How do you get that landscape out to other programs?
You can save the elevation map of course, and associated texture map and more, even the lighting maps for baking in.
Learn more about 3D Designer on our youtube channels and at https://www.thebest3d.com/3D-designer
You can also load the exported OBJ file into the 3D Viewer that's included with Windows. For one, just selecting an OBJ file in Windows Explorer that came out of the export from 3D Designer in Howler, you may see the preview in 3D and turn it around to inspect. Here's an example with a terrain that didn't get its own colors or texture.
When you open the file (here's another, this time with u,v texture map showing terrain coloring based on height and slope, as created in 3D Designer), you get extra options, different lighting and more.
But what if you want to bring your own 3D OBJ file back into Howler? What if you used Curvy 3D or Blender or other tools to create 3D shapes and models and exported that as OBJ, or what if you purchased or downlaoded a 3D shape in OBJ format? Can you load that into PD Howler? And to what end? How would you want to use it once it's in PD Artist or PD Howler?
We are just getting started with this. Expect some new developments in that area. But for now, understand that we already have had a basic OBJ loader/viewer of sources, though it has been dedicated to loading triangles only and released for trees. But, hey, they're 3D Trees!
You can find it under this menu:
View > Utilities > Widgets > Render and obj...
The current image remains there when starting this widget. This is so that you can predict the background color, or even position the 3D object against the background scene.
You will find a "Geometry" sub-folder in the place where Howler (or Artist) is installed.
Take one of the smaller files first, just to get a sense of how fast it loads on your system, and how the interaction looks. Here we loaded FirstTree4.obj.
Use the mouse inside the small preview area, with left or right button to move up/down or closer and use the slider in the interface to turn the tree.
Note that the Render option is meant to represent how the tree is rendered WHILE IT MOVES, i.e. while you change it's position or orientation. By default it is showing just the boundingbox at this time so that it remains very fast even on slow systems.You will see it as a blue bounding box that contains the whole tree.
Perhap[ps a better way for your faster PC is to use the Wireframe mode. Now the tree appears by its polygons, blue triangles.
If your system is fast enough, you might prefer to stay in Shaded mode even while positiong/orienting the tree.
Here's one of the Oak trees.
The nice thing about this even in this early stage, you can slightly change the rotation angles and create a variety of trees from just one OBJ file.
Taking it to the next level:
- You can also render the same over the prior and do it 2-3 or more times at various rotation angles to accumulate a denser looking tree.
- Once you have them aligned like this, this array of images can easily be collected into an animated brush from the Brush menu > Animated brushes
- Then you can paint with that animbrush. Add slight randomness to the colors, hues, saturation, position and/or rotation in the brush and you will make it look like a rish forest of hundreds of different trees, and it started with just one single OBJ file of a 3D tree.
Have fun!
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Last but Not Least
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There's a new menu next to the button that adds a new layer:
"The new layer menu... It's a shortcut to add a layer of a specific type. But it also does some things for you. Like, if it's an additive layer, the background color is automatically set to black. If it's a around gray layer, the background color is automatically set to gray."
Thank you so much for dibble-dabbling, waffling and howling into 2023!
Team Dogwaffle
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