Project Dogwaffle Howler
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staigerman wrote:
thanks I'll post something next week if I do something worthwhile sharing ;)
I'm finding dogwaffle much better than carrara for terrains as it is much quicker to see what you are working on
I saw those animations when you posted them to the forum.
amazing job you did. I will revisit them later - !
PS nice work Dartanbeck
FYI: I have updated the very first post to turn the thread from a question into a statement. I must say that I am very impressed with this software!
no trouble, i mainly use a mouse though i have tablet
question re Manual.
I'm fairly keen to download it print it out.
Not sure how to do this?
any clues appreciated!
You mean the manual for Dogwaffle?
There isn't really an updated latest version manual. There is one that dates back to v2.1 or so, still has a lot of validity though for basic concepts, even if the interface has evolved, and much was added since.
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/help/how_to_print.html
Scroll down and you'll find a link to a PDF version.
and a choice of formats here: (zip, html,...)
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/help/index.html
Thanks staigerman, appreciate the prompt reply.
That's a very helpful link.!
Sorry I wasn't more explanatory, my wife was still in bed. She gets annoyed when I get up and get on the PC first thing in the morning - so I was typing "quietly".
It's always handy to have a hard copy of the manual ;)
As I watched through the series, I thought I saw a terrain grow... I haven't tried yet as my workstation is always busy rendering. But can Carrara use animated Height maps?
I used the curve tool to correct a flickering tree trunk in a windy animated scene. the clouds are animated too.
First I used the curve tool and Rotoscoping to key frame where the trunk 'should' be by tracking where it really was throughout the animation. Then I made lightning and flashed the brightness levels with the strikes. Then I made a rain mask for the first layer of rain using AnyFX, like your video shows.
Now it's a 1280 x 720 Backdrop, and I saved the camera movement - which is used with this backdrop.
My first use was kind of okay... but the new one I'm making now is so much better!
Here's my first one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Hedc99hAk
Howler 8.2d is out. This was announced on the yahoo dogwaffle group. The download link to registers going to be mailed out in the next two weeks to Howler 8 owners.
Howler 8.2d What's New
Awesome, right? My baby netbook had that black icon issue. Can't wait to see what the UI choices are :)
I really love Dogwaffle more and more every time I open it. It took a little getting used to at first. But I blame myself, because I've been watching all of their videos in order, sequentially. I should have started with the Version 8 stuff, and then started from the beginning. Philip explains, in very great detail, exactly how to take your first steps in Howler (and/or Artist) within those first few videos. I find that I can just watch those things over and over again. That's my nightly TV show now!
I think we've started supporting more major formats natively, for importing image sequences, recently.
I think we've started supporting more major formats natively, for importing image sequences, recently.
Very cool news! I'm really loving 8.2d even though I've barely had time to really put it to work. Just today I used the Motion Detection filter to lengthen several animation that went way too fast. I can hardly believe how fast you software works on these functions. I used some pretty decent settings, too - was very impressed with how smoothly the conversions went. That rotoscoping curve tool has got me a bit addicted. Here I am... all excited to paint and draw and make my own particle brush systems... Oh I wish I could buy time. But then again... If I could it would be way out of my range... I'd have to wait for a sale! :)
We spent a lot of time developing on netbooks. For some reason, we like those things. One of our development machines is an AMD c60 powered APU, and an older one had one of the original Atom processors. We did that also looking forward to tablets based on Windows 8. It looks like AMD is releasing some Jaguar processors that should rock for tablets in the very near future.
Kick A.. Anle...
Kick Ankle! Yeah... thats it!
I love this little thing too. It seems like it would almost fit in the drive of my mighty eight core workstation... and now I'm drooling over building a bigger, faster one... and you go and get me all excited to buy a new Jaguar! LOL
Love it. These things (netbooks) really are handy - mine is just the celeron with Win8 on it. Dogwaffle Howler works great - even on this teensy weesy smart phone - styled lappy. That's what it is... my smart phone/sketchbook!
I'll likely buy a Jaguar version when they come out. I give my current one to one of my four, adult children - who ever needs it most. Nobody ever turns down these cute little things. My Atom (the first Acer AspireOne netbooks) played Nevrwinter Nights pretty darned good for a proc that was designed out of smart-phone tech
Dan,
You truly are a hero to have made this marvelous software, that is Project Dogwaffle.And then to keep the older versions around for less cash, and those who have less need for the new. I need all the poweryou can give me. In fact, in the future I'd love to get more capability of fetting bigger. Like animating an 8000 x 4000 (or even bigger) spherical backgrounf image for Carrara. Perhaps Icould now if I had more RAM (I have 16GB now).
But I am so happy with my Howler! Man, I can't beleive how real you make it. You have my stylus (which I'venever liked to use before) feeling exactly like a real paint brush, heavy and sticky with a glob of oil paint on it - or dry with a touch of acrylic, or tempra...
My first use was on this little netbook. I was traveling - didn't like my first session with Win8, because I forgot my memorized e-mail PW that they've been making me change... Arghhh... get into the hotel room, without actually knowing the right-click to choose a brush... I just used the panel controls to create what I thought would be a 7H, maybe 6H pencil. Jammed out a sketch just like I was on my sketch pad. As I get more used to the controls and my tablet, I'll get much better - and want to create an oil painted animation fantasy drama - like a hour and a half, two hours long... somewhere in there... I think it would be fun, and very cool.
You freaking R O C K ! ! !
Oh... and I love you adventure music too!
Hya
Is this a good place to ask questions?
So I am working at about 7200 by 3600 pixels for publication.
I need to take the CG look from some of my work.
I;ve had a few goes at changing the mode so I am exposing the swap channel
but
I'm finding the inbuilt brushes a little small.
Apart from that some of the effects are good.
I would like to turn my image into something more resembling hand worked.
My options might be water color, oil or coloured pencil effects.
Could someone hold my hand here for a moment (please)
So step one, I copy my image into dogwaffle into the swap channel?
And then - for example if I wanted to achieve a pencil effect what would I do?
I'm looking for a way to change the original image but not have to draw it again - being lazy :)
Also anyway of chancing the transparency of layers?
Is there a better place to ask these questions?
thanks in advance
This one should help towards that: Dogwaffle Layers
Oh... I also wanted to mention that it will become incredibly useful to learn how to use and make custom brushes - those you can make any size (even full page big or bigger!) and offer immense flexibility. Again, I'm too new to know how to text it out... but Philip explains stuff really well in those videos.
I've mentioned earlier in this thread, my process of making my animated backdrop of a windy rain storm with lightning, which I pretty much just followed Philips tutorial for making rain. Well I've been experimenting with using Howler to create full animated texture maps in avi format, and some others that are more generic masks (animated) that can be applied to bump channel and highlight to help with rainy FX on figures that are used in that backdrop. Sometimes Carrara seems finicky about the avi texture maps. perhaps it's the codec used, if I used one. Most of the avi I create are in full frame mode. I just checked the finished clips from what is currently batch rendering, and the textures are animating very nicely! Her skin is dripping, but nearly everything she's wearing, as well as her hair, includes my generic subtle motion applier avi.
Rather excited = me! ;-)
That's almost C/C++ coding... ;-)
That's almost C/C++ coding... ;-)Yes. It's Yoda's version of C++
Rather sexy = that
Much Action = that Scene
Set Condition = where I begin to get lost! lol
Nah... I can understand some code pretty well, if I have access to stuff that it may be missing, because it's calling it from somewhere else. I accidentally learned how to make some fairly efficient handlers for Neverwinter Nights. There was a guy, whom I only ever saw via e-mail, who actually knew how to write code from scratch, so he wrote the stuff for me if I ever needed him to - but I almost never bothered him with that. But every time I'd send him an e-mail, just to see if he'd help... there he was, with a page full of code!
There isn't an official forum for Dogwaffle questions (yet?) so I suppose this thread is as good as any, and luckily I do get notification when people post to it. PErhaps with enough requests they could open up a Dogwaffle-focused forum section? There is also the official forum at yahoogroups.com/groups/dogwaffle and there's one at YURdigital.com
I recomm,end you start with smaller size initially to get faster results and experiment with things until you know what tools you'll use in what order.
Most of the internal brushes use a small bitmap image, over time they have grown but they're still the smaller ones. Custom brushes can be much larger images. You can find options to convert Internal to Custom. Look in right-click menu on the brush tool for example, if I recall off the top of my head. Once you have a Custom brush you should be able to enable previewing it (Prv in context bar). Control its opacity, and allow custom brush transform (rotation/scaling on large images can be slow on slow systems). That's in the brush Options (Settings). Try shortcut o for options and select Custom tab.
I'll be in Los Angeles this Friday/Saturday for the Production Pipeline Expo, if anyone is there come see me for more :-) www.productionpipelineexpo.com
Not sure that you have to load it in Swap buffer, depends on whether you want to do stuff with it that works through the Swap buffer. I'd for sure store the image to quickly get back to it in a click. (Image -> Store image copy).
Note that the exact menu item spelling and names depend on which version you have.
You could load the image and select some of the bristle brushes, and increase the Bleed or adjust some but there are some good presets. You can add some bristled brush look to it that way.
There are also a few filters in the Filter -> Artistic and Filter -> Stylize categories. For example in Filter -> Artisting there's a filter to add a bristled appearance. (Brush strokes).
About transparency: You can see a transparency (opacity) slider to adjust it. But there's no opaque mode if you're asking for that. There are 30-40 modes, a few of them can be used to create opaque mode based on dedicating a color (like Magic Pink)_ to opaque erase.
It would help if you showed a small version of the original image. And another what effect you're trying to achieve. Perhaps I could use it for a few tutorials? (if I had time that is, but over a few weeks perhaps?)
The free DoggyFX for PD Pro has a few option you can use to make an image look like it was drawn, etc.
Despite that it says it is an animatio plugin, you can apply most of the effects to a single image.
You can get Doggy FX for Free at:
http://pjw-productions.com/
Current version is 1.29, also grab the 2 Custom FX sets you can find on the download description page in the Custom FX section.
The links to download all of that are still working I just checked them.
I did some quick tutorial images showing using Doggy FX to get a
1.) After you get your image loaded and any post work you want done go to Step 2.
2.) Go to Filtes and Select DoggyFX1_29 (see attached image DFX 1.)
3.) You'll see a Categories and Plug-ins box for DoggyFX 1.29. (see attached image DFX 2. Note: The attachments are showing this after the DFX 3 image for some reason.)
4.) Select Filters and in the Plug-ins category select the plug-in you want to use and double click on it.
5.) You'll get a box for that specific plug-in. I used the Sketch Filter (Soft Line) Plug-in. (see attached image DFX 3 Note: The attachments are showing this before the DFX 2 image for some reason.)
The exact options you get in a box will be different for the Plug-in you are using.
I turned just Turned up the Default Strength for the image I worked on. With some plug ins you'll notice that instead of more being better, less is better.
I've attached the before and after image i changed using this method.
Hope that helps.
I've been meaning to tackle this one all day but something kept getting in the way.
There are several ways to tackle the problem. The first one may be to use the "Rub color" paint mode, since you are already using the swap image. It picks up the color from the swap screen every time you start a new brush stroke. That could be a good way to make a painterly type of effect in the main image.
Another one is more automatic. The Crayon mode in the Artistic/Graphics pen filter can do some interesting things, anywhere from colored pencil to watercolor, but I imagine it could be pretty slow at that resolution. Maybe worth a try. Just don't bump the stroke density to 100% or you'll be waiting a long time. Start at around 80-90%, and move it up a little bit at a time.
A third option involved a commercial plugin for Dogwaffle, but it isn't very expensive. Gurtrudis for Project Dogwaffle can do some amazing things. I haven't' used it in a long time, so I don't know if it works with version 8.2 or not, or if there are other OS or 64 bit problems. I think they have a demo version. Actually, now that I look at it, it is amazingly FREE. Ok, cool. it can be found here.http://www.gertrudisgraphics.com/more/free-software
Hi all. I'm the Author of Howler, and I'm doing a little side promotion this week on another one of our products, which is a royalty free soundtrack collection. You can use it to add music to your videos, even for commercial and broadcast use without every having to pay another license fee. The collection cost $24.99 regularly and it is discount to $19.95.
The contents of the music collection includes movie soundtrack style tunes in the following categories:
Alien Encounters
Dinosaur Danger
Cartoon
Space and Mech battles
and general production music.
You can get it at the regular Dogwaffle Howler website at www.squirreldome.com, and click on the link to the soundtrack collection. I appreciate it, because, you know, gotta eat.
I'd happily move the official Howler group to Daz if they were into it.
Dartanbeck wroteth
thanks so much, that's Exactly what I was looking for! You know I got up at 6 and started watching the tut :) by the time I'd screwed around and the penny dropped I was at about 17.15 - and then it was time to go to work :) bummer, will get to play later on. ! I like the inbuilt artist filters but I want more control .
Thanks for all the other links. I'll check them out when I get home.!
I've watched quite a few of the tuts but I always run out of time. :(
thanks for the considered answer Staigerman. Obliged!. I will post an example of what I am looking for. So far my attempts had been with the "rubthrough" brush. I was trying to get a painted effect using eg oils and rubbing away the top layer (white) But after seeing that tut Dartanbeck linked too I realised it was the "wrong" approach. I couldn't see the layer transparency slider so I will check out that layer tut.
The artistic filters are good, but I am finding I need more control in certain places eg some parts of an image with less contrast can get lost so I need to be able to customise certain passages. I'll get something to show you this evening.
Thanks again :)
Jay-Nola, thanks for the mini tut.
I'll sit down and go through it :) Looks very helpful.
Cheers from ear!
Dan-Ritchie wrote
Thank you for that heads up on the Rub color" paint mode. It sounds very close to what I want!
Yes, ah I tried the Graphic Pen filter and it gives very good results - reminds me of some of Dickens' scenes from his novels. But yes, if I twiddled the wrong dial it took a "while" for the bigger resolutions ;)
Thanks for that link for the plugin. Can't wait to explore it !
And it would be grande to see Daz give a forum corner for Dogwaffler .
I'm very glad I asked this question. The program is obviously very good, and very powerful and it's great to get answers from the maker.(s)
cheers :)
{ Note to DAZ: See? This is how it is done. :coolhmm: }
Dartanbeck has definitely raised my curiousity about Dogwaffle and what it can do. Kinda like how he infected me with the Carrara virus (achoo!). He's good that way. :-)
What I have not been able to figure out yet is where a tool like this fits in if I already own Photoshop. Is this more than just a paint program with some cool image filters?