04.12.2007
What's new with PD Pro Digital Painter?



Project Dogwaffle is a digital painting and animation program developed by Dan RItchie and marketed by TheBest3D.com.

It's been over a year that we presented PD Pro 3.5 in a review. Also about a year ago, version 4.0 was released, followed by several free update patches over the months. In June 2007 the latest update, 4.1, was released. Also, a japanese version was released (based on 4.0c) by NetJapan's PowerX division.

We thought this would be a good time to recap some of the major new features that have found their way into versions 4.0 through 4.1

Multithreading

One of the major new features in 4.0 was the introduction of a framework for making filters multi-threaded. A few filters already were turned multi-threaded with version 4.0. Additional filters (Value-only contrast, and color noise filters) made it into the multi-threaded club. When you run PD Pro 4 on a Core2 Duo, or AMD X2 or other multi-core systems, you'll notice significant speed improvements with these filters. Imagine a dual processor system with dual-Xeons, or one of the new Core2 Quad processor systems. It's a screamer.

PD Pro always had an architecture that was suitable for multi-core systems, with the main process running as activeX server and most filters running on their own process, thus automatically spreading across available core resources for optimal performance. PD Pro 4 has just made it even more efficient.

Compositing with Image Sequences

You can do several types of image compositing for video and animation, including blue screen and green screen based. It's great for video FX animators who, for example, have a walk sequence done in Poser or other 3D animation program, and want to later place that sequence looping in front of another animated background.

In the 4.0b patch, some improvements and bug fixes were made to allow for better compositing, such as when the two clips have different dimensions. You can see some examples and tutorials here:

Blue-screen compositing:
http://www.thebest3d.com/pdpro/tutorials/bluescreencomp/index.html

Alpha channel based compositing:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/tuts/cryptonite/index.html

Here's another, recently added tutorial, also using Bluescreening. It is used to build an animated texture for use in 3D programs to simulate the scratching of a lottery ticket.
http://www.thebest3d.com/pdpro/tutorials/scratchme/index.html



Clearly, PD Pro is not just a paint program. It goes into lots of features for video FX and compositions as we'll see soon with some of the many new filters and effects in the Timeline editor.

Snowfall Filter:

The timeline editor has had an animated snowfall filter for a while now. One thing that was added in 4.0b is a new slider to control the brightness of the snowflakes. They can be dark now too, not only white. This can be suitable when using the filter with high velocity and windspeed for rainfall effects.

Hide those Marching Ants:

When you make a complex selection, perhaps with the magic wand or through several iterative brush strokes with blobby brushes directly into alpha, it can at times be difficult to see what's behind the selections because the 'marching ants' are animating the selection outlines. Plus, in some very complex selection cases it can slow down the interaction (viewing) and other activity.

To remedy this, it may at times be preferable not to see the selection mask, at least just temporarily. To that effect, you can use new options in the Alpha menu to disable the animation and/or visibility of the marching ants in the alpha channel.

Animated Skies:

For long now, Project Dogwaffle has had a Sky rendering filter. One new feature added in version 4.1 is the option to animate that sky's clud system. You can change the position in x and y as well as in z, i.e. into the fractal space that controls their shape. Combine this with a clever gradient for silver lining around the clouds and you get interesting effects that look like fast moving and shape-changing cloud patterns in the sky.

You can see examples here: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatscool/animsky

Age Decrementing on Particle Brushes:

One of the better known and fun features of Project Dogwaffle is a type of brushes called particle brushes, also known under the name of Optipustics (optical Octopus). When you paint with particles, dozens or even hundreds of particles emanate from under your mouse or tablet pen. They spread in different direction, responding to gravity, hand motion and speed. They change color according to a color gradient. They can change size too, split and react to image-based force fields.

One thing that hapens when particles reach their lifespan is that they are respawned to begin the cycle anew. The duration of their life cycle is dictacted by the Lifespan parameter.

With the addition of Age decrementing, they won't however appear to live the same duration again and again as they renew. Instead, they live shorter and shorter lifespans each time that they start another one. This is perfect for certain types of roots and twiggs which you want to show shortening and thinning as you go from trunk to tip.

A good example of age decrementing at work is shown in this tutorial:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatscool/agedecrement


Animated Lens Flares:

PD Pro was developed primarily by a Holywood special FX animator named Dan Ritchie. It's not surprising then to find special effect brushes and tools such as lightning, snowfall and the all-mighty lens flares. Fotographers hate them, special effects animators love'em!

Version 4.1 of PD Pro saw the addition of new features in the lens flare system, and the fact that they are now also found in the timeline editor, and thus can be animated. You can animate parameters such as position and intensity. It's rather easy to track the moving headlights of a motor bike or car in the darkness of the night through a few keyframes, and add lensflares that way.

Here are some great examples of animated lens flares:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatscool/animdlf


Animated Shadow Vision: Mystic vision is a very cool filter which does sort of a combination of zoom blur and directional light diffusion. It's great for light rays of the Sun piercing through dark clouds or from behind thick shrubbery, trees and bushes.

The counterpart of Mystic vision is Shadow vision: very similar in what it does, except that if casts rays off the dark pixels instead of the light ones.

Shadow vision can be used to simulate volumetric shadows cast by clouds. And because they too are animated and found in the timeline, you can create very convincing effects.


The Woodcut filter: The woodcut filter joins a tradition of Dogwaffle's many art filters, such as

- apply current paper
- wet paint
- brush strokes
- tarnish
- weave
- graphic pen (which has tons of modes and options in itself)
- oilify, and
- cross contour

The woodcut filter takes the current image, perhaps coming from a  photograph, and uses a thresholding mechanism that shows it with just one or a few levels of grey. This mimics the look of woodcut reprints. You can further enhance it with the addition of paper textures that look like wood patterns.

Here are some examples and tutorials: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatscool/woodcut

Evidently, Project Dogwaffle is definitely a tool you should check out if you like to turn photos into works of art.


Waving in the Wind:

A custom brush is made of one or several images, potentially a long video clip. A new animated brush fiulter in the Timeline filter collection can take such brush images and apply transformations to them to make it look as if the wind or the breeze is waving and rocking them back and forth, left to right.

This works also for underwater currents with seaweed. Take a look at some examples here:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatscool/animbreeze


To summarize, PD Pro 4.1 is loaded with great tools and gadgets to take your digital art and animated media even further. Check for example this last animation: http://www.thebest3d.com/pdpro/tutorials/cloud2planet

and ask yourself: can your digital painting and imaging program do that?.... for a mere $119 ?

To Probe Further: To learn more, visit these sites:

tutorials: www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/tuts
galleries: www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/dotm
PD Pro 4: www.thebest3d.com/pdpro
PD Particles: www.thebest3d.com/pdp

Special year-end promotion: Through the end of 2007, a discount coupon is offered when ordering PD Pro on the BMT store: BFKK000S4 - use this coupon for a 25% discount on PD 2.1, PD Artist, PD Pro 3 and 4, as well as the tutorial collection #1: Discovering Project Dogwaffle!