Interesting Developments February Edition
I’ve seen some cool things around the internet to do with digital art and software. which I wanted to share with you this month.
I have recently created a new Twitter account as an aid to my blog research, however Twitter makes people log in to view my profile and read the updates, so I’ve decided to keep writing logs about what I find here on the blog as well.
For anyone relying on Twitter or any social media platform as an alternative to a real website or blog I would advise different strategies going forward due to the decreased accessibility of information.
Plasticity
I’ve not been that interested in NURBS / CAD based 3D modelling software if I am completely honest but this caught my eye because it is being developed low cost software aimed toward concept artists.
The well known software MOI was an inspiration for the developer. I did try the demo for MOI once but I decided it wasn’t for me. Perhaps this software will help soften the learning curve for that type of software because it aims to be familiar to users of Blender.
Plasticity is being developed by Nick Kallen and has a GitHub project page. You can find more out about how the software works by watching his YouTube videos and read more about the background behind the project on CG Channel.
New Sculpting Features in Blender
I still haven’t tried much sculpting in Blender. I use ZBrush and 3DCoat for for my 3D sculpting and painting software so I haven’t really needed to. At present I find those software’s lighter on my CPU for sculpting. The main things I use Blender for are rendering out my completed models and occasional light polygonal modelling.
Developments of the sculpting branch in Blender were quite regular when a developer called Pablo Dobarro worked on the project. After leaving to pursue his own projects last December updates have been slower but are still being worked on. You can read about the planned updates on Blenders development blog.
PD Howler 2022.2
Digital painting and VFX software PD Howler, updates with the following improvements:
- Completely rewritten warp mesh filter
- rewritten floating color picker
- New halo-free tone mapping tool replaces the older local contrast filter under the adjust menu
- New centripetal and chordal parameters for curve tool to remove kinks at closely placed control points
- New tone mapping parameter for the light diffusion filter helps keep the add combine mode from clipping
- New paper layers
You can find out more about PD Howler and download a trial on the website.
Development is still continuing on PD Howler despite some setbacks over the last year or so for the developer. I aim to make more art with the program and try out the new features soon.
Goxel
I don’t know why but this software escaped my notice until recently. I don’t have a huge research team though, it is just me.
Goxel is a free open source 3D voxel editor available for Windows, Mac, Linux, IOS and Android not dissimilar to another software I have mentioned on the blog before called MagicaVoxel.
Clavicula 0.9.8.2
Clavicula is an updated version of a software I mentioned on the blog once called Neobarok. It can be used on desktop and VR. Their have been some new developments this month which you can read about on the developers Facebook page linked from his website.
I think this software needs some more documentation and tutorials for beginners / those new to 3D as it isn’t as intuitive as other options. There are some videos on the developers YouTube channel demonstrating features of the software. It may be of interest to people with more experience of using 3D and some programming knowledge for the new shader layers.
I’m currently working on a new 3D mascot for the blog which I will be writing about and showing in the coming weeks. I had some technical difficulties the last few weeks but everything is working OK now.
Thanks for reading.
