Hello again,
here is another update from the "Dogwaffler of the
Moment" newsletter.
See more and learn more in recent online editions
with HTML formatting, with images and links to
related videos. Start here to see all past
newsletters:
In this issue we
continue our fascination and exploration of Pluto
and foreign worlds, and be add a muzzle. No, not
the kind you put on a bad dog to prevent the
biting. Muzzles are also flares in front of
machine guns in a video game. Muzles, flares,
stars,... a bunch of things you can pick and
choose and customize from the effect brushes.
These are
exciting times, on an evolutionary scale.
The pictures from Pluto keep coming in. It
will take over a year for the last recorded
image to reach us. A lot of data was
recorded during the fly-by, but with the
very small bandwidth of just a 15 watt
emitter, it takes a lot of time to send it
all. The data is sent again and again in
redundant batches so as to make it possible
for the ground antennas to receive it and distinguish it from the
background noise, the stars behind.
Something like that. It's worth imagining,
dreaming about.
So the probe that went past Pluto on July
14, 2015, took a ton of pictures, which are
now stored on some device on that probe. Now
what?
We're now gradually seeing them get to our
screens. Keep an eye on the action here -
every day for the next 300-400 days!
Soooooooo much data was recorded on the
probe during the short fly-by's closest
approach. While it is now continuing to fly
away from us, the data is being transmitted
from New Horizons, back to Earth on a
15-Watt emitter. That's a fraction of my
wife's hair dryer, or my son's gaming PC,...
and yet we can filter the data from the
background noise, transmissions
arriving daily, and over the next year we'll
get to see and discover how big this event
really was, on the grand scheme of things,
the evolutionary scale, the stuff that
matters, ....our place in the universe?
or maybe not yet.
But we can dream and paint about it.
Thank you Nova/PBS/NASA/Mom (Mission
Operations Manager)/my tax dollars at
work(!)/Google/Youtube/supporting
foundations and donors like you!.... did I
miss anyone?
'Chasing
Pluto': PBS Documentary on Epic New
Horizons Flyby
We're continuing to
explore the universe, Pluto or other
imaginary worlds, and if it helps, we'll add
a cup of morning Joe to keep us boldly going
where no GPU has gone before.... right here
in the kitchen, with our morning cup of
coffee.
Brush Tool:
It's
all about the brush. Dogwaffle is
brush centric, this is one place
where that shows, we think. It is the top, first
tool in the toolbar.
Brush
settings: You can also use 'o'
for options to display the brush
settings. That's if the application
has the keyboard focus.
Custom tab:
This is a great place to start
making various types of Custom
brushes, from simply blobs to
complex animated brushes consisting
of multiple frames.
Brush fx:
in the lower left corner in the
Custom panel. This will be your
gateway to quickly making numerous
types of flares and bright flash,
muzzle, smoke and stars.
Select a
preset. The preview area shows
it rendered out. Use the sliders to
adjust some of the key
parameters.Note that when you have a
preset that you changed and
customized, and you think you'll
want to use it more than once, it's
a good idea to save it in the Media
browser. Create a new category
folder in it, named something like Flares
and Stars or My
Muzzles. Whatever speeds up
your workflow to find and use it
fast.
Preview-resizer:
click and drag in the preview to
change the size. Try for example
dragging from the center to the
outer rim of the preview. This makes
a small version. Then drag one about
3-4 times the distance, way out.
This will make a very large flare.
It will also take longer to render.
There's an
option also to create animated
versions. It renders image sequences
into the custom brush directly.
Last but certainly
not least by a long shot (pun
intended), there is the Editor... -
use it to create many more variants
for your needs. These pre-existing
flares are great for seeing them
head-on. But if you want a gas exhaust
from a rocket engine, or the barrel of
a riffle seen from the side, you'll
want a more elongated starting image,
or you will also need extra
transformation filters or the Warp
tool and other techniques. Watch the
tutorials, old and new.
Here are some recently added
tutorials for Animated Text for fancy titles,
perhaps for use in a game. Oh an first, here's one
more on flares, and this one is with PD Particles
9
PD Artist doesn't have the animation capabilities
of PD Howler. But it goes beyond PD Particles in a
number of ways, such as the filters, and 3D
features. If you like to paint, PD Particles is
perfect. If you also like to create 3D landscapes,
PD Artist will take you that extra mile, with the
3D Designer and Puppy Ray, both now on the GPU.
PD Particles is usually priced at $27, but now
through August 16, you can enjoy it with an
automatic discount of 24% off the regular price:
less than $21
Here is an example: using an elevation map
(greyscale) with erosion and sediments, and a
color map. The rendered result can easily vary
based on chosen options, angles, fog, clouds,
lighting, etc...
And that's it for now.
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