Title: New Art Creation Plugin, Gertrudis for
Project Dogwaffle
Subtitle: Software turns your digital photos
into artistic paintings and hand sketches.
Santa Clarita, CA and Buenos
Aires, Argentina - May 3rd, 2005 - Dan Ritchie, author of PD Pro
Digital Painter, and Enrique Nieloud, developer of Getrudis art effects
software, jointly announced the availability of Gertrudis for
Dogwaffle, a plugin aimed at enhancing Project Dogwaffle's artistic
capabilities.
"We're very excited about this," said Ritchie. "Gertrudis is a
fantastic effects tool which easily turns a photograph into what looks
like hand-made drawings. It fits in very well with the core mission of
Project Dogwaffle, which is to equip every artist with affordable and
easy-to-use PC paint and traditional animation software."
This marks the first time in the history of Project Dogwaffle that an
external developer has ported and released their own software in the
form of a commercially available plugin for Project Dogwaffle. It shows
the ease of use of the free Dogwaffle SDK for programmers who are
interested in making their software available in the form of plugins.
This particular plugin was built with Delphi, demonstrating the
flexibility of the software architecture where Dogwaffle is an active X
server and pretty much anything that's COM-enabled can connect to it.
"The plugin port to Project Dogwaffle was done in just a few weeks",
said Nieloud. "Their SDK is well documented and easy to use. I am very
pleased with offering Gertrudis to the community of PD Pro 3 users as
well as users of earlier versions of Project Dogwaffle, even the free
version 1.2! This is absolutely an astonishing piece of software and a
great fit for Gertrudis."
Using the Gertrudis for Dogwaffle plugin, artists can start with an
existing picture such as from a digital camera or scanner, a 3D
rendering or painting from another program or image editing
application. Gertrudis first performs a topological analysis of the
image's content and builds a matrix of flow direction vectors. Users
can then paint a few quick strokes across the desired features of their
image. Gertrudis uses all that information to generate something
that looks more like hand-drawn masterpieces.
After returning the modified image from Gertrudis back to Dogwaffle,
there are many more filters and possibilities awaiting creative
exploration, such as wet paint, embossing, shadow drop, light
diffusion, brush strokes and paper textures to name just a few. These
can be used to create even more realistic looking artwork. Of course,
artists will also enjoy the ability to directly paint on top of the
image with a mix of various types of Dogwaffle's famous natural media
brushes and fractal particle brushes (Optipustics).
Gertrudis for Dogwaffle is available for Windows(R) 98 SE, Me, 2000 and
XP platforms. The following versions of Project Dogwaffle are supported
with it:
- v1.2 (the free version)
- v1.6
- v2.1x
- v3.0 and 3.1 (PD Pro)
Enrique Nieloud lives in Argentina and is the developer of Gertrudis.
His website and contact info is at http://www.gertrud.com.ar
- Gertrudis is an application that transforms images into strokes based
illustrations. The results can be saved as a bitmap image (jpeg, bmp)
or stroke by stroke in a vectorial form as a high quality Postscript,
allowing other programs to import the drawing.
*** About Dan Ritchie and PD Pro
Digital Painter
Dan Ritchie lives in Southern California and is the author of a novel,
"Silver Squirrel". He is also a 3D animator and special FX artist. PD
Pro and Project Dogwaffle are the results of several years years of
software development to make his own post-production tool for matte
painting, touch up and more. For details about Dan's work, visit http://www.squirreldome.com
*** About TheBest3D.com
Based in San Diego, California, TheBest3D.com is partnered with Dan
Ritchie to market Project Dogwaffle and PD Pro Digital Painter. It is
the website host for many resources including patches, galleries,
brushes and reviews.
*** Media Contacts
Philip Staiger
email: dogwaffle (at) thebest3d (dot) com
web: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/presszone
phone: +1-858-208-7377