great tools for happy artists  Gertrudis for Dogwaffle
 
 ... a quick look at Enrique Nieloud's Plugin for PD Pro
 more tutorials?
Gertrudis is an artistic modification program  developed by Enrique Nieloud.  It can be used to start with a photograph and turn it into works of art of various types that may appear to have been painted by hand.
There is a standalone version, as well as a plugin version specifically for Dogwaffle (works with version 1.2 (the freeware edition), with 2.x and with PD Pro 3.x).

Here is a quick description of how it works
  • you load an image into Gertrudis (from file or from Dogwaffle's buffer)
  • Gertrudis performs an analysis of the image, determines major outlines and topology, and finds flow vector fields in the color gradients. These will be used to automatically redirect the image portions as you 'brush' over it.
  • you liberally 'paint' some brush strokes over the base image (left). This produces a modified second image (right).
  • you can select parameters like brush bristle image, length, thickness, colors, density and other details
  • The modified and enhanced image is then ready to be saved, printed, or passed back to Dogwaffle for further editing.
 Here are some examples of artwork done by Dan Ritchie, using Gertrudis:

 

For a side-by-side comparison of
original photo vs resulting modified image:
 click here

You can find another tutorial on using Gertrudis standalone
together with Project Dogwaffle here: brainpower tutorial.
Using the Plugin Version:

After installing Gertrudis for Dogwaffle, start PD Pro. You should be able to run the Gertrudis plugin directly from within Dogwaffle's plugin panel. Use 'k' to view the plugins and select the 'Filter' tab. The plugin will appear as 'Gert_pm.exe'  or 'GertDog_pm.exe' (the final name may vary).

the Demo/Trial version:
 Free Download!
click here to choose the
standalone or plugin version

The Full Version:
Purchase
  
Gertrudis Pro 2
Standalone Edition
Standalone version, can be used with any imaging software that saves to the many supported popular image formats.
only $67 !
> order here <
new online store at Share-it!
 
Gertrudis
for Project Dogwaffle
Plugin version, for
Project Dogwaffle v2 or
PD Pro v3 and even
 for the freeware v1.2
only $34 !
> order here <
new online store at Share-it!
 


Screenshot of the Gertrudis Plugin version and Post Work done in Project Dogwaffle:

Mini Tutorial:  the Helicopter

Let's start for example with this image of a helicopter, originally modeled by thegamesworks and rendered in Conitec Gamestudio [ see tutorial
 or  see DOTM]
Now start Gertrudis for Dogwaffle. Gertrudis will launch and analyse the image copied from Dogwaffle's current buffer. After a short few seconds it's ready.


There are of course many things that you could use Gertrudis for Dogwaffle for at this time.  The one thing I'll try to do here is create a variant of the image that looks like it's sparking electrical static in all directions from the chopper after it's been struck by lightning. Who knows, perhaps we'll use this technique for an illustration in a game where you shoot down a chopper with a laser gun. Or we'll show it under fire during a lightning storm.

click to enlarge>



Back in Dogwaffle we now have this image. Store it (Buffer>Store buffer...) or save it to file (Cntrl-S).

                                    click to enlarge>
If the image we started from is loaded in the alternate buffer (the Swap buffer), we can easily blend them together and modulate (fade) the amount of the Gertrudis image we can to overlay or blend with it.

click to enlarge>

In fact just when we close Gertrudis for Dogwaffle you have an option to merge the modified image with the original in the main buffer where it came from initially.


Here's an example of an image that only had part of the chopper modified by Gertrudis when we sent it back and merged it with the original for a half-half composition. Left side is modified by Gertrudis.
We can further take the chopper image and use the Threshold filter to make it black and white and then copy it to Alpha. We can also load it into a custom brush image and paint with it.


                         click to enlarge>

alpha channel mask
And of course we can add much more now:

  • load a background image of turbulent stormy clouds;
  • paint the chopper from the custom brush at an angle and different size and color;
  • apply rainfall fx;
  • add light diffusion, fog, and other fx
  • add lightning strikes with the lightning filter.

and soon enough this looks like a chopper which is in serious doodoo.

click to enlarge>