• What is Penny for PD Particles?

Penny is a Spline based drawing&painting engine which was first introduced with Project Dogwaffle 2.1

This version is a free plugin, rebuilt for PD Particles 1.0 - It will not work with PD Artist or other versions of Project Dogwaffle.

• Installation of Penny for PD Particles
  

There is only one file with this free plugin: pdp_penny_paint.exe (160 KB)

There is no installer. Instead, you simply put a copy f this file into the folder where you have installed PD Particles. By default this is:


Download and save the above file into that folder, or wherever you installed PD Particles if you didn't use the default location.

You can then also create a shortcut, perhaps to the desktop, or to another folder which you may have open for easily accessing the  plugin. If you have such a folder in which a shortcut exists for cooltools #1, then we recommend that you place the above file there too. (as a shortcut to the actual copy placed in the PD Particles installation folder).

• How to Use Penny: a Brief Overview
  

Penny is essentially a "paint program within the paint program". In otherwords: it's not a standalone drawing gadget: in order to use it, PD Particles must be already running. If in fact you start Penny first, i.e. before PD Particles, then this will cause PD Particles to be launched too: Penny looks for and attempts to establish a connection to the PD Particles.
When you launch Penny, the first thing it will do is to display a small, new tools panel. The existing main tools panel won't disappear, but while Penny is running, you will want to focus on the new tools offered in the Penny Tools panel.

There are only a few brushes in this Tools panel, plus some familiar viewing controls, and tools to send images to and from the Penny drawing area. There's also the Undo tooland you can use the keyboard shortcut 'u' for undo.


The next thing that happens is that a new image buffer is created, and a copy of the current image from PD Particles main image buffer is placed in it. In other words: Penny doesn't start with an empty image: it starts with whatever is in PD Particles at that moment when you launch Penny.

Penny then lets you draw in this temporary image buffer. You can start by clearing its buffer, or continue from that image and add to it.




One of the first things you might want to do is to change the brush size from the Size slider, because it might be too thin for you at first.


When you're done drawing with Penny, simply close the temporary image buffer from Penny. This will cause the Penny image buffer content to be pasted back into the main image buffer. In other words: it will automatically save the last image you had just prior to closing the Penny drawing area. 


Or, you could use one of the tools on the Penny tools panel to send the image back to the main image buffer. Penny will continue running. If you use the cooltools plugins, you could then 'store' the regular image buffer at this stage, to grab and store a snapshot in memory for later uses.

So why might you want to use Penny? What's so special about the tools found in Penny?

There are only four brushes, but they are of particular interest to cartoonists, Anime and Manga artists, and artists who like to draw lineart.

• Penny brushes are Spline interpolated: no matter how fast your hand is, you will never see line segments even if you make very short turns. The curves are always... well, curvy.

• Penny brushes are anti-aliased: you will not see any jaggies, guaranteed.

• Penny brushes are Pressure sensitive. They're perfect for use with tablets.

There is also some control of Opacity, paper texture intensity, size and a few other parameters.

These are the 4 types of brushes found in Penny:

• Pen

• Water Brush

• Ink

• Gel brush